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India must step in : Chairman of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies.

India certainly needs to take some part in the events - we cant just sit by an do nothing. What to do is the question - The answer (to me at least ) is simple - do whats in the best interest of the indians living in the middle east - and believe it or not the indians are very happy with the current regimes in the middle east and most certainly DO NOT want a regime change as most of the opposition do not want expats in their country - So how do we get to keep the current regimes in power while also advocating democracy to the arab population - One way to do this would be to ask the arab govts to give more and more indians citizenship and at the same time ask them to give the citizens voting powers and give the parliament more power - the Indians being a huge part of the population will swing the votes in favor of the monarchies - thus making the indians over there happy as well as the current regimes - But this method will come with its own set of difficulties as when the indians get arab citizenships - they are no longer Indian - a way around that would be dual citizenship - of course other problems might also arise but nothing we cant manage

Dual citizenship is partly what did our aggressive neighbor in. Establishing democracies in the Arab states will have positive as well as negative effects. For example..... Radical Islam will undoubtedly flourish in a democratic set-up ( with overwhelming Muslim majority ) when the people are free to chart their own course. This , I'm sure you'd agree; is rather un-desirable. Turkey would be the sole exception.
 
Not true at all. Pakistan is an independent entity free to pursue their own goals. However, India will intervene when it conflicts with our interests.
If Pakistan aligns more towards China, that will cause indigestion to us and we will be forced to take the side of US to counter the dual threat . This is the current situation . It was because of Pakistans closeness towards NATO in early years which tells us why we were forced to buy Soviet weapons and become on the side of Soviet . The main thing around which our military doctrine rotates is Pakistan and now China of course.
 
If Pakistan aligns more towards China, that will cause indigestion to us and we will be forced to take the side of US to counter the dual threat . This is the current situation . It was because of Pakistans closeness towards NATO in early years which tells us why we were forced to buy Soviet weapons and become on the side of Soviet . The main thing around which our military doctrine rotates is Pakistan and now China of course.

This , i suppose is the bitter truth. But as of late, the implications of pakistani actions are starting have little bearing on Indian policies. We need to focus on the larger picture...which undoubtedly, includes china ( our immediate neighbor ) and the world in general. However....I do not think India ever truly aligned with anyone in its past....no, not even the soviets.
 
This , i suppose is the bitter truth. But as of late, the implications of pakistani actions are starting have little bearing on Indian policies. We need to focus on the larger picture...which undoubtedly, includes china ( our immediate neighbor ) and the world in general. However....I do not think India ever truly aligned with anyone in its past....no, not even the soviets.
Yes we were never aligned with any one even on soviet side . But we did the help we can do during Soviet attack on Afganisthan and they too helped us many times like sending their nuke submarine to counter US 7th fleet ACC which came to attack us and rescue Pakistan .Things would have been different if Soviet had not collapsed .
 
Lets just sort out our own problems then we can look outside to help others for now we have our hands full.
 
Lets just sort out our own problems then we can look outside to help others for now we have our hands full.
we get chance only once if we let it go we will be at loss , we have internal problems doesnt mean that we should not puts stop to our national interests . I can tell this in more detail way though...
 
we get chance only once if we let it go we will be at loss , we have internal problems doesnt mean that we should not puts stop to our national interests . I can tell this in more detail way though...

Every country has internal problems. Not just India. A considerable number of Indian citizens work in the middle-east. If anyone ought to "do more" in middle-east; it is us.
 
This is certainly much required and the obstruction is on our end. Otheriwse, GCC and Iranians would be quite happy to get India to mediate.

Ofcourse, there are some risks with this, but there are more risks of not doing anything. In terms of interests, we have about 7 million Indians working in GCC sending by remittances of about $30 BillionUSD a year apart from the $100+B in trade. Iran also provides energy supplies and is an important corridor for access to Afghanistan and C. Asia.

When you mediate, you are not choosing sides, but trying to resolve a potential violent crisis peacefully by acting as a go-between. Conflict in this region will impact India the most. US and China are quite far to withstand this. So any instability and conflict in this region is of a bigger concern to us than either US or China.
 
Noted:

At stake for India in the GCC states are nearly two-thirds of its total energy imports and four million expatriates, who contribute approximately $35 billion to the Indian economy annually, in foreign remittances
And.
According to estimates, India's oil import from the GCC states is expected to increase to 91.6 per cent by 2020

Since the GCC population is small, India as a Demography (oops! damocles-y, sorry I've lost the word when it comes to India that is Demo...what, oh ICBM), has to intervene (overtly alongside Israel) in the affairs of the Middle east or else.
Capiche?
 
