India should not put all its eggs in the basket of the USA

[ajtr]

Beyond Obama ​

India should not put all its eggs in the basket of the US president, says N.V.Subramanian.

London, 5 November 2010: In continuation of the Wednesday commentary, "Summit & after", and especially in the backdrop of Barack Obama's "defeat" in the mid-term elections, India has to make calculated changes in its engagements with the United States. It is improbable that a prime minister as timid as Manmohan Singh will put into effect the "calculated changes" suggested by this writer, among them being to engage the US over and above the American president, encompassing the Congress, Wall Street and big business, NGOs, special interest groups, opinion-makers, the media, and so forth, but the collapsing presidency of Barack Obama gives little other choice.
Whatever India had to gain from the US in the short term has been delivered by the previous American president, George W.Bush. The dynamics of Indo-US relations under Bush are too well-known to be repeated but references to them have been made in the alluded Wednesday commentary. The problem with Obama is that America is going down in his charge, and he has no clue as to what to do about it. The mid-term voting is indicative of the hopelessness generated by his presidency, and India should not consider itself immune from that sinking feeling.
Such a decisive vote against his policies, or the absence of them, should have compelled Obama to reflect on his presidential performance, and to then embrace change. But Obama is so risk-averse that he is unwilling to change, and even to consider that option. He is so immobilized by failure and the fear that attends it that he cannot look ahead much less plan for the future. For example, his observations about his forthcoming India visit are so full of rhetoric, so absent of deliverables, and so defeatist, that it has been pre-determined and hard wired for failure.
Obama has willy-nilly sunk India's hopes for a permanent membership in the UN Security Council anytime soon, saying the issue is too difficult and complicated. He has reiterated his opposition to outsourcing and he has indicated there will be no movement on the removal of certain Indian strategic establishments from the entities' list. So what is he coming for?
Some Indian strategists have argued not to look at Indo-US relations in transactional terms. But it is hard to imagine how else partnerships between two states ought to be considered and measured. Certainly, India and the US are not "natural allies" as, say, America is of the UK or even Western Europe, which it rushed to protect from a recent Al-Qaeda planned attack originating in Pakistan's FATA. On the other hand, and it hardly needs reminding, the US intimated zilch about David Coleman Headley's links to 26/11 until it was over, and that too after his role in a plot to avenge the Danish Prophet's cartoons came to light.
The transactional nature of US ties with its non-UK, non-European allies is not restricted to India. Decades ago, it was willing to sell Taiwanese interests down the river for closer relations with China, until an alarmed Taiwan lobbied hard and tirelessly with the Congress and other institutions. There is also the fact that American presidential powers are in decline relative to Congress (and the US Supreme Court) since Richard Nixon went down with Watergate. George W.Bush or rather politicians around him like Dick Cheney tried to fashion an imperial presidency for him but failed. Barack Obama had the mandate for change but flunked for a variety of reasons, torpedoing the American presidency.
It is after examining those reasons that a change in course for Indo-US relations has been suggested in the first paragraph. Quite apart from Obama's personal failures (and there are many), there is the fact that certain sectional interests are too deeply entrenched in the American system to suffer easy dislodgement even from a wilfully powerful president, which the incumbent is not. To cut a long story short, India has to move to make alliances with Wall Street and big business (while protecting its core and sovereign economic interests), Congress and so on, both to give positive impetus and depth to ties with the US, and to protect its peaceful rise from China. For instance, it is a failure of Indian PR that while Obama rages against outsourcing to Indian companies, the fact that nearly all manufacturing disastrously has relocated to China scarcely finds mention, and China has powered ahead to challenge the US precisely because of its manufacturing clout. It is no argument, or nothing that the Indians should accept, that Americans are more visibly angry at Indian call centres because they interact so often with them than they are enraged about products they buy which are mostly but less obtrusively made in China.
But as said in the beginning of this piece, it is unclear if a timid PM like Manmohan Singh will dare to go above Barack Obama's head to engage with America. But if he cannot, others after him have to. And this is not something entirely new for India, although the circumstances were different before. Even though the former US president, George W.Bush, brought about the Indo-US nuclear deal, India also lobbied hard and purposively with other branches of the US establishment and with important enclaves of civil society to enable its bipartisan passage (and which Obama as senator opposed). In the present case, Obama is not proving friendly enough for India (although he is not capriciously unfriendly either; he is merely choked up and too daunted to make new initiatives), so others have strenuously to be engaged with. It may be that when India changes the US environment increasingly favourably for itself through its own efforts, Barack Obama may come more agreeably and willingly on board as a friend of India.
But the point is this. India must build ties with the US regardless of the person of the American president. This might appear a revolutionary suggestion but it is simply logical. This is the only way Indo-US relations will sustain and be insulated from the whims/ predilections/ ideologies/ personal inadequacies of whoever occupies the White House. If India wants a "natural alliance" with the US for its own strategic advancement and for its peaceful rise, it must have to begin looking beyond Barack Obama.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, The Public Affairs Magazine- Newsinsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi). Email: envysub@gmail.com.

