The Doval dilemma and India's ham-fisted foreign policy

The pracharak was in the United States, where at a meeting of QUAD countries, American President Joe Biden forgot his name when it came to introducing him. If that was embarrassing, then his assertion that the “success of humanity lies in our collective strength, not in the battlefield” in his address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) was unconvincing.

As former Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar highlighted in an article, "Narendra Modi is the first Indian prime minister ever not to be on record on nuclear disarmament. His attention has been devoted to building our nuclear capabilities and delivery systems without mentioning universal disarmament."

Modi was on an overseas trip without his doppelganger national security advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval. The latter has been summoned by a New York court to appear before it, following an allegation by a Khalistan activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun that the Modi government conspired to assassinate him. Indian national Nikhil Gupta, indicted in the matter, is in US custody. Raisina Hill chose discretion over valour by not risking Doval on American soil. But it is an ignominy for India that a man holding cabinet rank in its government cannot travel freely outside the country.

Under Doval’s 10-year watch, Kulbhushan Jadhav, erstwhile of the Indian Navy, was captured by Pakistan in 2016 and is still imprisoned there; Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused the Modi administration of assassinating a Canadian Sikh (suspected by Indian authorities of being a Khalistani) on Canadian soil, near Vancouver; eight former Indian naval officers were sentenced to death by a Qatari court on charges of spying for Israel, before being released at significant economic cost to the Indian exchequer and several officers of India’s external espionage agency RAW (Research & Analysis Wing) stationed abroad have been declared persona non grata.

The essence of espionage is not to be apprehended; and if you are, then to be armed with plausible deniability. The jury is out on whether Modi and Doval pass this acid test.

Doval was among India’s intelligence officials who botched up when Pakistani terrorists hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC814 in 1999 — appallingly, he blamed the failure on others. His stints at Indian missions abroad were not in any diplomatic capacity. Yet today he is NSA, which demands a wide spectrum understanding of foreign affairs. Besides, should he, at 79, continue to discharge such an onerous responsibility?

Last week, he was thrown into the deep end — and practically drowned as a result of his incapability. He was despatched to Moscow in line with Modi’s promise to brief Putin on the former’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Doval cut a pathetic figure in the video that was shared. Seemingly unable to speak extempore, he resorted to notes to provide a simple rundown of the exchange. He couldn’t even pronounce Zelenskyy’s name properly. Putin listened impassively as his interlocutor fumbled.

It was astonishing that a video of a meeting that showed Doval and India in such poor light was made public. Apparently Sputnik, a Russian state-owned news agency, did so. If Moscow’s objective was to signal to the West that Modi was Putin’s poodle, it did very well.

The fiasco also starkly underlined the difference between considered multi-alignment and trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

Modi’s isolation over West Asia

With the collapse of its trusted Cold War friend, the Soviet Union, in 1989, India — while retaining non-alignment on superpower rivalries — switched to multi-alignment to deter Washington’s potential hostility. Thus in 1992, it upgraded relations with Israel to full diplomatic ties. However, given Israel’s intemperance towards Palestine, India cautiously opted for arms-length contact at the highest governmental level.

Not only did Modi visit Israel in 2017, throughout his tenure at the Centre, he has identified rather intimately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Jewish hardliner whose Likud Party’s coalition partners include the far-right Religious Zionist Party. Last October, Modi tweeted his unconditional support for Tel Aviv within hours of Hamas attacking Israel and taking over 200 hostages.

Hamas operates out of the Gaza Strip, which comes under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. On 23 September, only a few days after India abstained from the UNGA resolution calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, Modi met and tried to appease the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, on the sidelines of the UNGA session in New York. The international impression of Modi as a waffler is only getting more ingrained.

Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva has compared Israeli actions against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to Adolf Hitler killing Jews. South Africa took the matter to the International Criminal Court (ICC), following which its chief prosecutor Karim Khan sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant as well as for three Hamas leaders — Yahiya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Approval of the warrants by ICC judges is awaited.

In effect, on the issue of Israeli excesses, among BRICS’ founding members, Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa are on one page — New Delhi is on another.

Last week, Israel chose to expand its ‘self-defence’ (pre-emptive aggression in the eyes of a majority of UNGA member states) to Lebanon, where Hezbollah, another anti-Israel militant outfit is headquartered. Tampered pagers and walkie-talkies detonated in various parts of Lebanon, killing dozens. Hezbollah accused Israel of being behind the explosions.

Indian-born Norwegian Rinson Jose, who was untraceable, is reportedly the owner of a Bulgarian shell company which paid a Hungarian firm £1.3 million as part of an alleged deal made by Israel’s spy agency Mossad to obtain the pagers. The collateral civil deaths could constitute a war crime.

Israel escalated the offensive by bombing Lebanon and taking down a Hezbollah commander. Hezbollah responded with missile attacks on Israel. Fears of a full-scale regional conflagration in West Asia have grown exponentially as an unpopular Netanyahu, without apparently concentrating on rescuing the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas, has expanded the state of war in an alleged bid to remain in power.

NBC poll gives Harris 5 per cent lead over Trump

Which brings us to the bare-knuckled contest between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. The US goes to the polls on 5 November.

According to a New York Times/Siena College poll released on 23 September, Trump may have a slight edge in the sun-belt states of Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, regardless of his conviction in four court cases, including one for felony. On 22 September, though, an NBC News poll gave Harris a 49 per cent lead nationally over Trump’s 44 per cent. Of course, the face-off may eventually narrow to the outcome in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, it’s exciting times for the US intelligence and security services. Lapses in their attempts to protect Trump become serious not only because of the two attempts on his life (in July and September) but also because Iran has vowed to avenge the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in 2020 when Trump was president.

On 10 September, Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani businessman, was arraigned for allegedly paying $5,000 in cash to undercover US law enforcement officers as an advance for the assassination of a US government official.

US attorney-general Merrick Garland said, “As these terrorism and murder-for-hire charges against Asif Merchant demonstrate, we will continue to hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against Americans.”

Following the 13 July ‘assassination attempt’ at a Pennsylvania rally, on 16 September, Ryan Wesley Routh (58) was caught hiding in the bushes with an assault rifle outside the perimeter of a golf course in Florida, where Trump was playing a round. Spotted and fired at by US secret service sharpshooters, he fled the scene, only to be arrested an hour later and subsequently charged in court with firearm offences. Secret service acting director Ronald Rowe, however, told newspersons the suspect "did not have line of sight" on Trump.

Exit of another India-friendly leader

After Sheikh Hasina’s ouster in Bangladesh in August and Ranil Wickremesinghe’s defeat this week in the Sri Lankan presidential election, India finds itself increasingly encircled by indifferent or inimical neighbours (tiny Bhutan being the exception).

The new Sri Lankan president is 55-year-old Anura Dissanayake of the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna party. And while this isn’t an anti-India mandate, Dissanayake may attempt to play New Delhi and Beijing against each other for the sake of investment, which Sri Lanka desperately desires for its economic growth.

The question is: can India compete with China when it comes to money-power?

Ashis Ray can be found on X @ashiscray