^^^And you expect govt headed by india municipality level indian politicians supported by understaffed IFS to have coherent foreign policy?A govt which is not rooted in its soil can never realise the potential of the soil.For that you need the sons/daughters of the soil to lead the country.....ie maoists.Otherwise govts headed by super pm waitress and her kitchen cabinet NAC will make the soup out of country like they did in last 8 yrs.
 
Dual citizenship is partly what did our aggressive neighbor in. Establishing democracies in the Arab states will have positive as well as negative effects. For example..... Radical Islam will undoubtedly flourish in a democratic set-up ( with overwhelming Muslim majority ) when the people are free to chart their own course. This , I'm sure you'd agree; is rather un-desirable. Turkey would be the sole exception.

Its a really confusing to say "radical Islam" will flourish.

You have to define what you are talking about because its used to mean anyone who even mentions the word Muslim.

For example, Turkey's ruling party openly supports a secular state but is still considered "radical Islam" by you post. Infsct, AKP, is not Islamist even by the correct definition of the word.

The main concern is of course that political religious ideological groups would gain power initially because they can use religion to get votes. But if they don't perform, they will loose. Within a span of a year, MB vote share went down from 50% to 25% when the Presidential elections were held. And even in the runoff which was against a Mubarak appointee, it was a close 52% victory. In Libya, the MB counterparts lost badly. And in Tunisia, the Annahada party that has partial MB support has again confirmed that its a secular centre-left coalition and will emerge as a Muslim version of the Christian democrat parties in Europe.

The proper definition of an Islamist would be a group whose agenda is to use Islam as a political tool to establish a governance framework and then implement and impose "their" version of Islam top down. The democratic "political" versions are MB or Jamaat Islami in Pakistan for example. Turkey has no such counterpart. Within this is a minority that are the non-violent revolutionary groups are Hizb-ut-Tahrir type groups that oppose democracy and want to overthrow muslim govt. And then within this minority is another minority that violent wants to overthrow Muslim govt.s like TTP in Pakistan and Jihadist groups in Egypt, and Algeria.


India should not be afraid to engage the "political" counterparts while being against the revolutionary and ofcourse completely against the third variant. I personally would prefer to have no party professing a political religious ideology, wether Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Jew, but if the public votes them to power, then there is no point in not engaging them as long as they adhere to some basic principles. For example, we have Christian democrats in Europe, the BJP or Shiv Sena in India and the Shaas party in Israel all of whom have a political religious ideology which is an important component. But on an international level, govt. will engage whichever party is in power regardless. There is no reason why we in India should adopt the same approach.

However, I think one thing we should be clear, is that we are not going to export democracy. IF an Arab country wants our help in establishing democracy we will actively help them out like we saw rcently in Egypt when our CEC went there. But we will not call for democratic reforms like the West does because we should maintain the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.
 
I must add that
India has in the past used back channel diplomacy to mediate between US and Iran during the 2001 Afghanistan invasion. There is no reason why the same can't be done again in 2012. Some basic ground rules like non-interference in internal affairs of other countries need to be established and then India will need to use all if its finesse to hammer out a peaceful framework if not a settlement to discuss regional issues.

Also in 2010 ICWA had conducted a region security conference between GCC, Iraq and Iran res, so there is some foundation that India can build on already in place.
 
Isolationist? Our policy is not isolationist at all. We have a point of view, but, do not need to select force as a method of implementation.

And by the way, being neutral is quite different from being isolationist. Our foreign policy is quite sound and that is the reason we are able to deal with the world.
 
If Pakistan aligns more towards China, that will cause indigestion to us and we will be forced to take the side of US to counter the dual threat .

No, not necessarily.

Irrespective of what Pakistan does, China (or any other power) should be made to understand that its interests are better served by being on good terms with India. That will require continued trade and other engagement, along with incentives and disincentives to facilitate better relations.

As regards the topic, I am a bit mystified why the Gulf monarchies, which are not democratic themselves, are so much against Assad. Same question applies to Turkey, which itself has been suppressing Kurds from time to time. Why are these nations involving outside powers and fighting each other? It was the same story with Gaddhafi.
 

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