Delusional Politics
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HARDEEP SINGH PURI
DELUSIONAL POLITICS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
The Setting
Introduction
1. The Credibility Crisis
2. Brexit
3. Trump and the Global Delusional Order
4. The India Story
5. Global Governance
6. The Politics of Terror
7. The Politics of Trade Policy
Illustrations
Author’s Note
Notes
Acknowledgements
Advance Praise for the Book
‘Hardeep Singh Puri has, among other attributes, that rarest of qualities: lucidity of mind. If you want to learn about current events, read his accounts in Delusional Politics. Every chapter is a summary that cuts through the journalistic noise to give you the pure signal. Like a classical chronicler, he manages to provide clarity about what happens in our time, put things in context, and deliver to you the proper context to make up your mind. It is as if a historian is covering the present with the same filtering one can possibly apply only to the past’—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, scholar and author of Skin in the Game, Antifragile and The Black Swan
‘Delusional Politics is a sophisticated and deep reflection on the technological, political, economic and social forces driving this tumultuous era in global affairs. As a diplomat, policymaker and politician, Hardeep Singh Puri cuts through common opinion to reveal new insights into our present malaise. Rich in both historical and contemporary examples, it argues a number of thought-provoking and controversial propositions. This is an important contribution to the debate about the future of the global order—and how we might fix it’—The Hon. Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia, and president, Asia Society Policy Institute
‘Hardeep Singh Puri’s book Delusional Politics is insightful, thought-provoking, superbly researched and deftly crafted. While it’s an engaging story on global politics and global governance—and a textbook battle plan for anyone who wants to formulate foreign policy in today’s world—it is also much more . . . it’s a fascinating read! The lucid, open-hearted account makes interesting and informative reading for academics and practitioners alike. Puri’s unique experience and brilliant writing brings out the authentic richness of the world we are living in. The book could well be the key to all our futures’—Amitabh Kant, chief executive officer, National Institute for Transforming India (NITI Aayog)
‘This is a diplomat–politician’s unsparing political scrutiny of the rise of populism and a bruising shift from facts to belief-based politics in the post-truth era. The book looks at how Donald Trump’s rise has more to do with white working class woes than with racism; and how Narendra Modi’s popularity is a break from the culture of impunity that existed before him. While populism has been a reality in democracies for long, he says, social media can be its force multiplier. This results in delusional politics, and delusional decision-making’—Shekhar Gupta, senior journalist
For Himayani, our first born and one of god’s greatest gifts to us. Himayani is a celebration and inspiration of Lakshmi’s and my life.
The Setting
‘Be humble, for you are made of earth.
Be noble, for you are made of stars.’
—Serbian Proverb
‘Are you psychic or what? First Brexit and now Trump!’
This was the essence of a crisp message from our younger daughter Tilottama on the morning of 6 November 2016 when it became abundantly clear that Donald Trump was going to carry the electoral college.
No, I am certainly not a psychic. However, forty years of professional life has taught me to see the fault lines in a flawed narrative. My instincts have, over the years, been sufficiently honed to see through a situation in which a narrative is contrived. Producing an erroneous narrative is bad enough. But then to market it as the dominant mainstream narrative suggests a more serious underlying problem. Anyone can get an assessment wrong or make a wrong prediction. But if the expertise is suspect and the analyst or commentator has a vested interest in producing a flawed narrative, then the very essence of the democratic process stands undermined.
My friend Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Anti-fragile: Things that Gain from Disorder and so many other brilliant books, called this ‘a global riot against pseudo-experts’. 1 ‘Learned’ commentators the world over got both the Brexit and the Trump victory wrong. Many reputations should have been destroyed, including those of CNN and the New York Times. But instead of gracefully accepting their mistake(s), they dug in and decided to join the battle. They refused to come to terms with the fact that Trump could or, more importantly, should be allowed to win. Brexit and the election of the forty-fifth President of the United States (POTUS) were just the beginning of a process. Social media had already altered the dynamic. Once Trump began to settle down, well before he completed a hundred days in office, the battle to set the narrative started in the right earnest. Facts—as per the normal way they are understood, as being empirically verifiable—appeared no longer sacrosanct. Their ‘alternatives’ began to enter and occupy considerable space in the lexicon and the framing of narratives. The era of alternative facts and alternative narratives had finally arrived. It had been in the making for some time.
The world was in sufficient disarray and already in an advanced stage of entropy well before Brexit. Brexit and Trump, however, signalled the unveiling of an entirely different narrative—one only partly anchored in domestic mismanagement and influenced to a considerable extent by the processes of globalization.
Over the past quarter century, I have failed to be persuaded that the Western liberal democratic order represents the closest approximation to what is best for human civilization. The emphasis on human rights is laudable. The gains of globalization are also truly impressive. The model based on the processes of globalization—the Washington Consensus and trade liberalization, which in turn produced unprecedented economic growth—is, however, not without problems. Trade certainly helped individuals and nations to grow wealthy but has never been entirely ‘free’ but ‘managed’. The so-called ‘magic’ of markets is, at a certain level, a camouflage for rigging by elites.
