AS
India tries to carve its place in the New Global Order, its relationship
with the United States has undergone major shifts. For fifty years the
two countries regarded each other with extraordinary wariness. However,
the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the opening
of India’s economy, globalization, the revolution in information technologies,
increasing economic interdependence, India’s acquisition of nuclear weapons,
and the war on terror seem to set a new world stage upon which to reappraise
the relationship.
Early in 2004 former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
declared the two countries to be ‘natural allies’. This was a remarkable
description of a relationship that for almost five decades had been judged
to be, in Dennis Kux’s resonant phrase, ‘estranged’. On the American side,
President Bush defined the relationship as one of ‘strategic allies’.1
The announcement of the NSSP or ‘Next Steps in the Strategic Partnership’
in January 2004 was a watershed moment in India-US relations. The NSSP
opened the way for the sharing of so-called ‘dual-use’ technologies in
a variety of strategic areas including missile defence, civil nuclear,
and space cooperation and was remarkable for the fact that it came within
six years of India’s nuclear tests at Pokharan.
Anti-Americanism
as an ideology seems to be at its lowest ebb in India, even though the
Bush administration has its share of critics. But, this essay argues that
it is premature to conclude that there is a long term convergence of strategic
interests between India and the United States. While India should continue
to intensify its trade relations, it should under no circumstances compromise
on its strategic independence.
The most
important reasons for improving relations between the two countries lie
in the dynamics of migration and the changing nature of the two economies.
While during the first fifty years strategic and geopolitical imperatives
provided the main frames of reference for the often strained relations
between India and the United States, the relationship is now being driven
by increasing economic interdependence and the growing bonds of migration
and cultural interchange. Indeed, India and the United States are involved
in a relationship perhaps unique among nations. The accelerating growth
of the Indian diaspora population in the United States, together with
its relative wealth, high level of education and unique role in information
technology undoubtedly helped change perceptions on both sides.
India
and the United States historically had and continue to have very different
conceptions of the global order, determined in part by their position
in the international system. During the Cold War, the disjuncture between
the hope and reality of Indo-US relations was often widened by the pressure
of strategic imperatives. The United States wanted to enlist as many states
as possible in its war against communism, often in a formal strategic
relationship. The initiation of American military support to Pakistan
in 1954 cast an irrevocable shadow on the relationship. India viewed the
logic of American alliances as directly contravening its own interests.
The United
States for its part saw India’s policy of nonalignment as little more
than a sanctimonious cloak for interests which contradicted those of the
United States. India’s neutrality was far from neutral, as belied by the
country’s silence over the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia
in 1968. As Harold Gould perceptively wrote, the gap between the stated
claims of both countries on the one hand, and their actual interests on
the other ‘made it impossible for the United States to live up to its
moral billing in Indian eyes and conversely, for India to live up to its
moral billing in American eyes… both sides had come to the relationship
expecting too much of each other.’2
The
end of the Cold War eased the pressure on the relationship. First and
foremost, the United States became the single dominant power. One of the
irritants of Indo-US relations, India’s perceived closeness to the Soviet
Union, simply ceased to be a factor. Arguably, US dominance created a
win-win situation in relation to almost all countries in the world as
most nations competed to better their relationship with the United States
through formal alliances or partnerships. This was the only game in town.
This fact must be borne in mind, however, that since the United States
was ‘the only game in town’, as it were, many countries including many
of India’s strategic rivals could simultaneously feel that their relationship
with the global superpower was a privileged one. India was not the only
country currying favour with the US. But sometimes Indian policy-makers
act as if this was the case and are constantly surprised that US relations
with all countries, including India’s strategic rivals have improved.
The second-most
important change brought on by the end of the Cold War was an ideological
and a geo-economic shift that opened up new possibilities for economic
interaction between India and the United States. India slowly began to
dismantle the wall of protection it had built around its command economy.
With that, India began a slow but sure integration into the world economic
order. This, in turn, led India to jettison the instinctive anti-Americanism
that had accompanied its autarkic economic policies.
During the
last decades of the 20th century, India’s conception of national interest
underwent a profound change. It became premised on greater economic engagement
with the world, giving greater centrality to trade and investment, thus
allowing for new avenues of cooperation. This shift prepared the way for
cooperation across an astonishing range of activities, including defence
and law enforcement.
Finally,
the relationship moved beyond a preoccupation with two issues. For the
United States, India became much more than simply a nuclear non-proliferation
problem. For India, the relationship with the United States was no longer
viewed primarily through the lens of the India-Pakistan relationship.
