:: Nihal Singh

Pak can tilt Indo-US ties only to a point

S. Nihal Singh

July.02 : With the advent of the Obama administration, a debate rages on whether America loves India — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had made amply clear to George W. Bush Indians’ love for him. Two kinds of doubt have surfaced: the United States has downgraded India in its order of priorities and the old policy of hyphenation of New Delhi with Islamabad is back in vogue in Washington.

These Indian fears reveal the country’s tunnel vision and propensity to forget the lessons of the past. Any unbiased observer would have perceived that given the problems left over by the Bush administration — two wars and economic meltdown — India was a low priority for the Obama administration for good reasons.

President Obama had made the war in Afghanistan his own, in contrast to Iraq, and lavished much attention and money on Pakistan because it was considered essential to the outcome of the war. Second, as has been mournfully clear over the decades, Washington’s penchant for seeking short-term advantage plays havoc with its own longer-term goals.

It has been so in the arming of Pakistan during the Cold War, Washington turning a blind eye to Islamabad’s covert efforts to build the bomb, helping Pakistan’s spy agency with sticky fingers, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in routing arms and money for the anti-Soviet campaign and, until recently, giving Pakistan the benefit of the doubt in dealing with the Taliban. It is thus little surprise that the US should now treble its assistance to Islamabad proverbially to win the hearts and minds of the people.

That said, India continues to display a sense of insecurity in its pecking order in Washington. During her campaign for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, now the secretary of state, had said that China was the most important relationship of her country. So it is on many counts, given the Chinese economy, its breakneck military modernisation and the economic and financial cards Beijing has up its sleeve.

It is equally true that India remains an important country for the US for strategic, economic and ideological reasons. True, those in positions of power in the Obama administration were less than enthusiastic about the terms of the seminal Indo-US nuclear treaty. But there is no indication that Washington will renege on it although it will continue to pursue its non-proliferation goals. Indeed, one of the justifications former President Bush had given for the treaty was that it would help the cause of non-proliferation.

But India must accept the fact that Pakistan has been phenomenally successful in using its geographical location, religious affiliation and willingness to fight for American causes to extract money and arms from Washington. That Pakistan has traditionally used the American largesse for arming itself against India is no secret in Washington — in Krishna Menon’s memorable phrase, guns have not been invented that can fire only in one direction. US compulsions flow from its overriding priority to vanquish the Al Qaeda and the "bad Taliban"; so if Islamabad chooses to strengthen its war machine against India in the process of ostensibly serving American aims, so be it.

That the Obama administration has been less than fully focused on its relations with India should be taken as a compliment. India has reached a measure of political stability, particularly after the last general election, its neighbours and many other parts of the developing world can envy. And it has been clear even during the Bush administration that India must fight its own battle against terrorists, infiltrating from Pakistan or the home-grown variety, on its soil. The US will offer New Delhi help in intelligence and in tracking tainted money but the American goal remains the safeguarding of its citizens and country from terrorists.

Apart from implementing the nuclear treaty — a process stretching to several years — there are wide areas of Indo-US cooperation. The defence relationship is growing exponentially, areas of world trade and finance are fertile soil and India has much to contribute to the phenomenal growth in information technology, biotechnology and stem cell research. The India-Pakistan relationship will remain troubled and US approaches to Islamabad will impinge upon it, but New Delhi must learn to mitigate the harmful effects without crying blue murder each time.

Despite Mr Bush’s democracy crusade, the concept has proved a weak reed as a basis of relations. Washington’s alliances with dictators in various garbs around the world are no secret. America is famously subject to the competing pulls of Wilsonian and Jacksonian precepts embodying idealism and realpolitik.

Most US presidents have taken bits of both until Mr Bush tipped the scale in favour of giving itself the right of pre-emptive strikes against any nation of its choice.

The Obama administration is more inclined to use soft power and is guided by the compulsions of realpolitik. The only goal that does not change, whatever the stripe of the presidency, is Washington’s desire to remain the greatest.

The moral of the story is that India must hone its skills to fight for the country’s interests while cultivating good relations with the pre-eminent power and a host of other competing powers seeking a place in the sun. New Delhi’s interests do not always converge with Washington’s, but that should not be a cause for concern. Inter-state relations have become a more complex power play, with each country seeking to maximise its room for manoeuvre.

Apart from strategic and economic reasons, Indo-US relations are bound to grow in view of the nature of people-to-people relations, the increasingly influential Indian-American community and the enmeshing of millions of Indian families in the lives and fortunes of their kinsmen and women who have made their home in the US. The flow of Indian students to American universities remains undiminished.

The Clinton visit next month will set a marker in the Obama administration’s interaction with India, but it would be foolish to exaggerate its importance. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s expected call at the White House in the autumn will be a better touchstone for defining the texture of the relationship with President Obama.