That globalization produces winners and losers is a no-brainer. What has so far been underestimated is the angst of the marginalized and alienated voters among the losing segment. It is that angst which the intelligent politician taps into for political advantage. Taking advantage of something like public anger for short-term gain to seek political power for a larger good is one thing, quite another if that angst is used to unravel a society and country and to facilitate uncertainty and turbulence.
What is that trend and, if it is so, the process called? For want of a better term, populism, which is on the rise globally. Why? There must be several explanations. In order to outline the ‘Setting’ for this book, I will confine myself to only a few.
Populism provides a vehicle, at one level, to secure power quickly. This vehicle is not powered and driven by intellectual rigour and careful analysis of facts and trends. Nor is there any attempt to sift facts from fiction, to distinguish between objective reality and contrived narratives.
In a limited sort of way, social media has changed the texture of politics; revolutionized the processes of communications and simplified and dumbed down serious discourse. More seriously, it has also provided a platform to hurl invectives, hatred and divisiveness.
Participating in a meeting on ‘Next Generation Democracy’ of the Club de Madrid in Dili, Timor Leste, one of the world’s newest nations, from 30–31 July 2017, I gained several interesting insights. Some clearly merit mentio
n.
There was an agreement among us participants that the global swing of the pendulum is such that it must necessarily be much more sensitive to the voice of the marginalized and dispossessed, the poor. A very relevant point that emerged from our discussion was that the poor of today are very different; they have access to information, which gives them empowerment. It is their access to social media that has unleashed a new politics.
Traditional democratic governance, on the other hand, has been handicapped by disillusionment borne of inequalities produced by globalization, and the absence of genuine icons and heroes who can speak for and advocate the virtues of liberal democracy. The youth, in particular, are sceptical about politics. It is this cynicism which led one of the leaders, an ex-prime minister from South Asia to stress the need for civic education and to reform the three ‘P’s: Politics, Politicians and Political Parties. 2 Elections now are regrettably beginning to work like processes designed to choose masters rather than public servants. Is it any surprise, therefore, that sections of voters who feel left out now express themselves with such clarity and vengeance?
Equally, the Brexit and Trump phenomenon have demonstrated that such angst that expresses itself across party and ideological lines, can produce a geographical demographic divide, and that the angry continue to provide a support base to maverick governance. In the case of Trump, this support base has remained by and large relatively stable, if not seen a steady rise in 2018 as compared to 2017, 3 his failure on or as per traditional governance norms notwithstanding.
A leader who anchors his/her appeal on populist sentiment or angst invariably does well in the short term but produces devastating consequences in the medium to long term. Because institutions are stronger and more resilient in the ‘advanced’ world and less so in the poorer developing countries, a leader indulging in populist politics makes a greater contribution to arresting and derailing economic development that is so necessary for the welfare of people. Short-term populism is the worst enemy of long-term development. This lesson does not appear to have been learnt even by the systems that are normally associated with more mature governance.
The so-called Western liberal democratic order received a rude wake-up call with Brexit and election of Trump. In some respects, the trailer for this movie actually did a test-run in India in May 2014, when the political party that had been in power for most of the seven decades of India’s existence as an independent country, including the last decade, found itself completely eclipsed at the polls. While India has made impressive strides, post Modi’s spectacular victory in 2014, the prospects for the UK, post-Brexit, are gloomy. The jury is still out on what the outcome will be of the turbulence unleashed by Trump’s election as the forty-fifth President of the United States.
Rewind to May 2014. Unlike Brexit and Trump, in some respects, I did not get May 2014 entirely right. No one had any doubt that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, would by far be the single-largest party in the Lok Sabha and also that he would be the next prime minister of India. He set the narrative, and sustained and dominated it entirely. The previous ten years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition were widely perceived as being characterized by policy paralysis, corruption and a diarchy of political control and power.
As noted by Sanjaya Baru, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s media advisor during 2004-2008, ‘. . . the Indian National Congress is a party of our national movement. It’s a more than 150-year-old political party. And this is the political party that made India a free country. And I think it’s done enormous damage to Indian democracy that this national party, that this historic party, has been taken over by a family, so that it’s just a mother, daughter, son-in-law, son, that become the key figures of the party. Everybody else is secondary, including the prime minister.’ 4
To put it mildly, a powerful stench enveloped the political system during the UPA rule. An amendment to the Congress party constitution in 2004 transferred political power effectively from the prime minister to the party president, Sonia Gandhi. Ten years of UPA rule witnessed many positives, especially in the first five years. The narrative was, however, vitiated in the second half of the second term, particularly from 2011 to the end of 2013. Policy paralysis, corruption and toxicity helped produce the backdrop for the meteoric rise of Narendra Modi.