Partnership with the United States became a means to achieve a certain
status in the world order. For a while the broadening canvas of the relationship
seemed to liberate it from the litmus test that had always hamstrung this
relationship: US support for Pakistan. But the United States’ offer in
December to sell Pakistan high technology weaponry, and India’s reaction
to that offer was a reminder that the shadow of that litmus test still
hovers over the relationship.
But
despite these predictable expressions of consternation at US support for
Pakistan, it seemed like India had finally made its peace with America.
Certainly the climate for this was propitious. Swapan Dasgupta, for instance,
in an article in The Telegraph ‘On Another Plane’ (3 Dec. 2004)
argues that ‘India will be better served by carving out our own definite
space within Pax Americana.’ This position seemed to be representative
of the mainstream opinion in India.
But this
increasingly prominent position in Indian policy circles is politically
naive, strategically inept and based on an astonishing historical amnesia
that does grave injustice to India’s strategic independence. Swapan Dasgupta
is right to point out that a knee-jerk anti-Americanism would be a serious
mistake and a symptom of a kind of political adolescence. Anti-Americanism
in India is currently the lowest it has ever been, despite consternations
about the Bush administration. This opens up the political space to treat
each American proposal – whether it is the selling of arms or the NSSP
– on its own terms. But a careful consideration of these proposals would
suggest that America seeks to bind us more than we seem to be willing
to acknowledge.
If
the American’s are courting us today it is not because we lined up to
be part of Pax Americana. On the contrary, it is precisely because we
have displayed the capacity for independent action in a range of areas.
Unfortunately, there is a dictum in international politics that suggests
that bad behaviour is rewarded. As Machiavelli suggested long time ago,
if you behave badly and contravene norms, you can use that as a bargaining
chip to gain concessions from others. The other side has to give you concessions
to get you to behave ‘normally’. On the other hand, if you are already
rushing to conform to the norms laid down by the other party, why should
they give you any concessions?
It is often
said that India needs the United States more than the United States needs
India. Given the asymmetries of power and technology this is, in a certain
sense, true. On the other hand, this asymmetry is also a result of the
fact that by and large India can be counted on to be a good citizen of
the international community. There need be no special concessions given
to it, to get it to stop exporting nuclear technology for instance. On
the other hand, a state like Pakistan that for years actively subverted
two of the United States’ biggest foreign policy objectives – non proliferation
and terrorism – continued to be rewarded. One can argue that this was
because of Pakistan’s peculiar position as a frontline state in the Cold
War, and then its indispensability in the war on terror.
But
this only underscores the point that even powerful states, despite asymmetries
of power, can come to be dependent on weaker states. I am not suggesting
that India behave like Pakistan, but it should recognize that its capacity
for independent action is what will get US attention, not its unthinking
attempts to ingratiate itself with Pax Americana. Whatever one may think
of the morality and wisdom of India’s nuclear tests, they were examples
of independent action that forced the US to come around. And our emerging
economic power, like China’s, will give us clout that we would be foolish
to fritter away for a little political attention and a few arms sops.
It has become
fashionable to deride Indian anti-Americanism in foreign policy as a product
of a combination of hypocritical idealism, socialist piety, misplaced
moralism and a hangover from the Cold War. Nothing could be further from
the truth. Our stance towards America was always rooted in our strategic
interests. Our anti-Americanism in foreign policy came from the following
sources. First, for much of the last fifty years we sincerely believed
that America was closer to our strategic rivals. Second, that Pax Americana
would allow no room for independent action. Every nation (with the exception
of Israel) from Japan to Europe that has struck a formal alliance with
the United States has given up its capacity for independent military action.
Third, the
application of American power overseas, outside the context of Europe
and Japan, has generally been an unmitigated disaster, bringing numerous
countries to humanitarian and political ruin. Fourth, it is too easy to
forget that there was a period in American foreign policy when any hint
of ideological deviance would invite covert operations from the CIA. American
intervention in the political economy from the Middle East to Chile, from
the war on drugs to military presence in South East Asia, has had immeasurably
deleterious social consequences. One does not need to be a supporter of
Indira Gandhi to acknowledge that the ghosts of Allende loomed genuinely
large in the seventies. Finally, American alliance patterns were not based
on principle but opportunism on a global scale. If in international politics
there are no permanent friends or enemies but only permanent interests,
why over-commit to a power that itself seems to believe this dictum?
The
suspicion of America could sometimes take a pathological form and slip
over into a distrust of commercial and trade relations. And sometimes
our relationship with the Soviet Union was blind to the effects of the
application of its power overseas. But the independence from an alliance
with America allowed to us to maintain the nuclear option, to undertake
one of the more successful cases of armed intervention in East Pakistan,
and did the salutary service of keeping American troops out of Indian
soil. Our historical amnesia has propagated this bizarre myth that Indian
foreign policy was subservient till the BJP gave its manhood during the
mid-nineties. What the BJP did was made possible by the careful nurturing
of independent options to which all our governments have been committed.
