‘Out of the Box’ Diplomacy

The philoso­pher Ralph Wal­do Emer­son once said that “A fool­ish con­sis­ten­cy is the hob­gob­lin of lit­tle minds, adored by lit­tle states­men and philoso­phers and divines.” In the realm of inter­na­tion­al affairs, these words reflect the very nature of intel­li­gent diplo­ma­cy – an exer­cise that requires con­stant recal­i­bra­tion to face a dynam­ic world, where even a sin­gle tweet can spark an inter­na­tion­al inci­dent. Charges of ‘flip flops’ and ‘incon­sis­ten­cies’ may be good sound­bites for polit­i­cal attacks, yet they form part of any com­pe­tent nation’s diplo­mat­ic strat­e­gy.

Prime Min­is­ter Modi’s stop-over in Pak­istan to meet Nawaz Sharif did noth­ing less than stump the Oppo­si­tion in India, which scram­bled to for­mu­late a line of attack against the NDA gov­ern­ment instead of sup­port­ing the effort. For months, the Con­gress par­ty had crit­i­cised the Cen­tre for not talk­ing to Pak­istan. After the NSA talks in Bangkok and Indi­an Exter­nal Affairs Min­is­ter Sush­ma Swaraj’s atten­dance at the Heart of Asia sum­mit in Islam­abad, the same par­ty is now call­ing the NDA government’s new found engage­ment “unstruc­tured”, adding that the ground real­i­ties in the region have not changed.

It is clear that this is churl­ish crit­i­cism lev­elled pure­ly for polit­i­cal lever­age. Major polit­i­cal par­ties in Pak­istan wel­comed PM Modi’s vis­it to Lahore. Even the inter­na­tion­al media was full of praise, but the major­i­ty of Oppo­si­tion par­ties in India remained unit­ed against the PM’s move, cit­ing issues such as the progress of the 26/11 tri­al, Hafiz Saeed, cross-bor­der ter­ror and the Kash­mir dis­pute to counter the praise. Even Indi­an news chan­nels, which laud­ed the Prime Min­is­ter, were accused by the Con­gress of being BJP mouth­pieces.

PM Modi’s Lahore vis­it indi­cates his attempt to re-eval­u­ate India’s engage­ment with Pak­istan. It is a two-pronged approach, with Indi­an offi­cials deal­ing with the mil­i­tary wing via the NSA lev­el talks in
Bangkok and Modi engag­ing the civil­ian lead­er­ship. The Prime Min­is­ter is con­scious of the fact that the Indi­an gov­ern­ment can­not appear stub­born when it comes to India-Pak­istan ties. There is diplo­mat­ic cap­i­tal in engage­ment, espe­cial­ly atmos­pher­ics, when the Indi­an gov­ern­ment also enforces red lines. The Indi­an gov­ern­ment has pre­vi­ous­ly can­celled talks over Pakistan’s engage­ment with the Hur­riy­at as third par­ty stake­hold­ers in the bilat­er­al process. Enhanc­ing atmos­pher­ics in such a sce­nario is essen­tial to facil­i­tate favourable inter­na­tion­al opin­ion.

In the book ‘New Region­al­ism and the Euro­pean Union’, polit­i­cal sci­en­tists Ste­lios Stavridis and Pana­gio­ta Mano­li reflect on the estab­lish­ment of the Euro­pean coali­tion of nations, stress­ing the
impor­tance of atmos­pher­ics to estab­lish and strength­en region­al ties, espe­cial­ly to achieve new par­a­digms. They say, “It is not always the imme­di­ate impact that mat­ters, but rather the
wider ques­tion of social­iza­tion that needs to be acknowl­edged, which refers to a learn­ing process and the dif­fu­sion of norms and behav­iours. The poten­tial bridge-mak­ing role of par­lia­men­tary
diplo­ma­cy, cou­pled with its over­all social­iza­tion effect, should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.”

India-Pak­istan ties have always faced a polit­i­cal push and pull, but all chal­leng­ing diplo­mat­ic ties need to be reg­u­lar­ly boost­ed with acts of good­will and rap­proche­ment. It is an impor­tant pre-cur­sor to achieve any break­throughs, no mat­ter how unlike­ly they may seem. Naren­dra Modi’s vis­it to Lahore was uncon­ven­tion­al, but so are India’s ties with Pak­istan, which con­tin­u­ous­ly face the fleet­ing promise of res­o­lu­tion.

The main charge against Modi is that he didn’t fol­low con­ven­tion­al pro­ce­dure; that he thought ‘out of the box’. How­ev­er, no one with their sights set on a big objec­tive should hes­i­tate to think out of the box or fear crit­i­cism for break­ing with con­ven­tion. While achiev­ing tan­gi­ble results is a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge alto­geth­er, Modi’s recent move has been one of a states­man, not a politi­cian.