Like many others, I didn’t get it entirely wrong either. I underestimated the scale of the Modi victory. Back-of-the-envelope electoral arithmetic is a favourite pastime for most students of Indian politics. A Modi victory and a BJP government was a foregone conclusion. To achieve the 272 seats required for majority in the Lok Sabha, some of us thought the BJP would comfortably win more than 240 seats, and require the help of one or two, if not more, smaller coalition partners to cobble together the requisite 272 seats. Arun Jaitley 5 said many times that this was not about arithmetic but chemistry. 6 The people of India had made up their mind. The BJP got 282 and an absolute majority on its own, for the first time in 37 years. 7
We were not wrong in predicting an increase in the BJP’s vote share. We underestimated the collapse of the Congress Party. But why did analysts and commentators get it wrong? Quite simply, they were lazy and out of sync with the popular sentiment at the grass-roots level. More seriously, they allowed their judgment to be influenced and shaped by a media that had ceased to be independent, a media that was now a ‘participant’ in the political process. The media in New Delhi reflected the ideological biases and preferences of Lutyens’ New Delhi. An otherwise educated, now retired, member of the Indian Foreign Service and subsequently member of the Congress party was so bold as to suggest that Narendra Modi could not ever become the prime minister of India, and invited him instead to sell tea at the All India Congress Committee session, clearly referring to the now PM’s humble origins. 8
A retired senior colleague from the foreign service, in a column, wrote that every opinion poll had declared that Hillary Clinton would be the likely winner, amongst other predictions. 9 Any person making such a glaring mistake in terms of a prediction should normally go into an extended phase of hibernation or retire. CNN and the New York Times, in particular, disgraced themselves. The attempt to make amends from the publisher/editor, through their publication’s editorial calls, soon after the election of the forty-fifth President of the United States, was insipid and only added to the growing erosion of the NYT’s credibility. 10 The intellectual icons of our times from the US, Europe and Asia joined Fareed Zakaria on his show on CNN to pontificate on American democracy. They failed to realize how ridiculous they looked and sounded. The US electoral system, such as it is with all its flaws, elected Trump as the forty-fifth POTUS. An analysis of how and why this happened and how this might play out would have been far more relevant then and now. That is what provides the ‘Setting’ for delusional politics, in this, my second book.
Introduction
‘Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.’
—Eleanor Roosevelt
These words, popularly ascribed to the first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, more than half a century ago, are unexceptionable as an aspirational exhortation to raise the intellectual level of public discourse. Even though their copyright has never been established beyond doubt, it is widely believed that Roosevelt wrote these lines and was given credit for this wisdom.
She went on to make a seminal contribution to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in 1948.
There is, however, a small problem: Who are the so-called ‘great minds’ and who will define or characterize them as such? A high IQ, it has been established, does not guarantee success. However, the prospects for failure are high in the absence of EQ or emotional intelligence.
‘Greatness’ of mind cannot be inherited. It must be nurtured and demonstrated. Some famous people, after having tasted success, became delusional. A brilliant m
ind can in fact be delusional, ever so often.
An additional problem: Many of these delusional characters are thrown up by democratic systems. Hitler is a case in point. There are hundreds of other examples.
This is why it is all the more important to focus instead on ‘ideas’. A good idea needs to be pursued, and when its time comes, it can have a profound and transformational effect.
Great minds alone don’t produce ideas that are positively beneficial. Not all ideas are of this genre. Even contrived and flawed narratives take shape in ideas, in deception and falsehood. When individuals persist in producing and perpetuating falsehoods, knowing them to be so, they are at the very least delusional and are attempting to delude others.
Once elected, leaders can mould and shape the popular narrative. If they are allowed to do so without regard to factual reality and through processes that smack of arbitrariness and unilateralism, democracy would be viewed as having facilitated their task and they come to be branded as delusional. Democracy only provides a vehicle or route for such persons to acquire power.
Why and, more importantly, how did I become interested in studying this phenomenon of ‘delusional’ decision-making, particularly in politics? In 2013, I stepped out into the open world after nearly four decades in the Indian Foreign Service. The life of a diplomat is interesting and diplomacy as a profession can also be exciting and professionally rewarding. However, decision-making in diplomacy, as indeed in most other governmental activity, takes place in a controlled environment and follows a top-down model.
If the person entrusted with the decision-making authority, usually an elected official in a democratic system, is not fully sure and confident of his environment and displays some signs of diffidence, then the established bureaucracy, the mandarins, will take over. And because the civil service is hierarchical, cautious and risk-averse, the advice to the sovereign will be couched in a status-quoist ‘no risk’ envelope. Several layers of bureaucracy will ensure that a diffident political leader will hear what he/she wants to hear: usually, that the choice(s) of not taking any action, is also a policy option which will be rationalized ex post facto by scribes is encouraged by the status-quoist bureaucracy.