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Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy by  Shivshankar Menon ; Published by Penguin ; Pages  224 ; Price Rs 599/-

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 Shivshankar Menon was Foreign Secretary from October 2006 to July 2009 .He was a career diplomat, who  has served as India's envoy to Israel (1995-97), Sri Lanka (1997-2000), China (2000-03), and Pakistan (2003-06). He was the NSA from January 2010 to May 2014.He has brought out an insider’s account of the decision-making process of India’s foreign policy in the book under review.

 Menon dissects  five absolutely crucial moments in recent history  that have had a crucial  impact on current events in  India. These are some of the most crucial scenarios that the country  encountered  during his long career in government and how key personalities were compelled to  make choices based on incomplete information under the pressure of fast-moving events.

Menon refers to important  Indian foreign policy decisions with which he was closely connected with.

These include 1) India-US nuclear agreement, 2) the first-ever boundary-related agreement between India and China, 3) India's decision not to use overt force against Pakistan in response to the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, 4) the 2009 defeat of the brutal civil war in Sri Lanka and 5) India's disavowal of the first-use of nuclear weapons. Menon devotes one chapter for each item and one for summing up.

In each case, Menon lays out the context, discusses the choices that Delhi had to make and the broader lessons from those decisions. This framework gives the reader a panoramic view as well as the granular texture of each issue area. Menon’s clear prose and command of the essential detail makes each account riveting. Even more important, Menon successfully captures the melancholy of modern statecraft.

Menon thoroughly discusses the parameters that dictated choices that throw light on   India's strategic culture and decision-making, its policies toward the use of force, its long-term goals and priorities and its future behaviour.

"Choices will be of interest to anyone searching for answers to questions about how India, one of the world's great, rising powers confronts and arrives at decisions on the world stage, and the tough choices that sometimes have to be made,"

According to him ,”The real threats to India are ‘internal’ and emanate from communal and social violence, not from outside forces such as Pakistan or China “. There’s no existential threat to India’s existence today externally, unlike in the 50s or when we were formed. And for many years till late 60s there were actual internal separatist threats, not any more. I think that we have actual dealt with,”

His long career in public service spans diplomacy, national security, and India’s relations with its neighbours and major global powers.

This is Menon's first book post  after retirement. “If you look at violence in India, deaths from terrorism, from left wing extremism, declined steadily throughout this 21st century until 2014-2015. Even now the basic trend for terrorism, left wing extremism is down. What has increased is since 2012, communal violence, social violence, internal violence has increased. That is something we need to find a way in dealing with,”

This is not a traditional law and order problem, which our traditional instruments, the police, the states know how to deal with. You look at violence against women, communal, caste violence, if you look at those firms of violence, these are all a result of tremendous social and economic change of uprooting of population, urbanization-- various forms of change, which we still need to learn how to deal with.”

According to Menon  these are the threats, which in the long run, have  a ‘potential to make real difference’.“India has changed. It is normal. It happens to most societies where there is change. But you also have to learn new ways of dealing with.” He  attributed the new threats to the rapid and fast development of the country.

According to Menon this  is a consequence of the change that the Indian society is undergoing now.

He has written in his book that the ‘real threat’ to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons is from rogue elements inside its military rather than from the terrorist outfits.Noting that terrorists have easier and cheaper ways of wreaking havoc, Menon said the nuclear weapons are complex devices that are difficult to manage, use and deliver and require very high level of skills.

‘To my mind, the real threat (to Pak nukes) is from insiders, from a Pakistani pilot or a brigadier who decides to wage nuclear jihad, with or without orders,’ Menon writes. ‘The risk increases as Pakistan builds tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use, control of which will necessarily be delegated down the command chain.’

Menon says Pakistan is the only nuclear weapon programme in the world that is exclusively under military control.

Menon writes that India has nuclear weapons for the contribution that make to its national security in an uncertain and anarchic world by preventing others from attempting nuclear blackmail and coercion against India.

While India has a declared policy of no-first use of nuclear weapons, Menon  warns that if Pakistan were to use tactical nuclear weapons against India ‘even against Indian forces in Pakistan,’ it would effectively be opening the door to a massive Indian first strike, having crossed India's declared red line. ‘Pakistani tactical nuclear weapons use would effectively free India to undertake a comprehensive first strike against Pakistan. There are several responses short of war available to a state like India,’.

Regarding the 26/11 atack on Mumbai, Menon was in favour of retaliation, overt action against LeT Headquaters in Punjab and LeT camps in POK. But he candidly concedes now that “ …on sober reflection and hindsight I now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and to concentrate on diplomatic and other means was the right one for that time and place.”

This is a very significant contribution to the making of public policy in thr Country, at once useful to politicians. Policy makers and students of Indian polity.

P.P.Ramachandran.

29—01--2017