India’s Vice President M Hamid Ansari released a book by Hardeep Puri titled ‘Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos’ at a well-attended function September 7 in New Delhi.
Addressing a packed house after releasing the book ‘Perilous Interventions,’ Vice President lauded the book, saying that, “To the initiated, the title of Ambassador Hardeep Puri’s timely and well written book reveals much!”
Like Mr Puri, the author of the book, Mr Ansari has been a distinguished diplomat and served as Puri’s predecessor at the United Nations, where the book is based.
Mr Puri, who played a critical role behind the scenes during his tenure as rotational president of the United Nations Security Council in 2011 and in 2012, helping to prevent an all out war in Syria, has written an insider’s account of the deliberations on the Levant at the world’s diplomatic high table.
“India has been a Non-Permanent Member of the UN Security Council only on seven occasions since 1946, the last being the term 2011-2012. For this reason alone, Ambassador Hardeep Puri’s book has uniqueness for being ‘an insider’s account,’” the Vice President said, which “adds to our understanding of the inner mechanisms of an institution that has at times been called a modern day ‘Star Chamber.’”
Ambassador Puri “candidly states that the purpose of writing the book is : ‘to tell the outside world how decision-making took place within the Security Council in 2011-12 in relation to the momentous developments in Libya and Syria.’ He leaves the reader in no doubt about his depiction of the title and defines a perilous intervention as ‘whimsical and reflexive decision making, and about taking decisions with far reaching consequences without thinking through their consequences. It is about the urge to intervene, about the ‘use of force’ and about ‘all means necessary’, often to achieve a ‘regime change’ even when that is not the explicitly stated objective,’” the Vice President pointed out.
He goes on to add that ‘interventionist mindsets invariably seek destabilisation to settle scores, with or without the use of force.’
Taking forward Ambassador Puri’s critique of the functioning of the United Nations, the Indian Vice-President said, “By coincidence, not design, both of our last two terms on the Security Council witnessed major international crises. Both therefore gave India the opportunity to witness at close quarters the actual, rather than formal manner in which the UN system works on matters pertaining to international peace and security. Both also show the validity of historian William Lingenbach’s observation, made in 1900, justifying intervention in relation to the European state system since, as he put it, ‘states are not independent of each other; that they are not politically equal; and that their so-called independence is constantly called in question.’”
Among the little known incidents of Ambassador Puri’s tenure as head of the UN Security Council was that, within three days of assuming the presidency of the council in August 2011, Puri was able to produce a “presidential statement” at the 6,598th meeting of the council. Since the Syrian unrest began five years ago, the statement remains, even today, the only viable basis for peace in that war-ravaged country.
There was, however, a problem. Lebanon, then an elected member of the council, did not agree with Mr Puri’s presidential statement. A compromise was then worked out. Mr Puri would make his statement, which would officially make it a UN peace call. Then the Lebanese would take the floor and disagree with the presidential statement.
Ambassador Puri writes in his book, “Since the dissociation statement was made after the [presidential] statement had been adopted by the Council, the Lebanese statement was [merely] entered into the record” of the council’s proceedings.
It is a testament to Mr Puri’s enormous diplomatic skills that, after burning a great deal of midnight oil in closed door, backroom consultations, he managed to produce such a statement, which remains valid to this day. It is also a telling example of how the UN is made to work when there is a will, and willingness to compromise.
Taking off from the book and turning his comments to India’s aspiration to join the UN Security Council as a permanent member Mr Ansari said, “We know that the Security Council is reflective of the world of 1945 and of the dominance of the victorious powers in WWII. It is only partially reflective of the generality of the UN membership today in terms of numbers and opinions. Is there then a lesson for the political and security aspect of the work?”
In this context, there is a strong case for endorsing the view that ‘a theory of legitimate power is inescapably a theory of democracy in the interlocking processes and structures of the global system.’
“In my view, therefore, the need of the hour is to induce confidence through removal of structural inequalities, through democratic functioning, and through a genuinely common agenda. Only then would sovereign states come forth to the United Nations, in the words of the Preamble of the Charter, as ‘a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations’ in the attainment of common ends,” the Vice President concluded.
India’s Finance minister Arun Jaitley, an old friend of the author from their time together at Delhi University, spoke more in a personal vein on the occasion, saying, “”A good Sikh, when he loses, he behaves like a winner and when he wins, he behaves like God. That sums up Hardeep’s personality,” he said as the packed audience in the ‘Diwan-e-Aam’ hall erupted in loud applause.
A panel discussion after the launch of ‘Perilous Interventions’ saw an animated discussion on some issues raised by Ambassador Puri in his book. Among those on the panel were Sujata Mehta, Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, Martin Ney, the Ambassador of Germany to India, Manoj Joshi, Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and Urvashi Aneja, Associate Professor, Jindal School of International Affairs & Fellow, ORF.