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On the way to superpower status
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ON THE WAY
TO SUPERPOWER
STATUS
India and the EC compared Johan Galtung
The Cold War had a poor role repertory to offer members of the inter-state system: superpower, client and non-aligned. But these are still key roles in the system, and with the rapid demise of the Soviet Union as a superpower and the slower decline of the USA the question of mobility in the system is raised. The EC countries were labouring hard during the cold war as clients, providing a negative motivation for the drive to superpower status, whereas India derived some moral status as non-aligned, providing a positive motivation as a country beyond reproach. The article examines the capabilities of the two for filling the requirements for superpower status, concluding that they are both well on their way.
Let me start with some simple observations about the world subsystem of states (‘sub’ because there are also other things in the world), supposedly having internal and external monopoly on the type of power of major concern here--military power. Ideally, a world system would have n states in relations of conflict and equitable cooperation, mostly the latter, and with mechanisms for handling the former. But during the last generation or so we lived in a polarized co/d warsystem, and before that in an imperial world system, and before that there was no world system of states. Or, maybe the European mediaeval system, built on the ruins of the Roman imperial system, the moral authority of the Catholic church and intermarriage in royal families was closer to the ideal, exactly for that reason? The cold war system had three positions to offer the state members: ‘super-
Johan Caltung is Professor of Peace Studies, University of Hawai’i, and can be contacted at 51 Bois Chatton, F-01210, Versonnex (Ain), France. This article was originally given as the Silver Jubilee lecture at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, 3 January 1990, and at the International Youth Centre, New Delhi, 4 January 1990; also at the Indian Ocean Centre, Perth, West Australia, 2 August 1991. The author is indebted to Dr Prabhas Sinha and S.P. Udaya Kumar for valuable comments and assistance, and to discussants at all places.
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power,’ ‘client’ and ‘neutral/non-aligned’. This was the role repertory available on the cold war stage. Role expectations were clear: antagonistic conflict among the superpowers, with an element of backstage cooperation; vertical cooperation between the superpowers and their clients, with an element of backstage conflict; no unapproved interaction between clients and the superpower on the other side; and then conflict and cooperation in all other relations. A simple system, indeed. Of course, there were subdivisions, like global v regional superpower. There was the status as ‘most/least reliable client’; like West Germany/Japan and France for the USA in a certain period; and East Germany and Romania/China for the Soviet Union.’ There was also the status as ‘maverick’/‘the odd man out’/‘pariah state’-the state that does not play by the rules but does dirty jobs for itself or for others without having the presumed legitimacy of the superpower, eg Israel, South Africa, North Korea.2 And finally there was the status as ‘isolate’-Albania, Burma3-interacting with nobody in a world system they felt had little to offer them. But for the present purpose the superpower-client-non-aligned triad is sufficient. Enters the year of liberation from Stalinism and partly from nuclearism, the year 1989. Radical changes are ushered in, not only in Eastern European societies but in the world system. The stage is the same, but it looks neither like a new scene, nor a new act in the same play, but like a new play with an unknown script by an unknown author. With one superpower and one alliance gone the role of all others obviously changes, including the possibility of controlling clients. The non-aligned are still non-members of alliances. But the co/d warsystem was organized by a very forceful and vibrant theme-the East-West conflict-and over such basic values as liberalism v marxism, capitalism v socialism and pluralism v singularism; and over such basic interests as who shall lord it over Eastern Europe. But today the Marxist-socialist monopoly-on-truth is dead and Eastern Europe belongs to itself, at least for a short while. In short, the core of the cold war has simply withered away, with a whimper rather than with a bang, starting with the German ortpolitik and the Final Act of Helsinki in 1975.4 Of course this had a major and almost immediate impact on the role relations. The superpowers let cooperation come up to front stage. The clients let the conflicts with their superpowers come out front stage, first in the East, soon also in the West (eg over the European Army/NATO issue). The non-aligned pretended to continue as before, but it is obviously impossible to be non-aligned between one alliance and a vacuum when in addition the conflict is gone. An incredibly quick transformation away from the cold war system, but towards what? An ambiguous system with +, - relations front stage all over, not very stable. So, where is the new post-cold-war equilibrium? Or, at least, the script? The approach taken here to that question is based on the simple idea that the role expectations typical of the superpower-client-non-aligned triad are still around even if the past rationale has rapidly evaporated. There are still essentially three roles offered to any state member of the world system: superpower or hegemon, be that global or regional; client state; and outsider, at least to any particular hegemonial system. In short, the cynics, whose mother tongue seems to be French, will intone their plus ca change, plus best la m&me chose. The new script is not knowable, not even unknown. It is basically the same old script, with the same actors and the same roles. But there are some new role allocations, with some states moving up, some others down, and still some others sidewards.
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To enrich this a sociological perspective defining a position or a status as a role set, and a role set as a set of role expectations, meaning ‘job descriptions’, may be useful.5 That perspective opens for two important insights: 0 0
with changing expectations to old status holders comes a change in their status, in their whole social reality; but the old expectations will still be around, both impeding and facilitating change of status.
Example: a former global superpower knows by the way he is treated that he is ‘former’, and also knows what his new choices are-regional superpower, client or non-aligned. Pick your choice. Thus, the sociological perspective is somewhat less cynical, opening for the possibility of redefining the role expectations, meaning writing new scripts. But otherwise the two messages are similar: the legitimacy of the present superpowers’ claim on their old status is running out. But the status as superpower is still defined in the system, like Messiah in Judaeo-Christianity. Like most truths, except truisms, there are limits to the validity of these statements. Not everything is in the role expectations and their enactment. Abolish feudal land tenure as a system of reciprocal rights and duties and the lord is no longer a lord, the vassal no longer a vassal and the serf no longer a serf. But make all of them (‘white’) Russian refugees in Paris in the 1920s and they may nevertheless behave to each other as if they were, even with no land to own and nobody to till it. The role repertories translate into social assets and social deficits, usually called ‘style’ or lack thereof. Equalize their material conditions through capitalist or socialist practices and they may have more problems enacting these expectations. Let differences in manners, style and demeanour wash out with a generation or two, and the feudal social system is almost dead. All that is left is memory: s/he is of noble family . . . History throws long shadows into the future. But ultimately even shadows have limits. Nothing lingers on forever. Conclusion: a status is defined, primarily, in terms of reciprocal role expectations; how the status holders relate to each other and enact their role obligations. Secondarily, a status is defined in terms of what the status holders have, relative to each other. Finally, in terms of what the status holders are, in and by themselves. We may refer to this as the relational, the relative and the absolute aspects of status, respectively. Translated to the focus of our concern here: superpowers will lead, and clients will follow as long as the basic theme, the cold war legitimacy,6 is still there. But even with that legitimacy gone the superpowers still dispose of much more power resources than others. And even if that comparative edge should narrow they may still feel like, and even be referred to by themselves and by others as ‘superpowers’. The objective power base is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition. Even the Soviet Union, suffering the ignominy of losing alliance and clients, was still in 1991 referred to as a ‘superpower’, and some of that was inherited by Russia as a successor state after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the longer run they will both be waning, and even quickly as others cease relating to them as superpowers in the cold war context, and no equivalent has been found; a ‘clear and present danger’. If in addition their resource base (including excess capital) contracts, among other reasons because of the tolls of the arms race they got themselves into, the process accelerates.’ Surprisingly soon the
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USA and Russia will probably be referred to as ‘superpowers’ in the same way as the UK and France are referred to as ‘colonial powers’-as ‘have-been?, as collective memory, indicating that they better not behave as one today. The time is over, the glory is gone. The sun of history ultimately also sets, on everything, including on waning superpowers. Unless, that is, they create a cold war equivalent. What happens is that the position as superpower in the world system is vacant, with applicants lining up with their credentials and some bully hiding in the curtains, grabbing the role rather than applying. Waning is not dying. The present superpowers may be slow in dying, and as the feudalism example is meant to illustrate: there are the relational, the relative and the absolute phases or stages to pass on the way down. The process is by necessity a slow one, even for the Soviet Union/Russia. And there may be reversals on the way down, like residual colonialism. Correspondingly, there are phases or stages on the way up-the absolute, the relative and the relational.8 Like for the human life-cycle there are stages on the way up to maturity, and on the way down. q In short, there is dramatic macrohistory at work, in the process called the emergence of a ‘new world order’. The waning superpowers have one recourse beyond the lost cause of reviving the cold war-identifying a new cause, to mobilize old clients. This implies a search for new enemies and new antagonistic relations, including new clients to protect. Not always easy, lo but Saddam Hussein and the Gulf War did some of the job. The other two positions in this world system, as client and as non-aligned, may provide more potential for dynamism. They both became increasingly liberated as cold war superpower relations became less antagonistic, even protagonistic. Why should somebody be a deferential, even obedient client when there is no clear and present danger? What is the meaning of being non-aligned when the superpowers themselves behave to each other as if they were? When there is no East and West to be non-aligned between the compass is dead. No longer two superpowers, readily available for the Third World/non-aligned; no more ‘if you do not support me I go to the Other’ and ‘if you do not support me the subversive movement inside my country may win’ games. ‘Non-aligned’ then has to be interpreted as ‘neutral’, meaning non-available to any other power on some automatic basis, now or in the future. This would make much sense if the world system should become multipolar-too complex for non-alignment, not for neutrality. And superpowers, by definition, cannot even be neutral, let alone nonaligned! But is there some raw material out of which new superpowers can be forged? So far not. Clients and non-aligned have not been free to do so, spellbound by the cold war. But how about some upgrading, given recent and dramatic changes? The superpowers
are dead; long live the superpowers!
