United States had a Monroe Doctrine, India needs a Modi Doctrine – Firstpost

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On December 2, 1823, James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, sent his annual message to Congress outlining his policy priorities and agenda. Historically, the annual message, like the State of the Union address that succeeded it, are dull statements of policy or politics quickly forgotten. Monroe’s seventh message, however, was different. Buried in the text was a foreign policy statement that would have profound repercussions for more than a century to come. It was a simple declaration: “The American continents … are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation by any European powers.” Today, it is remembered as the Monroe Doctrine.

Critics of the United States — the late Cuban President Fidel Castro in Cuba or Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, for example — cite the Monroe Doctrine as evidence of US imperialism. The reality is more complicated. When the United States won independence from the United Kingdom, it was unclear that it could maintain its freedom. King George III remained a threat. Less than a decade before, British troops took Washington, DC, and burned the White House. The Treaty of Ghent cemented peace between London and Washington just two years before Monroe took office. While Spain sold Florida to the United States in 1821, it continued its efforts to consolidate control over South and Central America. The Congress of Vienna, meanwhile, sparked broad efforts by European powers to reconsolidate monarchy and resist, militarily if necessary, the independence movements sweeping Mexico and the other former Spanish colonies in the Americas.

By issuing the Monroe Doctrine, the president essentially signalled to Europe that the age of its imperialism, at least in the Americas, was over, nor would the United States allow North America to become a playground for European powers in the way that Africa and Asian had become. Fairly or not, it made the United States the dominant power in the region. Subsequent history shows that was not always a bad thing. It had a stabilizing effect on the region. Spain sought to take advantage of the American Civil War to reconquer the Dominican Republic, but evacuated the country a year later when the United States defeated the Confederacy.

There are parallels between America’s rise in the 19th century and India’s rise as a regional if not global power today. Undoubtedly, India is a power. It is both the world’s most populous country, and its largest democracy. Just as hostile powers fantasized about constraining if not destroying the United States in the 19th century, today India finds itself in a similar situation. Both China and Pakistan occupy Indian territory and seek to encroach further.

Within the Indian Ocean basin, India faces increasing competition from countries that seek to pilfer the region’s resources or to export foreign ideologies inimical to peace. China overfishes off the Horn of Africa and in the southwest Indian Ocean. The decimation of fishing stocks contributes to piracy off the Somali coast and to Islamic State insurgency in Mozambique. Unsustainable Chinese fishing further impacts the Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Tanzania.

The Chinese presence in Sri Lanka is a growing strategic concern. While Chinese diplomats and those in the West reliant on Chinese funding often say there is no reason for concern, the arrival of the Yuan Wang 5 spy ship at the port belies this.

Turkey, meanwhile, has not only built a naval base in Somalia, but increasingly seeks to move into the Maldives. Turkey is to the 21st century what Saudi Arabia was to the 20th century, an engine for the spread of Islamist ideology.

India has an interest and perhaps even a moral responsibility to be the dominant power in the Indian Ocean Basin. Consider the African coast. When I interviewed Islamic State fighters captured by Rwandan forces in Mozambique, I reviewed the material they had in their possession when captured. Many had Islamist tracts published in Karachi and then transported by sea to Mombasa, Kenya. The Islamic State in Africa is arguably more dangerous than that in Iraq and Syria because of the resources at its disposal. Not only did it have access to the Indian Ocean prior to Rwanda’s deployment, but it can access the gold and even uranium mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, commodities more easily extracted and transported than Iraqi oil.

As India transforms from a regional power to a superpower, it is time for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to issue a Modi Doctrine modelled after the Monroe Doctrine two centuries ago. It could be simple: “The Indian Ocean is henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future exploitation by any European or Asian powers.”

China claims the South China Sea as its territorial waters based on a fiction; the Indian Ocean as a whole, of course, is not India’s territorial waters nor does New Delhi demand it be. But India should be the paramount power. As Beijing tries to indebt or bribe small states to act as Chua’s trap door into the region, India should put those states on notice. India sees peace and security in the Indian Ocean basin as both India’s interest and responsibility. Turkey and China might play games in Africa or Central Asia, but India will use all means at its disposal to deny the region to any imperial state, outsider, or regime that would endanger the progress, peace, and development of the Indian Ocean, from Darwin to Durban and from Muscat to Male.

India is a rising power, and a force for good in the world. In 1947, India successfully threw off the yoke of colonialism. It subsequently became a voice for the non-aligned against the predation of outside powers.

Today, imperialism and exploitation comes in different forms. The root of colonialism comes less from European militaries and more from China and Turkey. Both seek to sow chaos in the region for their own cynical purposes. As India becomes a global power, it should build on its anti-colonial ideology to counter 21st century imperialism in whatever forms it takes. The Modi Doctrine can do for the Indian Ocean basin what the Monroe Doctrine did for the Americas.

Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

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