India doubting its US 'strategic
partnership' By Sultan
Shahin
NEW DELHI - Clearing the way for close
military ties, resumed sale of defense equipment and
millions of dollars in direct economic assistance,
United States President George W Bush has lifted the
sanctions imposed against Pakistan following the
bloodless military coup led by now-President General
Pervez Musharraf in October 1999. The move comes a week
after US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in
Islamabad that Pakistan's status was being elevated to
that of a major non-NATO ally (MNNA). Sanctions related
to Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998 have already been
lifted.
As a result, India is questioning its
own "strategic partnership" with Washington, and many
influential Indians are calling US rhetoric hollow and
saying it confers no benefits. Some influential Indians
even are talking of economic warfare with the US
"enemy".
India is deeply worried, in view of
Pakistan's past belligerence toward New Delhi whenever
it was able to establish close military and economic
ties with the US. The Sikh-majority Indian state of
Punjab and Muslim-majority Kashmir became problem spots
for India during the period of close Pakistan-US
military ties in the 1980s when they launched a joint
campaign to send Soviet troops packing from Afghanistan.
Now the US and Pakistan have launched what some in India
consider to be another joint jihad, this time against
the same jihadis whom they had urged, trained and
financed to fight the Soviet infidels in the 1980s. At
that time they were referentially called mujahideen, but
now the joint jihad has forged even closer ties between
Washington and Islamabad.
"There could be
problems if Pakistan uses its MMNA tag to put up a price
vis-a-vis Indo-Pak issues," a senior official in India's
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) told journalists. MEA
officials are indicating that New Delhi will formalize
its position on Islamabad's MNNA status only after
getting to understand its "behavior pattern" in the
aftermath of the US decision.
India's experience
in the context of Pakistan's Cold War-era alliance with
the West under the Baghdad Pact - a defense pact
involving Middle Eastern countries from 1954 until 1979
- and its successors, the Central Treaty Organization
and the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was
no different. Pakistan tried to get help from its allies
for its war against India in 1965 and 1971, but without
success. Citing these experiences, India's ministry of
external affairs sources said: "The MNNA status is an
enabling provision aimed at facilitating defense
supplies. We have to see what actually gets delivered."
Soon after Powell's announcement, Robert Blake,
deputy to US ambassador David C Mulford, had met senior
MEA officials, US embassy sources said. Blake is
believed to have told officials that Washington
considered India as its strategic partner and was
committed to further cementing Indo-US ties.
Yet, a lot of confusion and uncertainty has
crept into the steadily growing US-India relationship.
The fact that India was kept completely in the dark
about the latest lifting of sanctions against Pakistan
has exposed what New Delhi considers to be the
hollowness of claims that India-US ties are strategic in
nature.
Busy in their re-election campaign,
Indian leaders are trying to show that they are not
worried about Pakistan's major non-NATO ally (MNNA)
status. They have even rejected with disdain the
suggestion that the US also was willing to consider a
MNNA status for India, if it applied for it.
But
the more India thinks, the more it gets worried.
Pakistan's MNNA status cannot be simply dismissed as of
no great consequence. The worry is, however, not just
about how Pakistan will respond and how this will affect
India's relations with the US. The entire gamut of
India's ties with the West, even the policy framework
regarding globalization and liberalization of its
economy, is coming under scrutiny. The very feasibility
of the transfer of Western technology to India - the
primary reason why India had decided to open up its
economy in the early 1990s - is becoming questionable.
Hardly any worthwhile technology transfers have taken
place as of yet or are likely to take place in the
foreseeable future, despite all the promises and sweet
words about so-called strategic ties.
One reason
this is cause for serious concern for those espousing
pro-globalization policies in the last few years is that
from all indications, the governing Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) is likely to increase its tally of seats in
the parliament this spring. If this happens, the BJP
will grow stronger in the governing alliance and its
ideological mentor, the Hindu fundamentalist Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its extended family, called
the Sangh Parivar, will come to have a greater say in
policy formulation.
The RSS-linked Swadeshi
Jagran Manch, with its pronounced anti-globalization
views, is waiting in the wings to run India's economy
and foreign relations, something that will not suit the
US. The manch believes that the West has been able to
maintain its economic pre-eminence by teaching false
economics to the developing countries. While some can
dismiss leftist and socialist anti-globalization
campaigns as of no consequence, they cannot treat the
Hindu Right in present-day India with the same contempt.