The sun also rises, and may shine on vexing superpowers. And the exploration in the preceding section gives some hints about how to become one. Start by feeling as one, as being slated to become one. The next stage is accumulation of the paraphernalia. And finally, behave as one and, more importantly, have others behave towards you as if you are one. And, most importantly, behave towards others as if you expect them to expect you to be a superpower. From being, via, having to behaving (being-having to be-having&absolute, relative, relational. Try
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to behave like one without having what it takes, and others may call that bluff (they are that evil). You make a fool of yourself. Try to behave like one without being one and you may even call the bluff yourself. Or the other way: tell the world that you feel like one, and they will laugh. Show the world that you have what it takes and they pay attention, become frightened, irritated, try to fight you. But if in addition you can convince the world that you have a theme, have what it takes and feel ready to ‘assume the responsibilities”’ the world may follow and grant you the coveted superpower status. At this point the three roles built into the status of the superpower should be separated from each other-the role as antagonist to the other superpower, the role as hegemon over the clients, and the role as indifferent to the outsider neutral/ non-aligned. The (mature) colonial world system was essentially built around the second role. In the (mature) cold war system all three roles were enacted, and with tenacity, even talent, by the ‘leader of the free world’ and the ‘leader of the socialist camp’. An alliance headed by a superpower provided a setting for two of the roles. But the world system knows many antagonists who were not hegemons, and hegemons who were not antagonists (like Britain and France at the end of the colonial era). The alliance was or is like a court, confirming the emperor. With the court gone, so is the emperor. This isomorphism is important given that the world system still has not had its 1789, being essentially feudal. However, the arguments can be adduced that a state in an antagonistic relation will seek allies, and that alliances easily become vertical, like organizations in crisis, in general. Courts can be built. Moreover, two hegemons tend to become antagonistic if for no other reason because they are competing for the positions as the only one global or regional hegemon. These propositions become more interesting when used as maxims of statecraft than as social science theorems. Thus, a would-be superpower can masterbuild hegemony as a protector, like any feudal lord always did with real or imagined enemies as pretexts. Hegemony can also be used to launch a conflict. It may be argued that the latter was a major purpose of the hegemonial colonial world system, and the former the real purpose of the cold war system.12 In short, the end of the cold war was no fundamental change of the world system, the role repertory remaining basically the same. The role as a state just like any other, in relations of conflict and equitable cooperation remains undefined; in the system, it is not that egalitarian. The roles are not even in search of an author like in Pirandello’s play, only of a new theme, the basic script being known. So let us now look at two powerful applicants for superpower roles and the themes they come up with. Being a superpower:
India and the EC compared
The first two sections have given the setting for an exploration of India and the EC on their way to superpower status. They meet the bill. India was the primordial ‘non-aligned’ country, and the EC was a ‘client’ cluster. Both positions being increasingly meaningless, the prediction would be that they are now in search of new roles. The same arguments could be applied to the Slav-Orthodox and the Muslim part of the ex-Soviet Union; but that will not be developed here. Three factors might make a would-be superpower feel like one, from the inside. First, the long shadow ofhistory, memories in the collective subconscious of past glories that one day may come back, if not as a true copy at least as
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sufficiently similar; and of traumas suffered, to be erased. Second, a niche in the social structure, a caste or a class recognized as both motivated to carry and capable of carrying the mantle of the past. Third, a national culture providing legitimacy for greatness, not only bigness, even providing a calling to assume ‘leadership’-a sense of being chosen, anointed. In short, the position as superpower should be felt as something normal, natural; just the right attire for that nation to carry, with some of them more anointed than others. The internal, domestic role should be rooted both in structure and culture so that it can be both institutionalized and internalized. There should be a historical tradition to build on; to build it all from scratch is not easy. For the case of India I would point to the shadow cast by the British Empire. There was glory, and it radiated from New Delhi. One may object that the glory was reflected, England being the sun, India the moon. But that moon was much bigger than the sun with a tradition, of Mahabharata/Ramayana fame, of independent glory; the Maurya and Cupta dynasties with Hindu empires ranging from Iraq to Thailand. But the British raj is more recent; besides, the Viceroy had his own glory. More tribute was paid to the centre of India than India paid to Britain. India itself had a centre, an internal periphery and an external periphery; the kind of raw material out of which an empire can be made. Centreperiphery can easily be generalized from economic-cultural to political-military dimensions, meaning full hegemony. As to the mantle: no problem. The Indian Civil Service constituted the seamless link through history, running British India for the British raj and Indian India for HindSwarajCif not the way Gandhi envisaged it in his book with that title). The Indian civil service had a heavy brahmin-kshatriya load, the priestly and warrior castes with a varna-dharma ideally suited for empire building, for self as well as for the Moguls or the British. The cultural factor is more problematic. There is nothing in the Indian tradition legitimizing the appearance of India as a global or even as a regional superpower, except the universal character of Hinduism as the richest of all world religions, containing the metaphors of all the others. But what is not today may become so tomorrow. India is today officially a secular state. One prediction would be to build on Hindu universalism meaning that India would sooner or later shed secularism de facto, perhaps even de iure and adapt Hinduism not only as a national religion but as a code, a programme to be enacted. For the case of the EC there certainly is the shadow cast by the many European constructions of the past-some of them with an eastward thrust and others pointing outwards, to Asia, Africa and to (what is still called) ‘Latin’ America. Europe has also known a number of social constructions pointing eastwards-the Greeks and the Romans, the Vikings, Charlemagne, Charles Quint, Napoleon and Hitler to mention some; and almost as many colonial constructions pointing outwards, particularly southwards as there are members of the EC-the UK and France, Germany and Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and Portugal (the rest being either too small, too distant in the past or too victimized). As to the mantle: no problem. The aristocracy class ran both constructions, knowing what they were doing. Like brahmins and kshatriyahs they transmigrated on the wave of ‘modernity’ to bureaucracies and corporations, more suitable tools for modern empires than the cavalries of the past. A class like that would more than willingly assume imperial responsibilities, discharging them well. The culture is certainly no problem either. The West is still in its expansionist,
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even universalist mode. That mode started with the Catholic, lberian expansionism of Portugal and Spain, then went north and involved the other powers mentioned above with a less Catholic, more Protestant (Anglican-Reformist) centre of gravity. Inability to accommodate the third colonialist wave, Germany-Italy-Japan, led to considerable European self-destruction and increased scope for US and Russian imperial expansionism, consolidating the Soviet Union as the second circle around Moscow (Russia itself being the first circle), building a third circle in Eastern Europe and in Central and East Asia. With the USA in economic, and the Soviet empire in rapid political disintegration, the joint expansionist momentum of the first, second and third European waves is now assembled, even united in the EC. ‘Only’ Japan is outside, left to its lonely efforts. In short, I see both India and the EC as meeting the bill, easily, with some minor adjustment for India. To what has been said could easily be added the last factor--trauma. India suffered the trauma of British (and other Western) colonization; before that the Moguls, and before that the Delhi Sultanate. Europe suffered the trauma of decolonization and of being d&/ass& by the superpowers. Strong psycho-political factors, crying for some kind of compensation. At this point one small remark about the rest of the world. A focus on India and the EC by no means implies a neglect of other superpower/hegemon material elsewhere. Thus, two other Asian powers have to be discussed-Japan and China. And above all there are the two cold war superpowers with their cold war superpower legitimacy gone. Russia has to be looked into; both the Slav/Orthodox and the Muslim parts. And so indeed, for the USA, with the additional hypothesis that the country may be aiming for a new position, above ordinary superpower status-to be the superpower of superpowers, the hegemons’ hegemon, the one setting the rules for the rest, coordinating and administering. For that role the cold war repertory is not enough; to understand that role feudalism is probably the best system model.
