COMMENTARY India seeking a
friend, not a patron By Ehsan
Ahrari
As President George W Bush arrived
in India on Wednesday, US-India ties were
undergoing a process of considerable contemplation
and discourse, both in Washington and New Delhi.
One has to recall another time - 1972, when
president Richard
Nixon visited the People's
Republic of China - to find a precedent for
similar high interest and curiosity.
However, a chief difference is that China
was not then a rising global power, while India
now is. As such, its friendship and strategic
partnership appears important to the US. However,
one also has to be wary of the emergence of one or
more variables inside India or the United States
that may put these ties under severe strain.
One constant variable is that the United
States might set a standard of friendship that
India will not fulfill for one simple reason: it
wants a relationship based on comity and mutual
respect. More to the point, India is seeking a
friend, not a patron.
The civil nuclear
cooperation agreement that was signed between the
two countries in July is being increasingly viewed
as yet another litmus test of India's independence
as well as of the willingness of the Bush
administration to be able to live with a partner
that will say yes to the US only when it behooves
its own national interests. No one expects
Washington to behave differently on such matters.
The principal issue of interest regarding
the US-India ties currently is whether these two
large countries are ready to accept each other as
partners and allies. There is the temptation to
suggest that as democracies they are natural
allies. As such, they are likely to gravitate
toward each other. But those who get schmaltzy
about the commonality of democracy as a source of
affinity between nation-states need to be reminded
that both were democratic while, more often than
not, they found themselves on opposite sides of
major issues of global concern during the Cold
War.
The chief litmus test, then, of a
"friendly" nation for the United States was that
it should be ready to toe the US line on most, if
not all, matters of contention and competition
between the two superpowers. India, on its part,
was also entirely too preoccupied about judging
its own "friends" in the light of how friendly
they were toward India in its rivalry with
Pakistan. The United States consistently flunked
that test as far as India was concerned.
The post-Cold War era (1991-August 2001)
did not require either the US or India to
reconfigure their strategic perception of each
other. India was in dire need of a major
interlocutor, since its major ally, the Soviet
Union, had imploded. However, the US maintained a
haughty and glowering attitude toward India
regarding its consistently pro-Soviet posture
during the Cold War.
India's entry into
the world of nuclear powers marked the beginning
of an end to that sour old attitude in Washington,
even though between 1998 (when India exploded its
nuclear bomb) and 2001, the United States tried to
persuade India to unravel its nuclear-weapons
program through a series of "strategic dialogues".
The September 11, 2001, attacks on the
United States turned out to be the major reason
for a major paradigm shift. After those attacks,
the US developed a palpably sympathetic attitude
toward how India depicted itself: a victim of
Pakistan-sponsored, religiously motivated
terrorism in Indian-administered Kashmir. Even
before those attacks, president Bill Clinton
played a crucial role during the Kargil crisis
(when India identified infiltration on its side of
the Line of Control in Kashmir in May 1999) by
persuading Pakistan to end the crisis by
redeploying its troops from its strategic
positions high up in the Himalayas.
The
Kargil war was not going well for India. There
were also intelligence reports that the Indian
leadership was contemplating the use of tactical
nukes. A general understanding in Washington was
that the Pakistani side might not limit itself to
a tactical nuclear response if India were to
unsheathe its nuclear option. The sheer likelihood
of a nuclear war warranted imminent preventive
actions. Clinton decided to put enormous pressure
on Pakistan, largely because that country could
not afford the prolongation of the Kargil war,
while India could. Besides, since Pakistan was an
aggressor in this particular instance, it was also
seen as the party that had to proffer major
concessions.
The Clinton maneuvering
during the Kargil crisis created an ideal
environment for a new US-India strategic
partnership. Washington had passed the
long-standing test of "friendship" by insisting
that India's bitter rival back down.
About
the same time, the government of India also
appeared to have been finally persuaded by the
chief Indian hawk, K Subramanyam - who had been
convincingly making a case for years about the
evolution of a strategic culture in the country
that would assign primacy to military and nuclear
power. The world powers would regard India as an
important player, he argued, once it acquired
credible minimum nuclear deterrence.