So the future of US-India ties will depend
largely on the election results. RSS-supported
economists believe that the world has entered the era of
economic warfare with the developed nations and that by
kowtowing to the US, India is merely prolonging its
status as a developing country. This is also the view of
India's president, missile scientist Dr Abdul Kalam,
whom the RSS sponsored for the post of the president,
even though he is a Muslim. The ideas expressed in his
books - about economic warfare - are very popular in the
country.
In a recent write-up, Sangh Parivar's
favorite economist, Bharat Jhunjhunwala, praises Kalam:
"President Kalam has placed the objective of India
becoming developed by 2020. The Western countries have
misled us into believing that we can improve our
conditions only by receiving technology and capital from
them. A healthy young man will stop playing football if
he is told everyday that he is not capable of playing
the game. Similarly, the West has told us that we cannot
become equal to them and we have meekly accepted their
talk. The West has no roadmap for the developing
countries becoming "equal" even, say, after hundred
years. Their strategy is to keep us locked into the
"developing" mode. Dr Kalam has done well to break this
hypnosis and proclaim that our objective is to become
developed by 2020."
Whether or not Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister
Lal Krishan Advani fully understand the implications of
Kalam's 2020 vision, they are crisscrossing the country
in the present election campaign propagating his
message. "India 2020" has become a BJP slogan. In his
book, India 2020: A Vision for the New
Millennium, Kalam says, "It is not just that the
Indian nuclear tests are resented. If tomorrow Indian
software export achieves a sizable share in the global
market, we should expect different types of reactions.
"Similarly, if India becomes a large exporter of
agro-products, various new issues would be raised.
Developed countries are setting up non-tariff barriers
to trade to deny us the opportunities to reach the
developed status. Even a simple analysis of many of
these global transactions indicates a much deeper fact:
The continuous process of domination over others by a
few nations. India has to be prepared to face such
selectively targeted actions by more powerful players.
What appears to be emerging is new kind of warfare."
Jhunjhunwala, comments in his column in the
pro-government newspaper The Pioneer, considered close
to the RSS: "The West has been able to maintain its
economic pre-eminence by teaching false economics to us.
It has taught that developing countries should increase
their exports so that their production comes up to
global standards. But increase in exports also means we
export more of our resources. We pack our water and soil
into the basmati rice and send it for consumption by
foreign people. The farmer is being told that selling
his water and soil is the route to prosperity. We are
exporting larger quantities of our resources at lower
prices.
"It never dawns upon us that it is not
necessary to export in large quantities to attain global
efficiency. Exports in small quantities are sufficient
for the purpose, just as one reception is sufficient to
establish the beauty of the new bride. The correct route
is to produce efficiently, reduce the quantity and
increase the price of our exports and consume more of it
ourselves. But we have been taught that eating coarse
rice ourselves and exporting basmati rice will beget us
prosperity. Truly, we should make cartels of our exports
like iron ore, tea, coffee and jute and raise their
prices like OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries] has done for oil. We should
increase our imports, not exports."
This is
consistent with Kalam's observation that since 1990s the
"world has graduated into economic warfare".
Jhunjhunwala continues: "There is need to clearly
understand our role in maintaining the strength of the
developed countries. The World Bank has pointed out in
its Global Development Finance report that the
developing countries have become net exporters of
capital. Developing countries are buying US Treasury
Bills and depositing their money in Western banks in
order to hold their forex reserves. Each year they are
collectively sending about US$100 billion to the
developed countries through this route. Another $100
billion is going through illegal remittances.
"The developed countries are receiving about
$200 billion a year through these routes and are making
$150 billion worth of FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] in
the developing countries. They are net recipients of
capital of about $50 billion. They are using their money
sent by us to buy our goods. The Reserve Bank of India
buys US Treasury bills and Indian businessmen send their
incomes abroad through hawala [illegal channels].
The US uses the money to buy our cloth and basmati rice,
which we sell cheap in order to increase our export
volumes as mentioned earlier.