Having what a superpower
needs: India and the EC compared
That both India and the EC are in the world class in terms known (Table I). TABLE
1. WORLD
Area Population GNP Army Navy Air Force Missiles Space Nuclear
Power
POWER BASE RANKINGS India No 7 No 2(l) No 13 No 4(3) No 6(5) Self-sufficient Short-range Intermediate Satellites Yes
of power base is well
OF INDIA AND THE EC EC No 6 No3 No 1 No l(2) No 3 Self-sufficient Short-range Intercontinental Satellites Yes
A number of comments are called for.13 Thus, the Indian ranking on GNP and the European on area are not among the highest, and this applies even more to GNP/capita for India (number 168 in the world, together with China among the poorest) and population/km2 for the EC
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(among the densest). But the point is, of course, that a country does not accumulate military assets with GNP/capita but with the GNP; and the Indian GNP is big enough in absolute terms. The argument that these resources could have been used to raise the bottom material level of Indian society-some would even say the resources have been squandered-may be morally and politically correct, but irrelevant. As to Europe: Europe is very badly suited for a war, given the high density not only of people but of all kinds of ‘assets’. Any war has to be fought in a more convenient setting for Europeans, meaning, as usual, in the Third World. They both have what it takes to become superpowers. But the argument of this exercise is not resting on such necessary but highly insufficient assets alone. What has to be looked into is the ability to extract, on an enduring basis, sufficient resources, both nature, human and capital resources, to sustain the building of an empire. Ideally an empire should be not only self-financing but even run with considerable surplus. In practice, however, there may be initial costs to be paid, entrance tickets and maintenance fees. A crisis and a call for total mobilization is needed. No problem: they are both well suited for mobilization of that kind because they are both human-rights-oriented democracies.14 Contrary to the theory commonly held that dictatorships are particularly good at mobilizing for imperial ends, the theory here is that democracies are even better at invoking the other side of the golden human rights coin, the human duties. There might even be a proportionality thesis involved: the more human rights, and not only civil-political but also socioeconomic rights are successfully implemented, the more duties can be extracted, as taxes, military service and general deference. From that perspective the EC would certainly rank above India. But had India been a repressive dictatorship it might also have been less of a threat to the neighbours than under the current condition of self-righteousness. This does not mean that resources can be extracted under the rights-duties quidpro quo formula. A free population would have to feel free, particularly when something is ‘extracted’. It must be offered willingly-if not completely voluntarily at least not against defiant resistance. Assets must be given up for heavily internalized goals, and to heavily institutionalized groups in society. Indian masses have already been forced to accept guns before butter. Which shows the significance of having the conditions mentioned in the preceding section well satisfied before superpower status is attempted. And also why the Soviet Union did not succeed.
Building
superpower
legitimacy:
India and the EC compared
The classical superpower legitimacy is based on the double perception of a threat ‘out there’ and somebody’s need to be protected. It is not enough to be able to deter an attack on oneself; the deterrence has to be extended to others, hence the current and very appropriate term ‘extended deterrence’. For this to be meaningful a quadripartite construction of the world in terms of a centre, an inner periphery, an outer periphery and an enemy is needed. The centre has to be solid and reliable. The inner periphery is nearby, more fickle, economically related to the centre. The outer periphery is more distant, less clearly related, yet significant. Typically this may be the place where nationals of the centre have settled. The enemy can be everywhere, including inside the centre as a
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subversive force, but usually with increasing density the further away from the centre. The tools of coercion will have to be custom-tailored to the operation theatre. Formulae emerging for the 1990s: l
0 0 0
for for for for
the the the the
centre: secret police surveillance; inner periphery: peace-keeping forces (PKF); outer periphery: rapid development forces (RDF); real enemy: heavy land, sea, air, space forces.
This formula will not surprise anyone familiar with the preceding decades. The enemy is out to get us; he has to be deterred with heavy, very offensive capability. The enemy may conquer the outer and less controlled periphery, hence the need to save one’s own nationals abroad through rapid intervention. For the inner periphery it is more a question of relatively light policing in case there should be upheavals. For the centre not even that is needed-only police surveillance of selected and suspected individuals with rapid intervention if necessary. Within this logic direct violence is the response to efforts to resist the structural violence emanating from the centre-penetrating the inner periphery effectively, the outer periphery less so and the enemy (almost) not at all. Short, sharp, shocks. But the lower the Self/Other ratio, the more purely enemy the territory the heavier, less pin-pointed the response, and the cruder the arms. But just as we did above, this reasoning can also be turned around. PKF is used not so much to (re-Jestablish law and order as to provide a context for deeper penetration into the inner periphery. RDF is used not so much for protection as to provide bridgeheads for penetration. And an arms race in heavy land, sea, air and space forces serves not so much to deter as to provide an image of ‘clear and present danger’. If the enemy can be seen as one and the same in all four arenas then the model set by the two waning superpowers has been implemented. They used the formulae of communist and imperialist subversion, respectively. Formulae for the 1990s will probably also include terrorist, Muslim, Zionist, possibly also East Asian subversion. Which formula is more probable: direct violence as response to unrest coming out of structural violence, or direct violence as instrument to establish structural violence? Both, of course. The point is the dialectic involved: investment abroad is a risk, but also an opportunity to establish more control; nationals abroad are a risk and are themselves at risk, but also an opportunity to establish more control. So, crises are welcome, indeed. In fact, a deep crisis in the inner periphery may lead to its incorporation in the centre by the PKF, and a deep crisis in the outer periphery to its transformation into inner periphery, by RDF. In short, appetizing. For the case of India the centre would be the Indian Union. The inner periphery is the other South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members, two of them big (Pakistan and Bangladesh), two of them medium (Sri Lanka and Nepal) and two very small (Bhutan and the Maldives); possibly also Burma which belongs both by the criterion of being a neighbour and once having been British-dominated. The outer periphery is where there are Indian nationals in the Arabian Sea-Indian Ocean-Bay of Bengal area. Given the British propensity for moving their colonial subjects, particularly Indians, that means many places-the Gulf area, East and South Africa, Malaysia/Singapore-and beyond-Fiji and Trinidad.
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The enemy is both remote and near: on the other side of the Himalayas and the big oceans on the one hand; and right up there in those snow-capped ridges and down there in the deeper recesses of the oceans. Not to mention air-borne and space-borne capacity. The cluster is classical and well defined; the countercluster of armed responses equally much so. The deep crisis in Sri Lanka led for a long time to something close to a de facto occupation of parts of the country by India,15 in the shape of the Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF). The clumsy coup in the Maldives gave India another opportunity for security forces to exercise peacekeeping. Nepal and Bhutan could be the next. the crisis potentials of both Bangladesh (socially) and Pakistan (ethically) are considerable. On top of that comes the possibility of more major wars over Kashmir, itself an example of New Delhi expansionism following in the footsteps of the British. But the bigger the country, the deeper the crisis needed before the opportunity outweighs the risks incurred. There is much at stake. For the case of the (coming) European Union, with its military adjunct, the Western European Union (the 12 minus the less obviously colonial Ireland, Luxembourg and Greece), the centre is the 12 EC countries, possibly becoming 15-16, and the centre of that centre the initial six Treaty of Rome signatories. The inner periphery would be the Eastern European countries; maybe also the Western republics of the ex-Soviet Union. And the outer periphery is almost the whole world as there are Western Europeans of different nationality practically speaking everywhere, but particularly in the 69 African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) countries. There is no limit to where RDF could be justified in terms of saving ‘European lives’. A periphery that much extended the enemy would potentially be almost everywhere, meaning that a construction of that size would see itself at permanent risk, and offer permanent opportunities. Again, crises are welcome! In a sense the configuration already started with a crisis, the deep crisis in residual Stalinism of late 1989, and goes on from there. Where it will end is anybody’s guess. So much for the military rationale of necessary control, at the surface of the construction, with efforts to keep details secret. Let us turn to the political and economic rationales. They lie deeper in the social configuration, are less ephemeral, more tied to deeper structures. And they have actually been hinted at above. Politically, the rationale is guidance, of the periphery by the centre, and economically the rationale is development, again of the periphery by the centre. India in Sri Lanka and India in Bhutan may serve as examples, so may the EC in ex-Yugoslavia and the EC in Asia. But the centre has to be recognized as a source of guidance, to stimulate development. For the case of India this might sound, at least to a Westerner, somewhat problematic. However, consider the following. India can point to a tradition of democracy with higher electoral participation than in the USA, in a very complex federal structure, to some extent unifying the second biggest population in the world? Critics will rightly point to the 1975-77 emergency and to interventions of the states by the centre (meaning New Delhi). But comparatively speaking (eg relative to Europe), the record is still impressive and legitimizing. And economically the same argument holds as for military expansion: development aid, particularly to small neighbours, is done on the basis of the high Indian GNP, not the low Indian GNP/capita. A big poor country might sometimes even help a small and richer country. For the case of the EC none of this is problematic. The inner periphery is begging for political guidance and economic development, also stimulated by the
