Interesting piece from the Wire.
Indicative of India’s current attitude toward engaging internationally with the law and legal sector.
The best and brightest leave the country leaving a moribund system unable and / or unwilling to function on the global stage.
Here’s the introduction to the piece….
Another factor could be the now-dominant view in New Delhi that international legal considerations matter little to South Asia’s hegemon. The few murmurs of protest against the legality of military intervention in the Maldives were, indeed, dismissed in cavalier fashion.
Scholars and diplomats may differ on the merits of this government’s South Asia policy, and whether it has served the national interest. But the neglect of international law in New Delhi is not a partisan problem – both the Congress and the BJP, as well as their attendant bureaucracies, have largely relegated the subject to a secondary concern of foreign policy. The step-treatment that the legal and treaties (L&T) division in the MEA has had to quietly suffer for decades is only a minor indication of an institutional malaise.
Broadly stated, there are two approaches to international law among pundits, politicos or practitioners in New Delhi: one that views it as “rules for losers”, i.e., weak and powerless states, to obey; and another, that argues states to be in any case not bound by international law. To varying degrees, both claims are correct. The international rule book is waved most often at smaller nations, while the major powers have, in some way or another, bent, twisted or broken them over the years. Take the forthcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un, for instance. The prospect of shaking hands with the US president has lifted the political fortunes of the North Korean leader although the regime of sanctions on his country remains in place. The United States has, by reaching out to North Korea, weakened the political foundations of an international legal apparatus that it worked hard to create. The end of North Korea’s pariah status is not necessarily a bad outcome, just a reflection of the reality that international law often serves at the pleasure of the great powers.
The second argument – that states are not bound by international law – is not so much a serious claim as it is a rhetorical device employed by those who believe sovereign nations act and do as they please. The American scholar Louis Henkin famously observed that “almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time”. India is almost certainly one such nation. But even as India complied scrupulously with its obligations, the debate over international law itself has become moribund, limiting the ways in which the country’s foreign policy can benefit, and indeed, re-orient itself through creative and strategic uses of legal principles.
From warfare to ‘lawfare’
That international law is as much a tool of state policy as its political, military or economic power is no revelation. The term ‘lawfare’ has gained currency in recent years, but it has always been the practice of states to use seemingly impartial legal instruments to further their own interests. In the 19th century, Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck masterfully convinced European states that his provocative attempts at German “unification” were actually in defence of the Congress of Vienna treaties. In 1928, France, Germany and the United States signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact that “outlawed” war. The treaty is often dismissed for its failure to prevent World War II, but it did provide the political ammunition to prosecute the aggressors at Nuremberg and Tokyo.
Full article…. https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-is-lagging-behind-in-the-study-and-use-of-international-law
