Clichés as foreign policy

Do we have a foreign policy? A look at the events all over the world makes it difficult to answer in the affirmative, for pusillanimity, stodginess, and gross ineptitude have become the hallmark of Indian diplomacy.
While the geopolitical situation is increasingly becoming hostile to our national interests, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government is responding with a timorousness which borders on idiocy. A day after China screamed about the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, the authorities asked him to amend his programme; the reporters covering his trip were asked to leave Tawang. Did anyone in Arunachal have any problems with the Dalai? No, they gave him a hearty welcome. Did anybody—that is anybody other than the known Beijing lackeys—in other parts of the country have any problems with his visit? No. But the mandarins in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) get jittery every time China screams. And, obviously, they lack the courage to have hard talk with Beijing, which has been fomenting trouble in the North-East and supplying arms to Pakistan, our mortal enemy and a terrorist state.
The latest instance of Beijing’s villainy is its decision to sell Pakistan 36 fighter aircraft for a consideration of $1.4 billion. And now another revelation has come: China provided Pakistan with a “do-it-yourself” kit and weapons grade uranium for making two nuclear bombs in 1982. According to The Washington Post, the deliberate act of proliferation was part of a secret nuclear deal struck in 1976 between Chinese leader Mao Zedong and Pakistan’s prime minister Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto.
“Upon my personal request, the Chinese Minister... had gifted us 50 kg [kilograms] of weapon-grade enriched uranium, enough for two weapons,” the notorious nuclear smuggler, AQ Khan wrote in a previously undisclosed 11-page narrative of the Pakistani bomb programme. But the MEA is still determined to placate Beijing.
Similarly, the MEA has miserably failed to influence US policy, which is increasingly becoming more pro-Islamabad, the epitome of which is the Barack Obama Administration’s decision to appoint Robin Raphel as coordinator for non-military aid to Pakistan
It is a well-known fact that Raphel is a rabid and despicable India-hater. She is notorious for her sympathies with Pakistan who, as Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, said in 1994 that Kashmir was “disputed territory”; she questioned the legitimacy of the Instrument of Accession. Obama’s decision to proffer a high office mocks at his stated antipathy towards keeping lobbyists in Washington’s power structure, for a lobbying firm recently made a disclosure that she worked earlier with it. But so committed is Obama to the cause of Pakistan that he had little compunctions in violating his own Administration’s code of ethics regarding appointments.
Raphel is already part of the Administration, having joined it in August, her entry being facilitated by Richard Holbrooke, US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Before her appointment by the US President, she worked with the lobbying firm, Cassidy and Associates. The firms had a $1.2-million contract with Pakistan. Obama has turned a blind eye to such blatant conflict of interests. The question is: what has the UPA regime been doing all along? While the political leadership’s failure is spectacular in matters related to diplomacy, our Indian Foreign Service officers have not covered themselves with glory. It is quite evident that they, like our politicians, are apt only at making hackneyed remarks and meaningless statements.