Millennia before European thinkers, Gita and Arthashastra embodied tradition of realpolitik -- Henry Kissinger's book on World Order
Henry KissingerThe world according to Gita: Millennia before European thinkers, Gita and Arthashastra embodied Indian tradition of realpolitik
World order in Hindu
cosmology was governed by immutable cycles of an almost inconceivably
vast scale — millions of years long. Kingdoms would fall, and the
universe would be destroyed, but it would be re-created, and new
kingdoms would rise again. The true nature of human experience was known
only to those who endured and transcended these temporal upheavals.
The Hindu classic the
Bhagavad Gita framed these spirited tests in terms of the relationship
between morality and power. Arjuna, “overwhelmed by sorrow” on the eve
of battle at the horrors he is about to unleash, wonders what can
justify the terrible consequences of war. This is the wrong question,
Krishna rejoins. Because life is eternal and cyclical and the essence of
the universe is indestructible. Redemption will come through the
fulfillment of a preassigned duty, paired with a recognition that its
outward manifestations are illusory because “the impermanent has no
reality; reality lies in the eternal.” Arjuna, a warrior, has been
presented with a war he did not seek. He should accept the circumstances
with equanimity and fulfill his role with honor, and must strive to
kill and prevail and “should not grieve.”
While Lord Krishna’s
appeal to duty prevails and Arjuna professes himself freed from doubt,
the cataclysms of the war — described in detail in the rest of the epic —
add resonance to his earlier qualms. This central work of Hindu thought
embodied both an exhortation to war and the importance not so much of
avoiding but of transcending it. Morality was not rejected, but in any
given situation the immediate considerations were dominant, while
eternity provided a curative perspective. What some readers lauded as a
call to fearlessness in battle, Gandhi would praise as his “spiritual
dictionary.”
Against the background
of the eternal verities of a religion preaching the elusiveness of any
single earthly endeavor, the temporal ruler was in fact afforded a wide
berth for practical necessities. The pioneering exemplar of this school
was the 4th century BC minister Kautilya, credited with engineering the
rise of India’s Maurya Dynasty, which expelled Alexander the Great’s
successors from northern India and unified the subcontinent for the
first time under a single rule.
Kautilya wrote about an
India comparable in structure to Europe before the Peace of Westphalia.
He describes a collection of states potentially in permanent conflict
with each other. Like Machiavelli’s, his is an analysis of the world as
he found it; it offers a practical, not a normative, guide to action.
And its moral basis is identical with that of Richelieu, who lived
nearly two thousand years later: the state is a fragile organization,
and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on
ethical restraint.
The Arthashastra sets
out, with dispassionate clarity, a vision of how to establish and guard a
state while neutralizing, subverting, and (when opportune conditions
have been established) conquering its neighbors. The Arthashastra
encompasses a world of practical statecraft, not philosophical
disputation. For Kautilya, power was the dominant reality. It was
multidimensional, and its factors were interdependent. All elements in a
given situation were relevant, calculable, and amenable to manipulation
toward a leader’s strategic aims. Geography, finance, military
strength, diplomacy, espionage, law, agriculture, cultural traditions,
morale and popular opinion, rumors and legends, and men’s vices and
weaknesses needed to be shaped as a unit by a wise king to strengthen
and expand his realm — much as a modern orchestra conductor shapes the
instruments in his charge into a coherent tune. It was a combination of
Machiavelli and Clausewitz.
Millennia before
European thinkers translated their facts on the ground into a theory of
balance of power, the Arthashastra set out an analogous, if more
elaborate, system termed the “circle of states.” Whatever professions of
amity he might make, any ruler whose power grew significantly would
eventually find that it was in his interest to subvert his neighbor’s
realm. This was an inherent dynamic of self-preservation to which
morality was irrelevant.
What our time has
labeled covert intelligence operations were described in the
Arthashastra as an important tool. Operating in “all states of the
circle” (friends and adversaries alike) and drawn from the ranks of
“holy ascetics, wandering monks, cart-drivers, wandering minstrels,
jugglers, tramps, [and] fortune-tellers,” these agents would spread
rumors to foment discord within and between other states, subvert enemy
armies, and “destroy” the King’s opponents at opportune moments.
The Arthashastra advised
that restrained and humanitarian conduct was under most circumstances
strategically useful: a king who abused his subjects would forfeit their
support and would be vulnerable to rebellion or invasion; a conqueror
who needlessly violated a subdued people’s customs or moral
sensibilities risked catalyzing resistance.
The Arthashastra ‘s
exhaustive and matter-of-fact catalogue of the imperatives of success
led the distinguished 20th-century political theorist Max Weber to
conclude that the Arthashastra exemplified “truly radical
‘Machiavellianism’ . . . compared to it, Machiavelli’s The Prince is
harmless.” Unlike Machiavelli, Kautilya exhibits no nostalgia for the
virtues of a better age.
Whether following the
Arthashastra ‘s prescriptions or not, India reached its high-water mark
of territorial extent in the third century BC, when its revered Emperor
Asoka governed a territory comprising all of today’s India, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, and part of Afghanistan and Iran.
Excerpted
from Henry Kissinger’s book , recently published by Penguin India World
Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of
History
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