After
May 1998, there emerged nuclear India, ready to do
business in the corridors of the "big dogs". The
fact that India's economy was also making
sustained progress - thanks to the economic
reforms implemented in the early 1990s - also
boosted its prestige as a rising power. The
growing information revolution of the 1990s found
India at the cutting edge of knowledge. The
globalized nature of international
entrepreneurship also helped its case as a cheap
source of outsourced jobs. Its highly qualified
technicians were eager to produce quality work for
a lot less money than their American counterparts.
In 2006, India has become much more than
just a beneficiary of the global outsourcing that
has been fleeing from the industrial world across
its borders. Today, India has also become a place
where the best corporations of America and Europe
are also going to open centers of research and
development. India's best schools of hard science
and business are only too keen to provide
ceaseless brain power for those centers.
The preceding developments only added
impetus to a well-calculated US desire to
establish a strategic partnership with India. The
director of the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, Andy Marshall - that legendary character
who made his life's ambition to keep the US at the
top of the heap of nation-states in the realm of
military power - has been entirely focused on
India as well as China. Except, in the case of
India, Marshall's thinking seems to be that
developing a strategic partnership is the right
decision for the US.
One has to examine
the civil nuclear cooperation agreement signed
between Washington and New Delhi with the
aforementioned developments as a backdrop. From
the US side, that agreement is a major development
in its strategic interactions with India as well
as with China. The Bush administration sees it as
enhancing the status of India as a major player
with China. Any measure complicating China's
strategic landscape is a welcome thing in
Washington. From India's side, the agreement is
also important for similar reasons. In addition,
since India so heavily emphasizes its acquisition
of world-class technology in its emergence as a
major military power, who else, save the United
States, can supply the kind of superior technology
that it needs?
But nothing in big-power
politics is free of cost. The price that India has
to pay is to separate its civilian and military
nuclear facilities and provide access to the
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors of
its civilian ones. Once credible separation of
those facilities is made, the Bush administration
is expected to ask the Nuclear Suppliers Group -
which is in charge of controlling the global
proliferation of sensitive materials and
technology - for an exception for India. Such an
exception would enable that country to gain access
to sensitive materials and technology, despite the
fact that it is not a signatory of the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, the
mere issue of separation of military and civilian
nuclear facilities is politically explosive inside
that country because its critics have already
started to argue that India's minimum credible
nuclear deterrence is in jeopardy. Foreigners,
they say, would determine how many military
nuclear facilities India should have. The
spuriousness of such a charge is obvious. However,
on matters of national security, debates in India
can get just as petty and silly as they are inside
the United States.
The communist coalition
partners of the present Congress party-led
government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are
already venting their anti-American feelings by
arguing that the US-India deal violates the
latter's sovereignty.
Meanwhile inside the
United States, the non-proliferation community is
champing at the bit about using this agreement
eventually to put pressure on India to reduce the
number of its military nuclear facilities, or even
put an end to its nuclear-weapons program. At the
same time, it is being vociferous about making an
exception for India with the Nuclear Suppliers
Group. This double standard, it argues, weakens
the tough moral stand the Bush administration has
taken against Iran and North Korea regarding their
nuclear programs.
As Bush visits India,
the chances are that the nuclear deal may not be
finalized. The issue is increasingly couched in
the language of India's independence in conducting
its foreign policy. And on the issue of
independence, no subject is as sacrosanct in the
Indian political arena as its nuclear power, the
acquisition of which once pushed it close to the
ranks of "pariah states" in the US parlance.
As a truly rising power, India will not
allow any limitations or constraints on its
ability to develop many civilian and military
nuclear facilities, especially coming from the
United States. For India, being the master of its
domain on all issues of its national interest is
part of its legacy. It is not likely to give that
up to the US patron under any guise, or through
the use of any euphemisms.
Ehsan
Ahrari is a CEO of Strategic Paradigms, an
Alexandria, Virginia-based defense consultancy. He
can be reached ateahrari@cox.netorstratparadigms@yahoo.com.
His columns appear regularly in Asia Times
Online. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing
.)