 

[ajtr]

Summit & after ​

Indo-US relations are taking a life of their own, with no help from the Indian and American political leaderships, argues N.V.Subramanian.

London, 3 November 2010: Barring the unseemly haste with which India has signed the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) with the IAEA, because it contradicts the new Indian law on nuclear liability, and could pose future problems, Delhi has acted with generic sobriety in regard to the upcoming Barack Obama state visit. There is no evidence of the breathless excitement, even though this writer is sitting thousands of miles away, that accompanied the visit of the previous US president, George W.Bush, even if largely in official circles. This is to the good, and it will shortly be explained why.
America is in decline. The decline very likely began, as some would like to argue, when the US lost a strategic rival in the Soviet Union. In terms of Soviet power relative to that of the US during the Cold War, China is still not there, although it is fast trying to catch up. It could be argued with some justification that George W.Bush speeded up the inevitable decline of the US, with one justified war in Afghanistan and a grossly unjustified conflict in Iraq, against a background of American economic ruin brought about by decades of profligate living. It has been Obama's unfortunate fate to inherit this disastrous legacy, and for personal reasons or otherwise, he has not been able to cope with the situation. The situation is by no means easy. But in politics, you cannot fail.
So, basically, it is an unsuccessful US president who is coming to India as opposed to George Bush who never confronted issues of American decline squarely and could, therefore, appear braver than he probably felt. Politics is a cruel game where success means all. The fact that Obama is losing traction with the American people, including with those who voted for him, has coloured perceptions about him before his visit to India and would dog him as well during his longish stay in the country.
This is despite the fact that he has a very understanding and compassionate opposite number in the person of Manmohan Singh. It is an open secret that the Indian prime minister got along brilliantly with George Bush. Part of the reason for their successful chemistry was that in their own way both were naive about issues of foreign and strategic affairs and it helped that Bush was a bold, big-picture president. Obama, on the other hand, although having perhaps tremendous intellectual compatibility with Manmohan Singh, who he looks upon as a sort of economic guru, nevertheless is a cautious plodder, his persevering but basically unattractive caution worsened by the speed, momentum and growing irreversibility of the American decline.
So with Obama short of big ideas to engage India, and obsessed with policy action to return America to growth, prosperity and greatness, and with Manmohan Singh being unable to produce deliverables of his own to propel Indo-US relations further, it is a given that the Diwali visit of the American president will be a tame affair. This writer was nearly the first to analyze so and no developments have intervened to change his mind. But the sobriety of the Indian response to the Obama visit so far does deserve closer scrutiny, because it may conceal a quiet but transformative change in the manner India deals with the big powers. At any rate, this is what this writer hopes this shows.
Call it a legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru's strategic autonomy thinking or the great power mindset incubated with wilful military action by Indira Gandhi, but India reflexively is independent in its dealings with the world. Besides Nehru and Indira Gandhi, and for that matter P.V.Narasimha Rao and A.B.Vajpayee, there are surely non-primeministerial causes and reasons for this autonomy or independence of strategic thought, located in India's culture, society, predominant religion, and so forth. But the fact of the matter remains that this independence (the very soul of Indian democracy, in another part of it) is too deeply ingrained to be altered by momentary changes in political leadership thinking.
For example, there cannot be a more pro-US prime minister in recent times than Manmohan Singh. (Although Vajpayee called the US a "natural ally" of India, he did not believe in his own phrase very much!) But the Indo-US nuclear deal he signed with George Bush was more pro-India than it was originally conceived to be, precisely because of the opposition put up by the BJP, the Left, the nuclear scientific community and strategic analysts, not excluding this writer. There was also resistance in the Indian bureaucracy to giving too much leeway to the Americans, again as a result of the deeply-thought philosophic notion of strategic autonomy/ independence. All of this combined with renewed vigour (besides the dramatically resurrected ghost of Bhopal) to make any concession to foreign nuclear suppliers, chiefly American ones, nearly impossible in the recently-approved nuclear-liability law.
Which is why this writer is sceptical about the rush to sign the CSC. It can only provide cosmetic satisfaction to the visiting president Obama, because when the details are worked out, it would be difficult to reconcile the CSC with the liability law. Manmohan Singh was never a powerful prime minister, but he had some space for strategic action (because of the need to divide the political/ administrative responsibilities with Sonia Gandhi) in his first term. In his second term, as events of the past few months have shown, he is even less capable of having his way than before, because of several confusing developments (which have been sought to be explained by this writer in earlier pieces), but the single-biggest change has been forced by the anticipated accession of Rahul Gandhi to the Indian throne, so to speak. In others words (and this has been said before by this writer), both Manmohan Singh and Barack Obama are proceeding to a summit as spent political leaders, and, therefore, not much should be expected.
But the current characteristics of the two countries they represent cannot be more different, and they trigger their own dynamics. A spent US president is leading a spent United States, or at least an America which is nearly there. On the other hand, there is a weak Indian prime minister leading a rising, resurgent India. So there are forces that are bound to be unleashed during the Manmohan Singh-Obama summit that reflect the differing and perhaps altered positions of the two countries, much as they have been demanding attention for weeks before the American president's arrival. For example, the bold stand of India on the David Coleman Headley scandal, the refusal to get Indo-US defence relations closer than they presently are, which prevent interoperability, joint deployment in the US's foreign wars, etc, the mounting pressure to remove some Indian strategic establishments from the entities' list, the growing clamour to enable India to be a permanent UN Security Council member, and so on. To be sure, successes on specific Indian demands from the US are still far and presently look unreachable. But they have taken on the tenor and sweep of national sovereign expectations, with a life of their own, which no Indian government can overlook or ignore. Surely, these expectations will channelize into national energies to propel India's rise faster, more assuredly, and with greater risks taken.
Indeed, the upcoming Barack Obama-Manmohan Singh meeting and subsequent India-US engagements will be less about a dialogue of respective leaderships and more about a jousting of the two countries. And with a US in decline and India rising, the play will be both unequal and interesting. The advice from this faraway writer is, go, grab the front seat. This is a new beginning for India if we have the sense to realize and appreciate it.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, The Public Affairs Magazine- Newsinsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi). Email: envysub@gmail.com.