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‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ logic. What a delight to receive solicited advice from the former enemy of the b&hoi brat’to the east who always offered so much unsolicited advice! Both politically and economically the penetration will probably go so far that by the year 2000 the former Soviet Union may, for all practical purposes have been reconquered, this time economically, particularly by Germany. The democratic-capitalist nature of that exercise will create considerable periphery poverty, even misery, which will then be legitimized by ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ utilitarianism, combined with majority rule. This will lead to upheavals by those who find no redress for the capitalist evils in the democratic mechanisms, just like in India. If only the majority, meaning more than SO%, are reasonably satisfied, they can outvote the minority, invite foreign peacekeeping forces, and even make it look legitimate! Once again, India and the EC are not alone in the world. Underlying this is a division of the world into regions for economic development and political/military guidance and control. The logic is something like this: the nation-state is too small, but we are not ready for world government (yet). Five billion human beings can better be developed, guided and controlled in regions in the half to one billion range. The USA will ultimately retract to the Western hemisphere and try to become unchallengeable with a smaller periphery to control, possibly hanging on to the Middle East. The EC will practise Napoleonic and Hitlerite logic, turning eastwards rather than southwards, with the ACP system as a giant outer periphery. Japan may ultimately succeed in turning most of the former da;-to-a kyoeiken into one. India, with the SAARC as inner periphery, is one more such region. China is already one and has been so for a long time, but will probably stick to itself, only withdrawing from Tibet. And the USA may become entrenched in Festung Amerika, partly as a defence against Japan. Five superpowers and regions, seven if we assume that out of the ex-Soviet Union will come one Slav-Orthodox and one Islamic (regional) superpower-the latter centred on Turkey. But, however all of this may be, there is a third layer in the configuration of rationale and legitimacy for the status as superpower-the cultural rationale of a globalmission, a calling, even of being anointed for the tasks of guidance, development and control. If the USA were chosen by Cod and the Soviet Union by History, then who chooses the would-be superpowers? There has to be some kind of mystique, something the would-be superpower can point to. For the case of India there is the interesting formula discussed in the first section abovelndia as nonaligned country, meaning a country beyond reproach. Today this has a taste of the ludicrous: what does it help to be non-aligned between some former superpowers when the country is rather firmly aligned with itself? It smacks like Nordic countries referring to their ‘non-colonialist tradition’, although they are parts of a system benefiting considerably from Western colonialism. For the case of the EC there is a closely related formula waiting to be used: we are back again! These are proud countries. To be the clients of somebody on the other side of the Atlantic was most unbecoming, a humiliating interval, bad for the generation that suffered those 40 years, but a tiny speck of time in the centuries of European emanation and penetration. A condition for this formula to work partly as a cause, partly as a consequence, is a certain level of anti-Americanism, more probable in the centre than in the inner and outer periphery of the EC configuration, combined with a proto-European nostalgia.” In addition, however, both of them can use, although more for internal consumption, local deities and icons of long standing. A very basic and ubiquitous,
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and for that reason easily forgotten point about Europe is its Christianity, a major reason why the Europeans so easily turn against Jews and Muslims (and why Turkey will hardly become a member of the EC/WEU). Christianity, with its long history of aggressive missionary activity, is ideally suited for cohesiveness within and expansion without. Can Hinduism play the same role? The recent gains of the BJP (Bharatiya Janatha Party) from two seats in 1984 to 119 in 1991 is probably an indicator of what might well happen-India becoming a non-secular, Hindu state.la A war over Kashmir, escalating from the present violence, might speed up the process, invoking ever more religious metaphors. The enthusiasm surrounding the TV presentation of Mahabharata every Sunday over more than two years, with India close to a stand-still to watch past glory, is significant. And to watch Arjuna become a good kshatriya fighting friends and relatives setting vama-dharma above swa-dharma equally so.lg
The superpower
path leads but to decline
and fall
The prediction is therefore that both India and the EC will embark on the way to superpower status; in fact, they are already quite advanced. The prisoners of the logic described above are many and well placed. Like all prisoners they see only parts of the system encaging them; to see it all they have to be free. The functionaries of the would-be superpowers will develop, one after the other, the parts of the politico-logic developed above and gleefully explore the many correlations between the parts, two at the time; for instance, between RDF and saving the lives of nationals; or between poverty and democracy-just keep the misery (well) below 50% lest the poor should march to the polls and vote into power an uncontrollable party. This segmented insight also applies to the future. One thing we know: hegemonial systems, sewn together seamlessly with an impeccable logic, do not work in the longer run but lead to decline and fall. The macro-historians with cyclical theories have all given good reasons for this, from Ibn Khaldun’s decline of asabiya (compassion, solidarity), Sorokin’s principle of cultural limits, Toynbee’s universal, ritual church to Weber’s iron cage and Sarkar’s principle of social limits---all of them deeper than Paul Kennedy’s economistic, but important princip/e of economic limits. The peripheries will sooner or later revolt and the centre will wear out (involt? devolt?). When these processes coincide, it is over. Some buildings, aqueducts, Red Forts and Secretariats etc, will survive the untold suffering of the many, for the glory of the few. Does that drama really have to be enacted again? Say, why don’t we ever learn . . .?!
Notes and references ?988;/feprinted 1. See/fhe Cold War as autism’, Alternatives, i/Essays in Peace Research, Vol VI I+ (Copenhagen, Ejlers, 1988)/and alsoPhe Cold War, peace and development: a comparison of the Atlantic and Pacific theaters’, Essays in Peace Research, V/(Copenrgen, Ejlers, 1988), pages 107126. 2. For the jobs being done by Israel, see a number of works by the Israeli specialist Beth Hallami. 3. Of course, a country isolating itself does not necessarily do so to go into hiding, but also because it has suffered badly as a part of the world system, as Albania and the three mentioned in the text certainly have. 4. The USA wants to perpetuate NATO, however, for three simple reasons: to keep a handle on
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5. 6. 7.
8. 9.
10.
11. 12.
13. 14.
15.
16.
17. 18.
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Europe, particularly (unified) Germany; to use NATO in confrontations with Maghreb and Mashreq countries; and to symbolize that ‘we won, they are dissolving’. See Johan Galtung, ‘Expectations and interaction processes’, Inquiry, 1959, pages 213-234. Or the other way round: the Soviet clients withdrew even the pretence of subservience and the cold war structure collapsed. Or both at the same time, in a fascinating dialectic. And this, of course, is the point made by Paul Kennedy in his The Riseandfallofthe GreatPowers (New York, Random House, 1987), remarkable for its blindness to the force motrice of it all, the culturally defined right, and even duty, to expand, found in missionary ‘great powers’. Although, historically, they do not always come in that order. See, for instance, Bernard Lievegoed, De levensloop van de mens (Rotterdam, Lemniscaat, 1988); or Johan Galtung, ‘Macro-history as metaphor for biography: an essay on macro and micro history’, biography, 1990, pages 283-299. Thus, the US effort at residual hegemony with NATO staying on in Europe is at present (late 1992) highly artificial. But with some work they may succeed in creating enough enemies, including persuading others that they are enemies, to make it look legitimate. To hear the USA say this to Japan is like listening to one mafia boss talking to another. Pushing through an open door; if it had not been for the solid resistance so far of the Japanese people. To discipline the clients, invoking the threat from the other side is the theme of the article mentioned in reference 1 above. Thus, European client states were even discouraged from seeking solutions to the land-based intermediate missiles gap of the 1980s; the perceived threat has to be maintained. This type of thinking has been with me from the first of my many stays in India in 1960, and was not inspired by an article in Time magazine, ‘Superpower rising’, 3 April 1989. For the human rights argument see my ‘The universality of human rights revisited! Some less applaudable consequences of the human rights tradition’, in Asbjorn Eide and Bernt Hagtvet (editors), (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992), pages 152-173. The quadrilateral relation, New Delhi-Tamil Nadu-Colombo-the Tigers, is probably typical of what could happen in many parts of the Indian inner and outer periphery, including assassination of top politicians. New Delhi IPKF fighting the Tigers in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka is a rather clear message to Tamil Nadu. To take only one factor: India is a much better integrated world system than Europe, the thesis of this paper notwithstanding. At least the subcontinent is not divided into two hostile blocs threatening each other with nuclear annihilation and some non-aligned in-between, with the blocs meeting in Nagpur or some similar central place! Looking at India as an international system rather than as a poor nation-state the glass looks half full rather than half empty, to put it that way. For this and similar themes about the EC and Europe as a whole see Johan Caltung, Europe in the Making (Basingstoke, Taylor and Francis, 1989). The seat distribution in Lok Sabha is as follows:
Congress BJP Janata Dal CPI CPI-M
1984 415 2 6 22
19. But, as Ramlal Parikh, the Vice-Chancellor of the university has pointed out to me: Mahabharata also shows the futility
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1989 197 86 142 12 33
1991 227 119 55 13 33
founded by Gandhi in Ahmedabad, of the whole belligerent exercise.