Anyone who knows anything about 1971 will be hard pressed to make that
argument that we have more capacity for independent action now than we
did two decades ago.
But then
independence is not a sentiment that the pro-American lobby seems to understand.
There is much euphoria in India about the NSSP being a framework for a
special relationship between India and the US. The United States has itself
propagated the idea that it is doing India a special favour by entering
into a strategic partnership of this kind, which has few precedents. Certainly
the NSSP represents a watershed compared to the status of Indo-US relations
over the last two decades. But this is golden chain that is more likely
to bind India than give it a strategic advantage.
Progress
in NSSP will depend upon India acceding to US conditions on technology
exports from India and may even pave the way for a monitoring of our nuclear
programme that is more draconian than anything the IAEA would muster.
We might have independently good reasons to curb our nuclear activity,
but we should do it for our own reasons rather than America’s. Second,
the so-called concessions that India is getting in dual-use technologies
do not put it even at par with Chinese access to these technologies. If
China can get access to many of these technologies without an NSSP framework,
what is so significant about the NSSP? It appears to be more a framework
that allows the US to represent India’s ordinary entitlements as special
concession.
Third, it
remains to be seen whether Washington will in fact accept India as a full-fledged
nuclear power. Given the fact that non-proliferation is used by the US
as a stick with which to beat regimes it does not like, it is unlikely
that it will admit India easily. For that would be to undermine US credibility
with other regimes and in contravention of US domestic law.
What
is this ‘space’ within Pax Americana that the likes of Dasgupta are talking
about? Pax Americana has the peculiar feature that it is a global empire.
Every part of the world must be, through formal alliance or informal understanding,
adapted to American interests. It is not a vision that will acknowledge
that emerging powers should be given a space within their regions for
autonomous action. America is a power that will intercede to abridge the
natural economic, geographic and cultural relations that characterize
different regions. Will India be allowed room for autonomous action vis-à-vis
West Asia? Will the US keep out of the Indian Ocean as a way of giving
‘space’ to India? The space that we yearn for does not exist, except as
a sign of subordination. It is no accident that the United States has
a difficult time accommodating China and India, the only two major powers
that demand their ‘space’ – the rest of the world is more or less locked
into some kind of formal alliance structure with the US.
Current
geopolitics also belies the pro-US euphoria. The US is in the enviable
position that it can improve relations with all countries simultaneously.
In that sense, everyone is carving out a place in Pax Americana. But precisely
for this reason we are deluding ourselves if we think that we can acquire
a special place. Any place we do get in Pax Americana will be like our
place in a reformed UN. We will be invited to the table after all the
cache associated with the invitation has disappeared. It’s a place without
much meaning and certainly no special privileges.
All this
is not to suggest that we should not buy arms from the US or bring the
relationship closer. There is every case for strengthening our economic
relationship. But as the US-China relationship shows, economic interdependence
is quite compatible with at least some strategic independence and tension.
The United States may even have a legitimate role in mediating conflict
in South Asia. But all of these should not be taken to entail that there
is an over-determined convergence of strategic interests. Many of us owe
a good deal of our intellectual and moral capital to American ideals.
We are not anti-American in that sense. But wariness of American state
power is not a sign of anti-Americanism or moralism. It has, and should
be a counsel of prudence.
America’s
placating both India and Pakistan with offers of weapons sales is the
21st century version of imperial divide and rule. It is not a way of calming
conflict in the region; it is a way of ensuring that India and Pakistan
always remain edgy vis-à-vis each other. This edginess will make us both
scramble to America. Pakistan’s biggest tragedy is that dependence on
America distorted its civil society, strengthened its military and irremediably
warped its state structure. Both India and Pakistan would be better off
if the Americans genuinely kept out of the region. Pakistan would certainly
be forced to confront its infirmities as a state more honestly.
Rather than
inviting America in we should work to give our region the ability to repossess
its own history. Has Indian nationalism sunk so low that it would readily
abdicate its independence for a place in Pax Americana? We are in the
position of maintaining our strategic and political independence, and
it is naively subservient to think otherwise.
Footnotes:
1.
On this term see, Francine Frankel and Harry Harding, The India China
Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know, Columbia University
Press, New York, 2004, p. 9.
2.
Harold Gould, ‘US-India Relations: The Early Phase,’ in Sumit Ganguly
and Harold Gould (eds.), The Hope and the Reality. Westview Press,
Boulder, 1992, p. 19.
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