"At the center of
this unholy cycle - of we providing money to our enemy -
is our continued buying of US Treasury bills or the
dollar-denominated US securities. The US is running a
trade deficit of $500 billion a year. The strength of
the US and the dollar exists only as long as it can
persuade the rest of the world to provide it with
capital inflows to this extent. India and China are
willing accessories to this US dominance by providing it
with money through purchase of US Treasury bills and the
like. If we were to stop sending this money to the US,
the US would not be able to meet its import bills and
the dollar would have to collapse - taking the US
economic strength down along with it. That would lead to
a totally different world scenario."
This is
hardly the language of strategic partnership with the
West that the BJP and the main opposition Congress party
have been speaking of in the past decade. Indeed phrases
like "economic warfare" and expressions like "enemy" for
the West sound ominous coming from the pens of eminent
personalities who have no reason to mouth empty rhetoric
in the fashion of rabble-rousing politicians. These are
deeply thought-out positions taken by responsible
thinkers who have the good of India and the developing
world at heart.
Even the original architect of
India's globalization policy, the former Congress prime
minister P V Narasimha Rao (1991-96) is alarmed at the
turn of events. In a recent two-part article in the
influential newspaper The Hindu, the octogenarian says:
"In point of fact, not much that can be called
meaningful has happened after the Cold War to
demonstrate that a new era has dawned. One feels a
little alarmed about why the expected golden period has
not arrived and why the possibility of its appearance is
becoming dimmer by the day ? If we are to sustain
democracy and development round the globe, there is no
alternative to a genuinely multilateral,
non-discriminatory, and development-oriented trading
system."
India's hopes go up in smoke
India's dream that Bush's "next steps in the strategic
partnership with India" would lead to easier access to
US high technology has been dashed. The US placed severe
restrictions on transfer of dual-use technologies, which
have both civilian and military applications, to India
following its 1974 nuclear tests. But In mid-January
2004, Bush and Vajpayee announced the upgrading of the
existing "Glide Path" relationship to "Next Steps". Both
leaders heralded it as a new era of cooperation.
Curiously, they refused to provide any details. Two
months later, as Powell visited India this month, he
brought nothing worthwhile with him.
A senior US
official stated that "India would receive no substantial
technology unless the US was satisfied that India had
tightened export controls." He further insinuated that
Indian organizations had re-exported US technology to
former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime, but
didn't provide any evidence to support his allegations.
Another senior US official stated that US cooperation in
space technology would be "limited to humanitarian and
scientific issues ... and would not have anything to do
with electronic components or space launch vehicles or
high-resolution imagery".
Analyst Ravi
Visvesvaraya Prasad comments in an article in the
Hindustan Times titled "America's two-timing": "It's
hypocritical for the US to deny much-needed technology
to the peaceful space program of a fellow democracy and
a key ally in the 'War on Terror', when it has long
countenanced transfer of dual-purpose technologies by US
corporations to a totalitarian nuclear power like China.
China's People's Liberation Army obtained satellite and
missile technologies - such as encrypted
radiation-hardened integrated circuits from Loral,
post-boost vehicle technologies from Lockheed, telemetry
systems from Motorola and nose-cone technologies from
Hughes. Washington had denied permission for export of
these very technologies to India following its Pokhran
nuclear tests in May 1998.
The greatest
disappointment to India has of course been in what is
now known as the A Q Khan affair. US Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz revealed that Washington
acquiesced in Musharraf's pardon of Khan in return for
greater Pakistani cooperation in crushing the Taliban
and al-Qaeda. It was after this revelation that Indian
intelligence and defense officials stopped wondering why
the US had not put enough pressure on Pakistan to call
off its test firing of the Shaheen II nuclear missile on
March 9, even though it appeared so inconsistent with
the mood of bonhomie prevailing in the
sub-continent on account of the ongoing peace process
and several successful confidence-building measures,
including the resumption of cricketing ties after 14
years.
The US has about two months to change its
current outlook. Whichever government comes to power in
India following the forthcoming elections, it will
insist that Washington clarify the meaning of terms like
"strategic partnership", see that Pakistan does not
resume its roguish behavior vis-a-vis India and transfer
not only dual-use technologies, but even the much-needed
defense, space, nuclear and missile technologies to
India. The alternative will be strengthening the hands
of those who want to take India down a different path.
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