Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague and its Chancellor, George Osborne are in India. The purpose of the visit obviously is to boost ties between Britain and India. The visit comes after a landslide victory for the Modi led BJP and the anointment of Mr. Modi as India’s prime minister. Britain and India share deep historical ties: India was a British colony-albeit an important one so much so it was held to be the ‘jewel of the crown’ in colonial Britain’s possessions. It is from the yoke of British colonialism that India attained independence. While colonialism was bad-morally and ethically- it is held by some that India owes its post independence institutional configuration and the deep imprimatur of democracy to the legacies left by what was called ‘Great Britain’.
Alas Britain is not great anymore. Gradually and inexorably, British power, prestige and position have waned. Britain is no more the power it used to be. It is a shrunken shell which may even shrink further if the Scots opt for outright secession or independence from the ‘mother’ country in the referendum slated to be held later this year. A whole host of reasons account for the country’s decline and weakness. Structural changes in world politics and the global economy, the bipolar structure of world politics after the Second Great War, the revival of Europe, and contemporarily globalization and the putative emergence of a more multipolar world are some of the salient ones. Even Britain’s so called ‘special relationship’ with the United States did not count for much. (Apart from support in the United Nations on issues of salience to the United States- for which Tony Blair was lampooned as a ‘poodle’-, intelligence sharing and some degree of military support to the United States, British support was mostly rhetorical).
Perhaps the most important factor that explains British decline is the lack or even loss of will to be a player, in its own right, after decolonization and the Second World War British was exhausted and drained. And it has never really recovered. The country could not re-invent itself as a player (state) of some reckoning in a decolonized world of mostly free and sovereign states. British insipidness does not appear to accrue from post imperial political decay , as was the case with the Ottoman empire or other imperial metropoles that were relegated to the dustbin of history. Rather, at the risk of repetition, it was because of structural factors and the loss of will and confidence by the British.
After the Cold War, the country tried a novel tack to carve for itself a niche in international relations and the global economy. It marketed itself as ‘ Cool Britannica’ and generated for itself competitive advantage by transforming London into a hub of global finance and banking. It achieved a degree of success in this but the financial crisis of 2008 threw this paradigm into a tizzy. In the domain of international relations and politics, it latched onto the United States and approved of every misstep that the sole superpower took. Under this patina and veneer of international relations dominated by the United States and a unipolar world, profound structural changes were occurring. The centre of gravity of economics was gradually moving to the East, emerging powers were stirring, the country was stuck in Euroskepticism and the contours of a more multipolar configuration of power could be discerned. Politically, instead of the End of History where a democratic and liberal nirvana was predicted, authoritarianism has not died; it has made a comeback. China is held to be a competitor to the United States; India an emerging pole of power along with the BRIC’s. All in all, it is even held by some that the West is in decline.
This is the world that Britain finds itself in and has to operate in. Can the country rebound? Will the India visit by Osborne and Hague do the trick? Unlikely is the answer. The reasons again are structural. Too much water has passed under the bridge for Britain to make a vigorous comeback. The world has moved on and there is talk of general decline of the West-politically and economy. The India visit may draw some form and quantum of investment into Britain and vice versa. However, this would amount to a trifling which would not make much of a dent in the political economy of both countries. India would stand to benefit more; a demonstration effect of world leaders making a beeline to India would boost India’s image. This may also generate pressures and momentum for fourth generation reforms in India.
Is Britain doomed? Not really. It may, in the final analysis, be prudent for Britain to ‘look East’’, so to speak, and leverage its diasporic connections with most of the world and build a different profile for itself. This does not mean disavowing the United States but rather balancing and leveraging Britain’s strengths proportionately and crafting both a domestic and foreign policy that speaks to the needs of the times. The world has and is changing; the speed and scale the transformation is stupendous. It calls for radical departures from the past and , in the least, attempting to catch up. A new and bold paradigm is needed by Britain to reclaim for itself space that it forfeited after decolonization. Delaying this would be at the country’s peril.
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