**OT** Upgrading India (Washington Times)
Amos Perlmutter
The Clinton administration has finally publicly recognized a process that has been going on for some time in South Asia: a revolutionary change in the balance of power ?the emergence of India as a nuclear power and the strategic decline of Pakistan. The president's trip was historic in the sense that it recognized the end of the Cold War in South Asia and with it the end of the special U.S.-Pakistani relationship that was directly connected to the Cold War.
India, the largest multi-ethnic, multination, multi-religious democracy has now emerged from its old anti-Americanism. India is a nuclear power and should be recognized, without lectures by the U.S. president, as a member of the Nuclear Club along with the United States. India has demonstrated stability and international responsibility. It is a true democracy, a non-expansionist state. The contrast with Pakistan is remarkable ? a military autocracy dominated by radical Islamicists in the military and dedicated to upsetting the status quo in Kashmir.
The reasons for India's success in becoming a nuclear power stem from its dangerous neighborhood. To the north is its chief rival, China, an aggressive, expansionist, authoritarian nuclear state whose political system is still in flux. The aspirations of the present Chinese leadership behoove the Indians to rely on an existential security system lest the Chinese once again, as they did in 1962, challenge India's sovereignty. India's perennial foe, Pakistan, also a nuclear state, is interventionist in its orientations. I find it extremely curious that before the trip, President Clinton described the Indian Subcontinent as, "the most dangerous place in the world today." President Kircheril Raman Narayanan of India rebuked President Clinton during the ceremony celebrating "new beginnings between India and the U.S." by blunt, straightforward talk, characterizing Mr. Clinton's description is "alarmist."
The Clinton administration continues to subordinate a realistic policy with India to its obsessive neo-Wilsonian idealism when it comes to its dogmatic policy of non-proliferation. Why spend such precious political capital achieved in the president's recent trip by continuously nagging the Indians on the issue of non-proliferation and its nuclear weapons. Why not invite India to become a member of the Nuclear Club instead. The Indian experience with the British Raj, and now the United States, makes them very sensitive to any paternalistic lecturing on the part of the great powers. India is striving to become a major power in international politics, especially in Asia. It is apprehensive of Chinese verbal threats toward Taiwan and Chinese meddling in Tibetan politics.
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