ON THE WAY
TO SUPERPOWER
STATUS
India and the EC compared Johan Galtung
The Cold War had a poor role repertory to offer members of the inter-state system: superpower, client and non-aligned. But these are still key roles in the system, and with the rapid demise of the Soviet Union as a superpower and the slower decline of the USA the question of mobility in the system is raised. The EC countries were labouring hard during the cold war as clients, providing a negative motivation for the drive to superpower status, whereas India derived some moral status as non-aligned, providing a positive motivation as a country beyond reproach. The article examines the capabilities of the two for filling the requirements for superpower status, concluding that they are both well on their way.
Let me start with some simple observations about the world subsystem of states (‘sub’ because there are also other things in the world), supposedly having internal and external monopoly on the type of power of major concern here--military power. Ideally, a world system would have n states in relations of conflict and equitable cooperation, mostly the latter, and with mechanisms for handling the former. But during the last generation or so we lived in a polarized co/d warsystem, and before that in an imperial world system, and before that there was no world system of states. Or, maybe the European mediaeval system, built on the ruins of the Roman imperial system, the moral authority of the Catholic church and intermarriage in royal families was closer to the ideal, exactly for that reason? The cold war system had three positions to offer the state members: ‘super-
Johan Caltung is Professor of Peace Studies, University of Hawai’i, and can be contacted at 51 Bois Chatton, F-01210, Versonnex (Ain), France. This article was originally given as the Silver Jubilee lecture at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, 3 January 1990, and at the International Youth Centre, New Delhi, 4 January 1990; also at the Indian Ocean Centre, Perth, West Australia, 2 August 1991. The author is indebted to Dr Prabhas Sinha and S.P. Udaya Kumar for valuable comments and assistance, and to discussants at all places.
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,
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power,’ ‘client’ and ‘neutral/non-aligned’. This was the role repertory available on the cold war stage. Role expectations were clear: antagonistic conflict among the superpowers, with an element of backstage cooperation; vertical cooperation between the superpowers and their clients, with an element of backstage conflict; no unapproved interaction between clients and the superpower on the other side; and then conflict and cooperation in all other relations. A simple system, indeed. Of course, there were subdivisions, like global v regional superpower. There was the status as ‘most/least reliable client’; like West Germany/Japan and France for the USA in a certain period; and East Germany and Romania/China for the Soviet Union.’ There was also the status as ‘maverick’/‘the odd man out’/‘pariah state’-the state that does not play by the rules but does dirty jobs for itself or for others without having the presumed legitimacy of the superpower, eg Israel, South Africa, North Korea.2 And finally there was the status as ‘isolate’-Albania, Burma3-interacting with nobody in a world system they felt had little to offer them. But for the present purpose the superpower-client-non-aligned triad is sufficient. Enters the year of liberation from Stalinism and partly from nuclearism, the year 1989. Radical changes are ushered in, not only in Eastern European societies but in the world system. The stage is the same, but it looks neither like a new scene, nor a new act in the same play, but like a new play with an unknown script by an unknown author. With one superpower and one alliance gone the role of all others obviously changes, including the possibility of controlling clients. The non-aligned are still non-members of alliances. But the co/d warsystem was organized by a very forceful and vibrant theme-the East-West conflict-and over such basic values as liberalism v marxism, capitalism v socialism and pluralism v singularism; and over such basic interests as who shall lord it over Eastern Europe. But today the Marxist-socialist monopoly-on-truth is dead and Eastern Europe belongs to itself, at least for a short while. In short, the core of the cold war has simply withered away, with a whimper rather than with a bang, starting with the German ortpolitik and the Final Act of Helsinki in 1975.4 Of course this had a major and almost immediate impact on the role relations. The superpowers let cooperation come up to front stage. The clients let the conflicts with their superpowers come out front stage, first in the East, soon also in the West (eg over the European Army/NATO issue). The non-aligned pretended to continue as before, but it is obviously impossible to be non-aligned between one alliance and a vacuum when in addition the conflict is gone. An incredibly quick transformation away from the cold war system, but towards what? An ambiguous system with +, - relations front stage all over, not very stable. So, where is the new post-cold-war equilibrium? Or, at least, the script? The approach taken here to that question is based on the simple idea that the role expectations typical of the superpower-client-non-aligned triad are still around even if the past rationale has rapidly evaporated. There are still essentially three roles offered to any state member of the world system: superpower or hegemon, be that global or regional; client state; and outsider, at least to any particular hegemonial system. In short, the cynics, whose mother tongue seems to be French, will intone their plus ca change, plus best la m&me chose. The new script is not knowable, not even unknown. It is basically the same old script, with the same actors and the same roles. But there are some new role allocations, with some states moving up, some others down, and still some others sidewards.
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To enrich this a sociological perspective defining a position or a status as a role set, and a role set as a set of role expectations, meaning ‘job descriptions’, may be useful.5 That perspective opens for two important insights: 0 0
with changing expectations to old status holders comes a change in their status, in their whole social reality; but the old expectations will still be around, both impeding and facilitating change of status.
Example: a former global superpower knows by the way he is treated that he is ‘former’, and also knows what his new choices are-regional superpower, client or non-aligned. Pick your choice. Thus, the sociological perspective is somewhat less cynical, opening for the possibility of redefining the role expectations, meaning writing new scripts. But otherwise the two messages are similar: the legitimacy of the present superpowers’ claim on their old status is running out. But the status as superpower is still defined in the system, like Messiah in Judaeo-Christianity. Like most truths, except truisms, there are limits to the validity of these statements. Not everything is in the role expectations and their enactment. Abolish feudal land tenure as a system of reciprocal rights and duties and the lord is no longer a lord, the vassal no longer a vassal and the serf no longer a serf. But make all of them (‘white’) Russian refugees in Paris in the 1920s and they may nevertheless behave to each other as if they were, even with no land to own and nobody to till it. The role repertories translate into social assets and social deficits, usually called ‘style’ or lack thereof. Equalize their material conditions through capitalist or socialist practices and they may have more problems enacting these expectations. Let differences in manners, style and demeanour wash out with a generation or two, and the feudal social system is almost dead. All that is left is memory: s/he is of noble family . . . History throws long shadows into the future. But ultimately even shadows have limits. Nothing lingers on forever. Conclusion: a status is defined, primarily, in terms of reciprocal role expectations; how the status holders relate to each other and enact their role obligations. Secondarily, a status is defined in terms of what the status holders have, relative to each other. Finally, in terms of what the status holders are, in and by themselves. We may refer to this as the relational, the relative and the absolute aspects of status, respectively. Translated to the focus of our concern here: superpowers will lead, and clients will follow as long as the basic theme, the cold war legitimacy,6 is still there. But even with that legitimacy gone the superpowers still dispose of much more power resources than others. And even if that comparative edge should narrow they may still feel like, and even be referred to by themselves and by others as ‘superpowers’. The objective power base is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition. Even the Soviet Union, suffering the ignominy of losing alliance and clients, was still in 1991 referred to as a ‘superpower’, and some of that was inherited by Russia as a successor state after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the longer run they will both be waning, and even quickly as others cease relating to them as superpowers in the cold war context, and no equivalent has been found; a ‘clear and present danger’. If in addition their resource base (including excess capital) contracts, among other reasons because of the tolls of the arms race they got themselves into, the process accelerates.’ Surprisingly soon the
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USA and Russia will probably be referred to as ‘superpowers’ in the same way as the UK and France are referred to as ‘colonial powers’-as ‘have-been?, as collective memory, indicating that they better not behave as one today. The time is over, the glory is gone. The sun of history ultimately also sets, on everything, including on waning superpowers. Unless, that is, they create a cold war equivalent. What happens is that the position as superpower in the world system is vacant, with applicants lining up with their credentials and some bully hiding in the curtains, grabbing the role rather than applying. Waning is not dying. The present superpowers may be slow in dying, and as the feudalism example is meant to illustrate: there are the relational, the relative and the absolute phases or stages to pass on the way down. The process is by necessity a slow one, even for the Soviet Union/Russia. And there may be reversals on the way down, like residual colonialism. Correspondingly, there are phases or stages on the way up-the absolute, the relative and the relational.8 Like for the human life-cycle there are stages on the way up to maturity, and on the way down. q In short, there is dramatic macrohistory at work, in the process called the emergence of a ‘new world order’. The waning superpowers have one recourse beyond the lost cause of reviving the cold war-identifying a new cause, to mobilize old clients. This implies a search for new enemies and new antagonistic relations, including new clients to protect. Not always easy, lo but Saddam Hussein and the Gulf War did some of the job. The other two positions in this world system, as client and as non-aligned, may provide more potential for dynamism. They both became increasingly liberated as cold war superpower relations became less antagonistic, even protagonistic. Why should somebody be a deferential, even obedient client when there is no clear and present danger? What is the meaning of being non-aligned when the superpowers themselves behave to each other as if they were? When there is no East and West to be non-aligned between the compass is dead. No longer two superpowers, readily available for the Third World/non-aligned; no more ‘if you do not support me I go to the Other’ and ‘if you do not support me the subversive movement inside my country may win’ games. ‘Non-aligned’ then has to be interpreted as ‘neutral’, meaning non-available to any other power on some automatic basis, now or in the future. This would make much sense if the world system should become multipolar-too complex for non-alignment, not for neutrality. And superpowers, by definition, cannot even be neutral, let alone nonaligned! But is there some raw material out of which new superpowers can be forged? So far not. Clients and non-aligned have not been free to do so, spellbound by the cold war. But how about some upgrading, given recent and dramatic changes? The superpowers
are dead; long live the superpowers!