 

[indian navy]

well something is cooking behind the door

 

[Kinetic]

Typical leftist view. He should be aware that India has way better cooperation with Russia than US. We have good relation with France, UK, Japan, South Africa and Brazil as well.

 

[TATA]

1. Obama a friend of pak and china can't be a friend of India.

2. US don't support India for UNSC and high-tech transfer ban is only partially off.

3. Obama or US don't allow even a match box to sell or purchased from Iran but they are providing weapons and aid to pakistan India's sworn enemy.

4. Obama personally harming India by spreading false fear and propaganda against India among american people that India is there rival for future.

5. Obama is also hiked cost for our IT companies.

6. For Obama/US life and property of Indians does not matter.

7. Obama is a wolf under the skin of a sheep but we have a very foolish watchdog (MMS) who is allowing that wolf to target innocent sheeps.

 

[sivadreams]

6. For Obama/US life and property of Indians does not matter.

7. Obama is a wolf under the skin of a sheep but we have a very foolish watchdog (MMS) who is allowing that wolf to target innocent sheeps.

I agree with all the points 1-5 except the last two.

Point no 6: I do not know the facts so would you like to be specific on this. I am not saying i do not agree but it shows my ignorance on the matter.

Point no 7: I would like to disagree on this. Its a paradigm shift US is undergoing vis a vis India is concern. I am not a supporter of Congress or any party being critic of all politicians.

Actually, all the big ticket sales as part of the US-India deals are all much debated already and has been our incapability to develop our technologies in TIME which led to these business deals and not the PMs fond of American goodies. One might argue why American if we have other choices. I see two reasons. One we do need to accept the quality is good. I did not say better. Two, there is a change in geo politics at this point and if we dont strike the chord now, somebody else will. its the onus on us to take the step forward. Its not good to keep all the eggs in the same basket. This sums it all.

Moreover, we Indians dream of an American dream. But hesitate to engage with them. Lets start the process but take guard against the risks which other countries had gone thru vis-a-vis USA.

