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Article
Reviews
Building
a New Partnership with India, Teresita Schaeffer,
The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2002 http://www.twq.com/02spring/schaffer.pdf
Teresita
Schaffer deserves to be commended for writing a
fairly comprehensive account of the major factors
affecting Indo–US relations. She has made an
accurate diagnosis of the variables that might
affect the trajectory of this relationship and the
challenges therein. She has refrained from making
any major controversial suggestions on how US
policy (or India’s policy) should be molded to
accommodate the challenges.
At the very outset, she states
that the US-India relationship cannot be an
alliance but a selective partnership based on
realism and candor, and based on specific areas of
common interest. This is an accurate statement. An
alliance between India and the US resembling the
US-British relationship is not feasible. The
natural and perceived interests of large
civilization states often diverge. Due to the much
stronger economic, military and diplomatic power
of the US, such a relationship would only be
possible with India assuming the position of a de
facto vassal state, which its size and
civilizational memory would not allow it to do.
Though realism is foreign
affairs is an unquestionable truism, its
importance in this context needs to be
highlighted. Both states have been guilty of
ignoring this principle. India adopted moralistic
and sometimes reactionary anti-Americanism at
times. Washington has been guilty of letting
bilateral ties languish due to a distorted vision
through a cold war prism, and a lack of sufficient
understanding of and sensitivity towards India.
Important areas of cooperation remained
untapped due to Washington’s insistence on
issues like nuclear non-proliferation, though it
was simply beyond its power to undermine Indian
consensus on the issue. Subsequent acceptance of
India’s nuclear weapons by the US, and India’s
strong (and lonely) support of the AMD program
also indicates a welcome growing maturity on both
sides.
The paper goes on to list
important changes in India and Asia that affect
the relationship, and is largely accurate in these
assessments. These include the higher growth and
size of the Indian economy. The greater
interdependence between the Indian and US
economies due to higher participation of
multinationals in the Indian economy and the
strong growth of the IT sector. The decline of the
preeminence of the Congress Party and the era of
the coalition politics is also mentioned.
India requires a broader range
of relationships since it cannot depend on the
strong political support of a weakened Russia.
India is the predominant military power in the
subcontinent and the largest military power
between the Persian Gulf and East Asia, two major
centers of US military presence. The prevailing
situation opens up important areas of military
cooperation. India’s overt nuclearization has
also focused US interest in the area. It is a
welcome development that US has matured its
attitude to India’s nuclearization and India to
greater US military presence in Asia.
The paper goes on to detail the
importance of Indian economic growth, the ideology
and dynamics of major political groups, internal
economic situation, and the dynamics of India’s
interests and relations with other countries, to
the Indo US relationship.
An important assertion that
Schaffer makes is that US should accommodate India
into the club of nations that manage the nuclear
non-proliferation regime. This is a welcome
suggestion since India’s record on
non-proliferation is superior to acknowledged
Nuclear Weapon states such as China. The denial of
NWS status makes little difference to the ground
realities, and is an unnecessary irritant. The
other important policy suggestions are increased
military and economic cooperation in the Persian
Gulf and Asia Pacific region.
The paper rejects the
possibility of an anti-China axis between the US
and India as impractical, and makes reasonable and
valid arguments for the same.
The denial of critical defense
and dual use technologies by the US to India is a
major irritant in bilateral ties. The decline of
the Russian armament supplies to India opens
opportunities to expand the defense trade between
the two countries. However the paper refrains from
suggesting any changes in US policy on the issue.
Schaffer succeeds in identifying
the fundamental difference in worldview between
the two countries. While the US interest is to
consolidate its role as the world’s sole
superpower, India desires an increasingly
multipolar world with itself as a major pole. The
shadow of Indo-Pakistan tension over Kashmir looms
large over the relationship. While the diagnosis
is accurate, the prognosis is vague and unclear.
The paper suggests a “sustained and
sophisticated US diplomatic strategy” to defuse
the situation. There is very little in terms of
policy suggestion. Though the paper does suggest
that Pakistan has to be pressured to stop cross
border terrorism, it qualifies this assertion by
saying that it might be difficult to persuade
Pakistan to do the same.
Unfortunately, this single issue
has the potential to overshadow all other recent
positive developments and opportunities. The
failure (or reluctance) of the US to force
Pakistan’s hand on the terrorism issue is an
overriding factor in the minds for the Indian
establishment. This fact, coupled with the
acknowledged difference in worldviews, and the
denial of critical defense technologies suggest a
strategy of containment against India. The motives
of the US in this regard are irrelevant, since
there is a growing view among the Indian security
establishment of Pakistan as a US (and Chinese)
client state to contain India.
For Indians, the acknowledgement
of Pakistan as a “frontline ally against
terrorism” is a ludicrous ‘Alice in
Wonderland’ scenario. From India’s point of
view, the US has been guilty of disregarding
India’s legitimate concerns over terrorism, and
equating the aggressor and victim by hyphenating
its relationship with India and Pakistan.
