What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
Why does prominent geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan tag India as a ‘pivot state’?
Let us focus on two interesting pieces of information as we begin this New Year.
The first one is something that Robert Kaplan wrote about India back in 2012: “As the United States and China become great power rivals, the direction in which India tilts could determine the course of geopolitics in Eurasia in the 21st century. India, in other words, looms as the ultimate pivot state.”
The second piece and the more interesting information is that despite coming from a highly valued geopolitical analyst and thinker like Kaplan, the essence of his opinion soon got lost in the maze within those very power centers that want to dominate the globe. I am talking about China and the USA.
KAPLAN’S GEOGRAPHY
Kaplan is an ardent fan of geography. He is one of those old-school geopolitical thinkers that assign the kind of importance geography demands in geopolitics. Interestingly, geography still holds some residual sway no matter the tech advancement. [Case in point: Afghanistan – a country destined to remain a slave to Hindukush’s whim. The mindless fanning out of the mountain right through the Afghan heartland keeps the population centers restricted to the periphery. The resultant lack of connection prevents the coalescing of an Afghan identity. A 75% mountainous terrain results in the lack of agricultural land and keeps Afghan tribes semi-nomadic. While the world witnesses the coming of artificial intelligence and robotics, the average Afghan retains a pastoral-nomadic temperament and is yet to grow into the agricultural and/or industrial mindset. Thus, no matter who rules Afghanistan, geography remains the king]. Therefore, when Kaplan mentions India as a pivot state, one can be certain that he means geography.
Geography apart, another factor influences Kaplan: that is Spykman’s ‘Rimland’. You see, whatever the strategies, whichever the institutions, however the plans get tabled, and whoever runs with them, the execution chapter of the 20th-century American liberal hegemony can be traced to the works of three people: Alfred Mahan, Halford Mackinder, and Nicholas Spykman. It was Spykman, who during the early 40s coined the term Rimland to clump all the Eurasian states with direct access to the open sea. Among other things, this influenced the final decision on the geographical location of Pakistan (read here) as a new state. An informed theorist like Kaplan is sure to consider the primacy of India as a Rimland state, and thus view India as a prospective ally of the unipolar hegemon (USA), especially given the relationship that both these nations share with China.
However, there is one other reason for India being a crucial factor, one that Kaplan missed (though that is no fault of his; he wrote his essay in 2012), and that reason does not fall under the realm of geography.
THE GLOBAL ORDERS
Between the existing world order and the new one struggling to be born is a major difference: while the current order is based on a free and deregulated market, the emergent order would predicate itself on a fair amount of state control. There would be degrees of difference in the demonstration, sure; the Chinese government today exhibits an open control of its economy, while Russia under Vladimir Putin keeps it fairly layered. However, at its core, this new order is completely opposed to the idea of the present fashion of politicians prostrating before the merchants, and it intends to reverse that. For them, keeping the transnational business elites under state control is the key to keeping the identity and primacy of the nation-state. While the liberal order has blurred the political boundaries of countries (the EU is a good example), the proponents of the emergent order exhibit a certain degree of assertive nationalism – to them, the Westphalian idea of nation-states remains relevant. And through their respective responses to Covid-19 or Ukraine War, as the clash between these two come out in the open, the clamour becomes more and more audible to the casual geopolitical observer.
PIVOT STATE
It is in this emergent game that India remains a pivot. Not just because of its geography, but because of its stance towards the two world orders too.
India liberalized its economy in the 90s, and that continues even today, with minor adjustments here and there. To add to that, India now has a so-called nationalistic party in power. While the liberal economy ensures that India stays connected to the globalised world order led by the West, the rise of nationalism within the Indian population makes India an organic source of the emergent nation-state/empire-based order.
New Delhi thinks it is trying to balance globalism and nationalism as it waits for one of the two leaders to make a proper inclusive gesture. The results, however, are mixed. To understand the impression, let us consider the USA, China, and New Delhi separately.
USA
As far as America is concerned, the popular saying around the world is that Americans do not understand history. They have demonstrated this repeatedly: their multiple ventures in the Middle East or Afghanistan are the ones that come to mind. Their complete disregard for the sectarian divides within Islamic communities resulted in their haste to get rid of the Baathist elites in Iraq. The blowbacks were in the shape of an Iran-dominated Shia Iraqi leadership at one end, and the Baathist morphing into AQAP and ISIL at the other. To expect this class to understand that part of India’s historical continuity from the Turko-Uzbeg Mughals to the latter-day creation of Pakistan, for example, is a big ask. Today, when the emergent Indic tries to gaze towards Washington, they see a unipolar hegemon with a profitable history of association with a confirmed terrorist state such as Pakistan (one that continues even today) has now resorted to lecturing India about its moral responsibility, to preserve their version of the global order.
(Click here to read the second part of this series)
[Arindam Mukherjee is a geopolitical analyst and the author of JourneyDog Tales, The Puppeteer, and A Matter of Greed.]
[Disclaimer: Views expressed above are the author’s own.]