If you can give alternate ways of engaging USA them it will be a nice discussion. I am looking forward for a discussion instead of mud slinging which is usually a norm here.

 

[Kinetic]

TATA

Though I don't like Obama and agree with you in many aspects but not fully. Let me put some other sides of the views as well.

1. Obama a friend of pak and china can't be a friend of India.

Is there any reason behind that? Are you talking about military aid to Pakistan? Than on the other hand he has intensified drone attacks and pressure on Pakistan as well. China?!!

2. US don't support India for UNSC and high-tech transfer ban is only partially off.

Agreed. I mentioned it earlier many times.

3. Obama or US don't allow even a match box to sell or purchased from Iran but they are providing weapons and aid to pakistan India's sworn enemy.

Its not just India but no other country sell major weapons to Iran, even Russia halted S-300 sell to Iran. USA is the only superpower, you should know that.

4. Obama personally harming India by spreading false fear and propaganda against India among american people that India is there rival for future.

Thats not true I think he just wanted to cheer them up.

5. Obama is also hiked cost for our IT companies.

He did it for US interest, we are blaming him for that. If we had anything in our hand in this regard we should do it other than just blaming him.

6. For Obama/US life and property of Indians does not matter.

Does t matter for us? Do we care about American life or property until it doesn't harm us??? Anyone else? Russians? Israeli? Every country think about themselves only.

7. Obama is a wolf under the skin of a sheep but we have a very foolish watchdog (MMS) who is allowing that wolf to target innocent sheeps.

Wrong. MMS or we the Indians are not that innocent.

 

[Markus]

I wanted the Indian government to send Obama back home empty handed but unfortunately thats not the case.

Its pretty clear by now that Obama has come to India just to prove a point to his audience back home that he is doing something about outsourcing and bringing more jobs into America.

Enough of this entertaining, time to dispatch him off!

Pakistan is so lucky that he did not visit their country.

 

[Kinetic]

I wanted the Indian government to send Obama back home empty handed but unfortunately thats not the case.

Its pretty clear by now that Obama has come to India just to prove a point to his audience back home that he is doing something about outsourcing and bringing more jobs into America.

Enough of this entertaining, time to dispatch him off!

So you just want to gain from others by not giving anything?

Pakistan is so lucky that he did not visit their country.

But still Pakistan tried every way to bring him to their country.

 

[!!craft!!]

1. Obama a friend of pak and china can't be a friend of India.

2. US don't support India for UNSC and high-tech transfer ban is only partially off.

3. Obama or US don't allow even a match box to sell or purchased from Iran but they are providing weapons and aid to pakistan India's sworn enemy.

4. Obama personally harming India by spreading false fear and propaganda against India among american people that India is there rival for future.

5. Obama is also hiked cost for our IT companies.

6. For Obama/US life and property of Indians does not matter.

7. Obama is a wolf under the skin of a sheep but we have a very foolish watchdog (MMS) who is allowing that wolf to target innocent sheeps.

come on bro give him some slack.. Taliban was the core propaganda of his government before election.. and i really dont blame him when taliban ran with their pants down to Pakistan when he came into power . now regarding Pakistan Obama will not go against Pakistan unless they are doing their job.. unless he wants to get really pulverized in his next election..

 

[!!craft!!]

I wanted the Indian government to send Obama back home empty handed but unfortunately thats not the case.

Its pretty clear by now that Obama has come to India just to prove a point to his audience back home that he is doing something about outsourcing and bringing more jobs into America.

Enough of this entertaining, time to dispatch him off!

Pakistan is so lucky that he did not visit their country.

first we cannot get the permanent UNSC seat without their support,
Second have you realized the amount of sanction they have on us. before our pokhran test they were totally supporting us with tech in the lca project . and you may realize the amount delay when they put the sanctions..

 

[Markus]

So you just want to gain from others by not giving anything?



But still Pakistan tried every way to bring him to their country.

I hope you realize what you are talking.

From Day 1, the only thing that we hear on TV from Obama's mouth is the no. of jobs that he is brining into America.

Let me put it very bluntly --> It has to be give and take. If Obama expects Indian military orders, then he has to do what India wants and I am sure Indian PM must have had told him in detail when they met.

If still US is only selective in her dealings in this region, then Mr. Obama is really not welcome here. The Europeans are very much capable of providing military systems and many other industrial equipment that US can sell.

 

[sathya]

india also should push for something that it ll be a gain for itself economically
need not be a high tech item, may be some thing which india can offer..