Will India, US shed past complexes
1999 BUSINESS LINE
November 1, 1999
B. Raman
NEW DELHI and Washington have embarked on the preparatory work for the expected visit by the US President, Mr. Bill Clinton, to India early next spring. According to as-yet-unconfirmed indications, he may spend four days in India - two in New Delhi and two outside, possibly including Mumbai and Chennai. He may go to Bangladesh for a day. A visit to Pakistan is doubtful unless, in the meantime, the military regime announces a definite time-table for the restoration of democracy and meets the US concerns on nuclear non-proliferation, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden issues. Otherwise, Mr. Clinton going to Pakistan may prove politically controversial in the US. If he decides not to go to Pakistan, Mr. Clinton might go to Vietnam from Bangladesh. A visit to Sri Lanka is reportedly not on the cards.
There is expectation in New Delhi and Washington that the visit would break the psychological barrier, which has dogged the bilateral relations since India's independence. If shared values alone could bring two nations together, India and the US should have been the closest of partners in regional and global affairs, but this is not so.
A psychological barrier resulting from complexes among policy-makers and opinion-moulders, a lack of shared interests and concerns, and inadequate understanding of each other's policy-motivation has stood in the way of better relations, despite the shared values.
Complexes in India arose from the US' perceived softness towards Pakistan, its alleged failure to appreciate and act on India's concerns regarding China's nuclear and missile co- operation with Pakistan and the perception that in its policy formulation in the region, Washington attaches greater importance to China than to India.
Bilateral ties also became a victim of perceptions in New Delhi that while Washington encouraged China's aspirations to emerge as a major regional power, it thwarted similar Indian aspirations, by denying it advanced technologies, by preventing Russia and other countries from giving it comparable technologies, by refusing to accept it as a nuclear weapon state and so on.
The post-Cold War emergence of the US as the sole superpower added to these complexes. Policy-making and -influencing circles in India have always tended to look for ulterior motives and hidden agendas in American policies and actions and this has been aggravated by the US' emergence as the sole superpower.
One tends to forget in India that while the US' interest in India only dates from the Second World War, there has been a certain fascination for China, its culture and civilisation not only in the US official circles and elite, but also in civil society as a whole from the days of the KMT Government, if not even earlier.
This fascination has been further strengthened by China's remarkable post-1979 economic achievements and by what the US views as the balance and maturity shown by Beijing in its external policy-making, despite its periodic sabre-rattling with Taiwan.
India has thus far failed to evoke a similar interest and fascination in the US. Americans are a pragmatic, result- oriented people, allergic to hype and unpredictability. The US has not consciously sought the sole superpower status. Power flows to a nation that performs, and the US has been the most performing of all nations in all spheres of human activity.
If power and status in Asia seem to be flowing more towards China than towards India today, it is because post-1979 China has been excelling in whatever activity it has been taking up - economic, scientific and technological, sports and so on. Even after eight years of our giving a new orientation to our economic and external policies, India's image not only in the US, but also elsewhere is still that of a nation that talks more and performs less.
If we think that we can change this image just by flaunting our nuclear and missile capabilities, we are sadly mistaken. We can do so only by projecting India - through performance and not spins - as a nation that means business in economic matters, that has the right priorities in its development agenda, that is sensitive and responsive to the views and concerns of others, and that is predictable and balanced in its policies and actions.
Actions such as the delaying of the Enron project by politicising it through baseless pre-election allegations; telling the US that a nuclear test was unlikely till the strategic defence review was completed and then surprising it with the test; immature gloating over deceiving the US; springing upon a surprised world a draft, unimplementable (for financial reasons) nuclear doctrine without worrying about its adding to the concerns of Pakistan and other countries; the extreme touchiness shown by India towards even good-intentioned suggestions from outside (even from non-governmental circles) on the Kashmir issue; the unfortunate controversy over the Pope's visit and so on definitely do not help create this new image of India.
India has to accept the reality that the US has important interests in China and Pakistan just as it has in India. It wants to help China make a success of its open-door economic policy, even while nudging it towards political liberalisation. It seeks to help Pakistan come out of the extremist quagmire in which it has been caught because of its active association with the US in Afghanistan while, at the same time, ensuring that a rejuvenated Pakistan does not add to India's concerns.
It would be unrealistic on our part to expect the US to dilute its focus on these objectives just for the sake of closer relations with India. However, it would be reasonable for us to expect that in pursuing these objectives, Indian interests are not jeopardised by the US. Past Indo-US relations were devoid of external warmth, but not of significant internal content. Unfortunately, the public has little knowledge of this. Right from India's Independence, the security bureaucracies of the two countries, with the approval of the political leaderships, co-operated closely, away from the glare of publicity, in monitoring possible threats to India's security from external attempts to export the armed communist revolution.
After this threat ceased in 1979, this co-operation was extended to counter-terrorism. The capability which the Indian security bureaucracy has built up for electronic monitoring of external threats would not have been possible but for generous and discreet US assistance. In India, one tends to harp on the US' softness towards Pakistan, its reluctance to declare Pakistan a state- sponsorer of international terrorism and to act against its clandestine nuclear and missile deals with China and so on. But how many of us highlight the determined manner in which Mr. George Bush, as President, implemented the sanctions under the Pressler Amendment, which to a great extent contributed to Pakistan's present economic difficulties, or Mr. Clinton pressuring the Nawaz Sharif Government to sack in 1993 Lt. Gen. Javed Nasir, Director-General of the ISI, and many other senior officers for their suspected links with terrorist organisations involved in India and elsewhere.
The perceived Indian proximity to the erstwhile USSR during the Cold War only partly explains the complexes in the US vis-a-vis India. In the past, American political leaders and bureaucrats never felt comfortable dealing with their counterparts in India. They had the impression of dealing with an incomprehensible, suspecting, sulking mind. They were also peeved at the way India saw conspiracies behind everything the US said or did and kept criticising it at every conceivable opportunity, while rarely acknowledging the US assistance to India on many occasions - whether it be the wheat supplies in the 1950s and the 1960s or the security assistance which, though not as spectacular as that to Pakistan, was not devoid of significance.
As Mr. Clinton's visit approaches, analysts, opinion- moulders and the spin-masters in both the bureaucracies would work overtime finding new labels for Indo-US relations - strategic partnership, new security architecture and so on. These are concepts which defy understanding; colourful expressions without real meaning.
What is important is that the two countries shed their past complexes and mind-sets and bring to bear a new co-operative approach on their bilateral relations, with a better understanding of each other's policy-motivation, compulsions and constraints and with a greater willingness than in the past to accommodate each other's concerns and interests subject to national constraints.
Once this is achieved, the nuts and bolts of the relationship on matters such as nuclear non-proliferation, attitude to Pakistan, counter-terrorism co-operation, etc., would automatically fall into place.
(The author is former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India.) |
