Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Lal Bahadur Shastri, anyone?

Just over at Stephen Walt's blog, where I hadn't been for a while. On Dec. 10 he wrote a post asking readers to nominate foreign policy makers of integrity. In order to look at the comments I had to create (yet another) account on ForeignPolicy.com. (What is with those people? Every time you go there they have another sign-in hurdle.) Anyway, I created the account and looked at the comments. The most interesting nomination? Lal Bahadur Shastri, India's second prime minister. I don't know offhand whether or not that nomination makes sense.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The hottest person in foreign policy? Hina Rabbani Khar of course: http://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/pakistan-foreign-minister/

Oh, the FP asked for "honest" not "hottest". Too bad.

Anonymous said...

If we are looking for the most honest foreign policy, I would nominate Israel. They always speak their mind, don't mince their words, even at the cost of losing support of close allies.
And in the case of Iran's nuclear program, they actually speak the mind of all the other nations in the region who don't dare to speak up: http://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/wikileaks-and-israel/

LFC said...

Andreas,
From your post linked in the second comment:

"Israel is the only country in the Middle East with an open and honest foreign policy that says exactly the same in public as behind closed doors."

That may be true w/r/t Iran's nuclear program but I doubt it's true across the board. I'm not sure I'd use the label 'dishonest' here: to say somewhat different things in public and private is pretty much standard diplomatic operating procedure. Though I will admit that the divergence betw. what Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states were saying about Iran in public and private
was very stark. (But, as you point out in the post, there are reasons for that: domestic opinion etc.)

By the way, great photos of the sunset in Malta. Makes me want to take a trip there.