The sun also rises, and may shine on vexing superpowers. And the exploration in the preceding section gives some hints about how to become one. Start by feeling as one, as being slated to become one. The next stage is accumulation of the paraphernalia. And finally, behave as one and, more importantly, have others behave towards you as if you are one. And, most importantly, behave towards others as if you expect them to expect you to be a superpower. From being, via, having to behaving (being-having to be-having&absolute, relative, relational. Try
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to behave like one without having what it takes, and others may call that bluff (they are that evil). You make a fool of yourself. Try to behave like one without being one and you may even call the bluff yourself. Or the other way: tell the world that you feel like one, and they will laugh. Show the world that you have what it takes and they pay attention, become frightened, irritated, try to fight you. But if in addition you can convince the world that you have a theme, have what it takes and feel ready to ‘assume the responsibilities”’ the world may follow and grant you the coveted superpower status. At this point the three roles built into the status of the superpower should be separated from each other-the role as antagonist to the other superpower, the role as hegemon over the clients, and the role as indifferent to the outsider neutral/ non-aligned. The (mature) colonial world system was essentially built around the second role. In the (mature) cold war system all three roles were enacted, and with tenacity, even talent, by the ‘leader of the free world’ and the ‘leader of the socialist camp’. An alliance headed by a superpower provided a setting for two of the roles. But the world system knows many antagonists who were not hegemons, and hegemons who were not antagonists (like Britain and France at the end of the colonial era). The alliance was or is like a court, confirming the emperor. With the court gone, so is the emperor. This isomorphism is important given that the world system still has not had its 1789, being essentially feudal. However, the arguments can be adduced that a state in an antagonistic relation will seek allies, and that alliances easily become vertical, like organizations in crisis, in general. Courts can be built. Moreover, two hegemons tend to become antagonistic if for no other reason because they are competing for the positions as the only one global or regional hegemon. These propositions become more interesting when used as maxims of statecraft than as social science theorems. Thus, a would-be superpower can masterbuild hegemony as a protector, like any feudal lord always did with real or imagined enemies as pretexts. Hegemony can also be used to launch a conflict. It may be argued that the latter was a major purpose of the hegemonial colonial world system, and the former the real purpose of the cold war system.12 In short, the end of the cold war was no fundamental change of the world system, the role repertory remaining basically the same. The role as a state just like any other, in relations of conflict and equitable cooperation remains undefined; in the system, it is not that egalitarian. The roles are not even in search of an author like in Pirandello’s play, only of a new theme, the basic script being known. So let us now look at two powerful applicants for superpower roles and the themes they come up with. Being a superpower:
India and the EC compared
The first two sections have given the setting for an exploration of India and the EC on their way to superpower status. They meet the bill. India was the primordial ‘non-aligned’ country, and the EC was a ‘client’ cluster. Both positions being increasingly meaningless, the prediction would be that they are now in search of new roles. The same arguments could be applied to the Slav-Orthodox and the Muslim part of the ex-Soviet Union; but that will not be developed here. Three factors might make a would-be superpower feel like one, from the inside. First, the long shadow ofhistory, memories in the collective subconscious of past glories that one day may come back, if not as a true copy at least as
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sufficiently similar; and of traumas suffered, to be erased. Second, a niche in the social structure, a caste or a class recognized as both motivated to carry and capable of carrying the mantle of the past. Third, a national culture providing legitimacy for greatness, not only bigness, even providing a calling to assume ‘leadership’-a sense of being chosen, anointed. In short, the position as superpower should be felt as something normal, natural; just the right attire for that nation to carry, with some of them more anointed than others. The internal, domestic role should be rooted both in structure and culture so that it can be both institutionalized and internalized. There should be a historical tradition to build on; to build it all from scratch is not easy. For the case of India I would point to the shadow cast by the British Empire. There was glory, and it radiated from New Delhi. One may object that the glory was reflected, England being the sun, India the moon. But that moon was much bigger than the sun with a tradition, of Mahabharata/Ramayana fame, of independent glory; the Maurya and Cupta dynasties with Hindu empires ranging from Iraq to Thailand. But the British raj is more recent; besides, the Viceroy had his own glory. More tribute was paid to the centre of India than India paid to Britain. India itself had a centre, an internal periphery and an external periphery; the kind of raw material out of which an empire can be made. Centreperiphery can easily be generalized from economic-cultural to political-military dimensions, meaning full hegemony. As to the mantle: no problem. The Indian Civil Service constituted the seamless link through history, running British India for the British raj and Indian India for HindSwarajCif not the way Gandhi envisaged it in his book with that title). The Indian civil service had a heavy brahmin-kshatriya load, the priestly and warrior castes with a varna-dharma ideally suited for empire building, for self as well as for the Moguls or the British. The cultural factor is more problematic. There is nothing in the Indian tradition legitimizing the appearance of India as a global or even as a regional superpower, except the universal character of Hinduism as the richest of all world religions, containing the metaphors of all the others. But what is not today may become so tomorrow. India is today officially a secular state. One prediction would be to build on Hindu universalism meaning that India would sooner or later shed secularism de facto, perhaps even de iure and adapt Hinduism not only as a national religion but as a code, a programme to be enacted. For the case of the EC there certainly is the shadow cast by the many European constructions of the past-some of them with an eastward thrust and others pointing outwards, to Asia, Africa and to (what is still called) ‘Latin’ America. Europe has also known a number of social constructions pointing eastwards-the Greeks and the Romans, the Vikings, Charlemagne, Charles Quint, Napoleon and Hitler to mention some; and almost as many colonial constructions pointing outwards, particularly southwards as there are members of the EC-the UK and France, Germany and Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and Portugal (the rest being either too small, too distant in the past or too victimized). As to the mantle: no problem. The aristocracy class ran both constructions, knowing what they were doing. Like brahmins and kshatriyahs they transmigrated on the wave of ‘modernity’ to bureaucracies and corporations, more suitable tools for modern empires than the cavalries of the past. A class like that would more than willingly assume imperial responsibilities, discharging them well. The culture is certainly no problem either. The West is still in its expansionist,
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even universalist mode. That mode started with the Catholic, lberian expansionism of Portugal and Spain, then went north and involved the other powers mentioned above with a less Catholic, more Protestant (Anglican-Reformist) centre of gravity. Inability to accommodate the third colonialist wave, Germany-Italy-Japan, led to considerable European self-destruction and increased scope for US and Russian imperial expansionism, consolidating the Soviet Union as the second circle around Moscow (Russia itself being the first circle), building a third circle in Eastern Europe and in Central and East Asia. With the USA in economic, and the Soviet empire in rapid political disintegration, the joint expansionist momentum of the first, second and third European waves is now assembled, even united in the EC. ‘Only’ Japan is outside, left to its lonely efforts. In short, I see both India and the EC as meeting the bill, easily, with some minor adjustment for India. To what has been said could easily be added the last factor--trauma. India suffered the trauma of British (and other Western) colonization; before that the Moguls, and before that the Delhi Sultanate. Europe suffered the trauma of decolonization and of being d&/ass& by the superpowers. Strong psycho-political factors, crying for some kind of compensation. At this point one small remark about the rest of the world. A focus on India and the EC by no means implies a neglect of other superpower/hegemon material elsewhere. Thus, two other Asian powers have to be discussed-Japan and China. And above all there are the two cold war superpowers with their cold war superpower legitimacy gone. Russia has to be looked into; both the Slav/Orthodox and the Muslim parts. And so indeed, for the USA, with the additional hypothesis that the country may be aiming for a new position, above ordinary superpower status-to be the superpower of superpowers, the hegemons’ hegemon, the one setting the rules for the rest, coordinating and administering. For that role the cold war repertory is not enough; to understand that role feudalism is probably the best system model.