Though the imperative for an
alliance with Pakistan can be justified and
understood as a tactical necessity, the opacity of
US intentions towards Iraq, and its inconsistent
stand towards WMD and nuclear technology transfers
vis-à-vis North Korea and China is viewed
negatively in India. The perception of India as
“Morality without Strength” is reciprocated
with a perception of the US as “Strength without
Morality”. This is an unfortunate scenario that
should be addressed by both countries at the
diplomatic level, even if overall geopolitical
policies remain unchanged.
The danger is that the success
of present US policy is predicated to an
acceptance of the status quo from India. If India
decides to disregard US concerns and assurances,
takes a proactive approach and precipitates direct
military action against Pakistan, the entire
edifice of US foreign policy in the region would
come crumbling down.
Support for the military option
has been growing steadily in India, with major
provocative events such as the Kargil War of 1999,
9/11 and the attack on the Indian Parliament in
Dec 2001. Some terrorist groups have been
displaying increasing autonomy in their actions,
sometimes defying the will of Islamabad. With
Indians losing faith in Pakistani assurances and
American guarantees, a major attack such as the
one on Parliament would make the military option
politically imperative, especially if a government
with weak nationalist credentials is in power, the
threat of nuclear escalation notwithstanding.
In
conclusion, the paper is lucidly written and an
important and comprehensive account of the gamut
of factors affecting the US and India bilateral
relationship. However its use as a policy paper is
limited since it does not venture any major
innovations in policy by either country.
Atish
Bagrodia
After the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, analysts
(mostly American, like Francis Fukuyama and Thomas
Friedman) started visualizing a pseudo-utopian
future world where all international disputes
would be resolved by the process of globalization. It was assumed that globalization’s promise of
US-facilitated free movement of products,
services, labor and capital across national
boundaries would eliminate competition for access
to resources between nations, thus removing the
primary causes of international conflict.
On the other hand, sub continental analysts were a little
more reluctant to see the end of the Cold War and
the spread of globalization as the solution to all
their regional conflicts. The events of September 11, 2001 have brought this difference
in perspectives under sharper focus.
It is in this context that the two recent articles in the
September 2002 issue of Seminar Magazine arouse
interest.
Mr. Ahmed, a Professor of International Relations at Dhaka
University, starts off by documenting the travails
of SAARC (the South Asian Association For Regional
Cooperation), the principal regional forum of
subcontinental nations.
He rightly chides SAARC for failing even to
meet regularly, much less develop into an agent of
growth and prosperity like neighboring ASEAN
(Association of South-East Asian Nations).
He examines the painful realty of life for residents of the
India-Bangladesh Border; a reality that he
contends is made worse by restricted cross-border
mobility.
In his view, the ongoing effort by the Indian government to
fence the India-Bangladesh border is clearly
misguided. Mr.
Ahmed’s case against fencing largely rests on
two points:
1)
Fencing would contribute to a worsening of the living
conditions of the border population.
2)
Fencing would not necessarily curtail weapons smuggling and
human trafficking, the two main reasons the Indian
government cites in support of fencing
Though these two points are debatable, Mr. Ahmed succeeds
in drawing attention to the contentious issue of
fencing. His
opening sentences seem to suggest that he may have
some tangible alternatives to fencing that the
governments involved could explore, if only they
talked on a regular basis under the auspices of
the semi-moribund SAARC.
But, he misses the opportunity to make a
truly compelling case against fencing by not
suggesting any concrete alternatives to it,
alternatives that would address Indian concerns
about weapons smuggling and human trafficking.
Ms. Ispahani, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, brings an American perspective to the
same issue of subcontinental dialogue, focusing on
the India-Pakistan equation.
The post-September 11, 2001 intensification of American
involvement in regional affairs, characterized
accurately by her as “dual bilateralism”, has
in her view the potential to find solutions to the
seemingly intractable problems between India and
Pakistan. She
expects a “concert of powers” consisting of
the US, China and Russia to come into play,
seeking to keep India-Pakistan relations from
undermining Great Power objectives in the region.
Analyzing the conflict in Jammu & Kashmir and the issue
of nuclear weapons, she demonstrates more than the
usual American perspicacity in discussing the
partition-era roots of the emotional distrust
between India and Pakistan.
She prescribes that American efforts should
focus on
1.
Bringing elites in both nations to the negotiation table
2.
Facilitating more people-to-people contact.
She does not address the concerns about cross-border
terrorism sponsored by Pakistan that underpin
Indian reticence toward both these moves.
Like most American analysts, she takes care
to differentiate the US-led “Global War on
Terror” from the Indian response to
Pakistan-sponsored terrorist activity on Indian
soil. Unless
this distinction is dropped, Indians will find it
hard to take American pleas for negotiations with
Pakistan seriously.
A.
Das
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