Having what a superpower
needs: India and the EC compared
That both India and the EC are in the world class in terms known (Table I). TABLE
1. WORLD
Area Population GNP Army Navy Air Force Missiles Space Nuclear
Power
POWER BASE RANKINGS India No 7 No 2(l) No 13 No 4(3) No 6(5) Self-sufficient Short-range Intermediate Satellites Yes
of power base is well
OF INDIA AND THE EC EC No 6 No3 No 1 No l(2) No 3 Self-sufficient Short-range Intercontinental Satellites Yes
A number of comments are called for.13 Thus, the Indian ranking on GNP and the European on area are not among the highest, and this applies even more to GNP/capita for India (number 168 in the world, together with China among the poorest) and population/km2 for the EC
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(among the densest). But the point is, of course, that a country does not accumulate military assets with GNP/capita but with the GNP; and the Indian GNP is big enough in absolute terms. The argument that these resources could have been used to raise the bottom material level of Indian society-some would even say the resources have been squandered-may be morally and politically correct, but irrelevant. As to Europe: Europe is very badly suited for a war, given the high density not only of people but of all kinds of ‘assets’. Any war has to be fought in a more convenient setting for Europeans, meaning, as usual, in the Third World. They both have what it takes to become superpowers. But the argument of this exercise is not resting on such necessary but highly insufficient assets alone. What has to be looked into is the ability to extract, on an enduring basis, sufficient resources, both nature, human and capital resources, to sustain the building of an empire. Ideally an empire should be not only self-financing but even run with considerable surplus. In practice, however, there may be initial costs to be paid, entrance tickets and maintenance fees. A crisis and a call for total mobilization is needed. No problem: they are both well suited for mobilization of that kind because they are both human-rights-oriented democracies.14 Contrary to the theory commonly held that dictatorships are particularly good at mobilizing for imperial ends, the theory here is that democracies are even better at invoking the other side of the golden human rights coin, the human duties. There might even be a proportionality thesis involved: the more human rights, and not only civil-political but also socioeconomic rights are successfully implemented, the more duties can be extracted, as taxes, military service and general deference. From that perspective the EC would certainly rank above India. But had India been a repressive dictatorship it might also have been less of a threat to the neighbours than under the current condition of self-righteousness. This does not mean that resources can be extracted under the rights-duties quidpro quo formula. A free population would have to feel free, particularly when something is ‘extracted’. It must be offered willingly-if not completely voluntarily at least not against defiant resistance. Assets must be given up for heavily internalized goals, and to heavily institutionalized groups in society. Indian masses have already been forced to accept guns before butter. Which shows the significance of having the conditions mentioned in the preceding section well satisfied before superpower status is attempted. And also why the Soviet Union did not succeed.
Building
superpower
legitimacy:
India and the EC compared
The classical superpower legitimacy is based on the double perception of a threat ‘out there’ and somebody’s need to be protected. It is not enough to be able to deter an attack on oneself; the deterrence has to be extended to others, hence the current and very appropriate term ‘extended deterrence’. For this to be meaningful a quadripartite construction of the world in terms of a centre, an inner periphery, an outer periphery and an enemy is needed. The centre has to be solid and reliable. The inner periphery is nearby, more fickle, economically related to the centre. The outer periphery is more distant, less clearly related, yet significant. Typically this may be the place where nationals of the centre have settled. The enemy can be everywhere, including inside the centre as a
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925
subversive force, but usually with increasing density the further away from the centre. The tools of coercion will have to be custom-tailored to the operation theatre. Formulae emerging for the 1990s: l
0 0 0
for for for for
the the the the
centre: secret police surveillance; inner periphery: peace-keeping forces (PKF); outer periphery: rapid development forces (RDF); real enemy: heavy land, sea, air, space forces.
This formula will not surprise anyone familiar with the preceding decades. The enemy is out to get us; he has to be deterred with heavy, very offensive capability. The enemy may conquer the outer and less controlled periphery, hence the need to save one’s own nationals abroad through rapid intervention. For the inner periphery it is more a question of relatively light policing in case there should be upheavals. For the centre not even that is needed-only police surveillance of selected and suspected individuals with rapid intervention if necessary. Within this logic direct violence is the response to efforts to resist the structural violence emanating from the centre-penetrating the inner periphery effectively, the outer periphery less so and the enemy (almost) not at all. Short, sharp, shocks. But the lower the Self/Other ratio, the more purely enemy the territory the heavier, less pin-pointed the response, and the cruder the arms. But just as we did above, this reasoning can also be turned around. PKF is used not so much to (re-Jestablish law and order as to provide a context for deeper penetration into the inner periphery. RDF is used not so much for protection as to provide bridgeheads for penetration. And an arms race in heavy land, sea, air and space forces serves not so much to deter as to provide an image of ‘clear and present danger’. If the enemy can be seen as one and the same in all four arenas then the model set by the two waning superpowers has been implemented. They used the formulae of communist and imperialist subversion, respectively. Formulae for the 1990s will probably also include terrorist, Muslim, Zionist, possibly also East Asian subversion. Which formula is more probable: direct violence as response to unrest coming out of structural violence, or direct violence as instrument to establish structural violence? Both, of course. The point is the dialectic involved: investment abroad is a risk, but also an opportunity to establish more control; nationals abroad are a risk and are themselves at risk, but also an opportunity to establish more control. So, crises are welcome, indeed. In fact, a deep crisis in the inner periphery may lead to its incorporation in the centre by the PKF, and a deep crisis in the outer periphery to its transformation into inner periphery, by RDF. In short, appetizing. For the case of India the centre would be the Indian Union. The inner periphery is the other South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members, two of them big (Pakistan and Bangladesh), two of them medium (Sri Lanka and Nepal) and two very small (Bhutan and the Maldives); possibly also Burma which belongs both by the criterion of being a neighbour and once having been British-dominated. The outer periphery is where there are Indian nationals in the Arabian Sea-Indian Ocean-Bay of Bengal area. Given the British propensity for moving their colonial subjects, particularly Indians, that means many places-the Gulf area, East and South Africa, Malaysia/Singapore-and beyond-Fiji and Trinidad.
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The enemy is both remote and near: on the other side of the Himalayas and the big oceans on the one hand; and right up there in those snow-capped ridges and down there in the deeper recesses of the oceans. Not to mention air-borne and space-borne capacity. The cluster is classical and well defined; the countercluster of armed responses equally much so. The deep crisis in Sri Lanka led for a long time to something close to a de facto occupation of parts of the country by India,15 in the shape of the Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF). The clumsy coup in the Maldives gave India another opportunity for security forces to exercise peacekeeping. Nepal and Bhutan could be the next. the crisis potentials of both Bangladesh (socially) and Pakistan (ethically) are considerable. On top of that comes the possibility of more major wars over Kashmir, itself an example of New Delhi expansionism following in the footsteps of the British. But the bigger the country, the deeper the crisis needed before the opportunity outweighs the risks incurred. There is much at stake. For the case of the (coming) European Union, with its military adjunct, the Western European Union (the 12 minus the less obviously colonial Ireland, Luxembourg and Greece), the centre is the 12 EC countries, possibly becoming 15-16, and the centre of that centre the initial six Treaty of Rome signatories. The inner periphery would be the Eastern European countries; maybe also the Western republics of the ex-Soviet Union. And the outer periphery is almost the whole world as there are Western Europeans of different nationality practically speaking everywhere, but particularly in the 69 African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) countries. There is no limit to where RDF could be justified in terms of saving ‘European lives’. A periphery that much extended the enemy would potentially be almost everywhere, meaning that a construction of that size would see itself at permanent risk, and offer permanent opportunities. Again, crises are welcome! In a sense the configuration already started with a crisis, the deep crisis in residual Stalinism of late 1989, and goes on from there. Where it will end is anybody’s guess. So much for the military rationale of necessary control, at the surface of the construction, with efforts to keep details secret. Let us turn to the political and economic rationales. They lie deeper in the social configuration, are less ephemeral, more tied to deeper structures. And they have actually been hinted at above. Politically, the rationale is guidance, of the periphery by the centre, and economically the rationale is development, again of the periphery by the centre. India in Sri Lanka and India in Bhutan may serve as examples, so may the EC in ex-Yugoslavia and the EC in Asia. But the centre has to be recognized as a source of guidance, to stimulate development. For the case of India this might sound, at least to a Westerner, somewhat problematic. However, consider the following. India can point to a tradition of democracy with higher electoral participation than in the USA, in a very complex federal structure, to some extent unifying the second biggest population in the world? Critics will rightly point to the 1975-77 emergency and to interventions of the states by the centre (meaning New Delhi). But comparatively speaking (eg relative to Europe), the record is still impressive and legitimizing. And economically the same argument holds as for military expansion: development aid, particularly to small neighbours, is done on the basis of the high Indian GNP, not the low Indian GNP/capita. A big poor country might sometimes even help a small and richer country. For the case of the EC none of this is problematic. The inner periphery is begging for political guidance and economic development, also stimulated by the
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‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ logic. What a delight to receive solicited advice from the former enemy of the b&hoi brat’to the east who always offered so much unsolicited advice! Both politically and economically the penetration will probably go so far that by the year 2000 the former Soviet Union may, for all practical purposes have been reconquered, this time economically, particularly by Germany. The democratic-capitalist nature of that exercise will create considerable periphery poverty, even misery, which will then be legitimized by ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ utilitarianism, combined with majority rule. This will lead to upheavals by those who find no redress for the capitalist evils in the democratic mechanisms, just like in India. If only the majority, meaning more than SO%, are reasonably satisfied, they can outvote the minority, invite foreign peacekeeping forces, and even make it look legitimate! Once again, India and the EC are not alone in the world. Underlying this is a division of the world into regions for economic development and political/military guidance and control. The logic is something like this: the nation-state is too small, but we are not ready for world government (yet). Five billion human beings can better be developed, guided and controlled in regions in the half to one billion range. The USA will ultimately retract to the Western hemisphere and try to become unchallengeable with a smaller periphery to control, possibly hanging on to the Middle East. The EC will practise Napoleonic and Hitlerite logic, turning eastwards rather than southwards, with the ACP system as a giant outer periphery. Japan may ultimately succeed in turning most of the former da;-to-a kyoeiken into one. India, with the SAARC as inner periphery, is one more such region. China is already one and has been so for a long time, but will probably stick to itself, only withdrawing from Tibet. And the USA may become entrenched in Festung Amerika, partly as a defence against Japan. Five superpowers and regions, seven if we assume that out of the ex-Soviet Union will come one Slav-Orthodox and one Islamic (regional) superpower-the latter centred on Turkey. But, however all of this may be, there is a third layer in the configuration of rationale and legitimacy for the status as superpower-the cultural rationale of a globalmission, a calling, even of being anointed for the tasks of guidance, development and control. If the USA were chosen by Cod and the Soviet Union by History, then who chooses the would-be superpowers? There has to be some kind of mystique, something the would-be superpower can point to. For the case of India there is the interesting formula discussed in the first section abovelndia as nonaligned country, meaning a country beyond reproach. Today this has a taste of the ludicrous: what does it help to be non-aligned between some former superpowers when the country is rather firmly aligned with itself? It smacks like Nordic countries referring to their ‘non-colonialist tradition’, although they are parts of a system benefiting considerably from Western colonialism. For the case of the EC there is a closely related formula waiting to be used: we are back again! These are proud countries. To be the clients of somebody on the other side of the Atlantic was most unbecoming, a humiliating interval, bad for the generation that suffered those 40 years, but a tiny speck of time in the centuries of European emanation and penetration. A condition for this formula to work partly as a cause, partly as a consequence, is a certain level of anti-Americanism, more probable in the centre than in the inner and outer periphery of the EC configuration, combined with a proto-European nostalgia.” In addition, however, both of them can use, although more for internal consumption, local deities and icons of long standing. A very basic and ubiquitous,
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On the way to superpower
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and for that reason easily forgotten point about Europe is its Christianity, a major reason why the Europeans so easily turn against Jews and Muslims (and why Turkey will hardly become a member of the EC/WEU). Christianity, with its long history of aggressive missionary activity, is ideally suited for cohesiveness within and expansion without. Can Hinduism play the same role? The recent gains of the BJP (Bharatiya Janatha Party) from two seats in 1984 to 119 in 1991 is probably an indicator of what might well happen-India becoming a non-secular, Hindu state.la A war over Kashmir, escalating from the present violence, might speed up the process, invoking ever more religious metaphors. The enthusiasm surrounding the TV presentation of Mahabharata every Sunday over more than two years, with India close to a stand-still to watch past glory, is significant. And to watch Arjuna become a good kshatriya fighting friends and relatives setting vama-dharma above swa-dharma equally so.lg
The superpower
path leads but to decline
and fall
The prediction is therefore that both India and the EC will embark on the way to superpower status; in fact, they are already quite advanced. The prisoners of the logic described above are many and well placed. Like all prisoners they see only parts of the system encaging them; to see it all they have to be free. The functionaries of the would-be superpowers will develop, one after the other, the parts of the politico-logic developed above and gleefully explore the many correlations between the parts, two at the time; for instance, between RDF and saving the lives of nationals; or between poverty and democracy-just keep the misery (well) below 50% lest the poor should march to the polls and vote into power an uncontrollable party. This segmented insight also applies to the future. One thing we know: hegemonial systems, sewn together seamlessly with an impeccable logic, do not work in the longer run but lead to decline and fall. The macro-historians with cyclical theories have all given good reasons for this, from Ibn Khaldun’s decline of asabiya (compassion, solidarity), Sorokin’s principle of cultural limits, Toynbee’s universal, ritual church to Weber’s iron cage and Sarkar’s principle of social limits---all of them deeper than Paul Kennedy’s economistic, but important princip/e of economic limits. The peripheries will sooner or later revolt and the centre will wear out (involt? devolt?). When these processes coincide, it is over. Some buildings, aqueducts, Red Forts and Secretariats etc, will survive the untold suffering of the many, for the glory of the few. Does that drama really have to be enacted again? Say, why don’t we ever learn . . .?!
Notes and references ?988;/feprinted 1. See/fhe Cold War as autism’, Alternatives, i/Essays in Peace Research, Vol VI I+ (Copenhagen, Ejlers, 1988)/and alsoPhe Cold War, peace and development: a comparison of the Atlantic and Pacific theaters’, Essays in Peace Research, V/(Copenrgen, Ejlers, 1988), pages 107126. 2. For the jobs being done by Israel, see a number of works by the Israeli specialist Beth Hallami. 3. Of course, a country isolating itself does not necessarily do so to go into hiding, but also because it has suffered badly as a part of the world system, as Albania and the three mentioned in the text certainly have. 4. The USA wants to perpetuate NATO, however, for three simple reasons: to keep a handle on
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.
On the way to superpower
5. 6. 7.
8. 9.
10.
11. 12.
13. 14.
15.
16.
17. 18.
status: India and the EC compared
929
Europe, particularly (unified) Germany; to use NATO in confrontations with Maghreb and Mashreq countries; and to symbolize that ‘we won, they are dissolving’. See Johan Galtung, ‘Expectations and interaction processes’, Inquiry, 1959, pages 213-234. Or the other way round: the Soviet clients withdrew even the pretence of subservience and the cold war structure collapsed. Or both at the same time, in a fascinating dialectic. And this, of course, is the point made by Paul Kennedy in his The Riseandfallofthe GreatPowers (New York, Random House, 1987), remarkable for its blindness to the force motrice of it all, the culturally defined right, and even duty, to expand, found in missionary ‘great powers’. Although, historically, they do not always come in that order. See, for instance, Bernard Lievegoed, De levensloop van de mens (Rotterdam, Lemniscaat, 1988); or Johan Galtung, ‘Macro-history as metaphor for biography: an essay on macro and micro history’, biography, 1990, pages 283-299. Thus, the US effort at residual hegemony with NATO staying on in Europe is at present (late 1992) highly artificial. But with some work they may succeed in creating enough enemies, including persuading others that they are enemies, to make it look legitimate. To hear the USA say this to Japan is like listening to one mafia boss talking to another. Pushing through an open door; if it had not been for the solid resistance so far of the Japanese people. To discipline the clients, invoking the threat from the other side is the theme of the article mentioned in reference 1 above. Thus, European client states were even discouraged from seeking solutions to the land-based intermediate missiles gap of the 1980s; the perceived threat has to be maintained. This type of thinking has been with me from the first of my many stays in India in 1960, and was not inspired by an article in Time magazine, ‘Superpower rising’, 3 April 1989. For the human rights argument see my ‘The universality of human rights revisited! Some less applaudable consequences of the human rights tradition’, in Asbjorn Eide and Bernt Hagtvet (editors), (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992), pages 152-173. The quadrilateral relation, New Delhi-Tamil Nadu-Colombo-the Tigers, is probably typical of what could happen in many parts of the Indian inner and outer periphery, including assassination of top politicians. New Delhi IPKF fighting the Tigers in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka is a rather clear message to Tamil Nadu. To take only one factor: India is a much better integrated world system than Europe, the thesis of this paper notwithstanding. At least the subcontinent is not divided into two hostile blocs threatening each other with nuclear annihilation and some non-aligned in-between, with the blocs meeting in Nagpur or some similar central place! Looking at India as an international system rather than as a poor nation-state the glass looks half full rather than half empty, to put it that way. For this and similar themes about the EC and Europe as a whole see Johan Caltung, Europe in the Making (Basingstoke, Taylor and Francis, 1989). The seat distribution in Lok Sabha is as follows:
Congress BJP Janata Dal CPI CPI-M
1984 415 2 6 22
19. But, as Ramlal Parikh, the Vice-Chancellor of the university has pointed out to me: Mahabharata also shows the futility
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November 1992
1989 197 86 142 12 33
1991 227 119 55 13 33
founded by Gandhi in Ahmedabad, of the whole belligerent exercise.