October 05, 2010
In almost exactly a month, the President of the United States will visit India. There was a time when such occurrences were so rare, you could count them by the decades. Dwight Eisenhower came to India in 1959, on a South Asia tour that also saw him stopping by in Pakistan, where he became the first American president to watch a cricket test match (Pakistan versus Australia). Ten years later, in the worst phase of India-US relations, Richard Nixon dropped by for less than 24 hours. It was another 10 years before Jimmy Carter landed in New Delhi in 1978 for a tepid interaction that saw disagreements on the nuclear issue.
The breakthrough came in March 2000, when Bill Clinton charmed and mesmerised India, making all the right gestures, saying just what his hosts wanted to hear. It was a landmark.
In 1955, Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin landed in India, with the Congress and the Communists competing to welcome them. The visit became emblematic of New Delhi's leftward tilt and, in a sense, took India into the Cold War. In 2000, Clinton's amazingly successful trip was, in effect, India admitting to itself that the Cold War was finally over.
Already Washington, DC, had begun to gently de-hyphenate India and Pakistan. In the previous year it had told Islamabad, at the height of the Kargil War, that the (Kashmir) border couldn't be redrawn in blood. Less than 24 months after India's nuclear tests of 1998, the two countries were locked in embrace.
Six years later, George W. Bush came to Delhi for a visit that was thinner on symbolism - unlike Clinton he didn't address Parliament and didn't have lifelong socialist MPs pushing and shoving to shake his hand - but weightier in significance. It sealed what now appeared to be a strategic partnership for the ages, and put the India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement in the fast lane.
Given this recent history, it is sobering that India's foreign policy establishment is responding to President Barack Obama's imminent arrival in a rather lukewarm manner. There are very limited expectations of the visit. Part of the reason is India does not see Obama as a âtraditional' White House resident, the sort who may have alarmed South Block in another era, one loaded with third world shibboleths, but who this country has come to find increasingly useful in a more pragmatic 21st century.
On business and free trade, on America's military muscle and strategic world-view, on Uncle Sam's old-fashioned sense of certitude, Obama is very different from Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. As Bob Woodward's recent book on the Obama presidency has underscored, he is only grudgingly a war-time president. He desperately wants his military commanders to give him an exit strategy from Afghanistan-Pakistan, even if they believe no such strategy exists.
India's two biggest constituencies in the US in the past decade have been the Pentagon (the Department of Defence) and American business. Between them they have pushed for a closer relationship with New Delhi, often lobbying against State Department veterans who have advocated a more cautious approach to a country that has not traditionally shared American foreign policy goals.
It is worth noting that neither of these constituencies is an Obama natural. He is not a favourite of the US military and is not popular on Wall Street. He is seen as a big-business sceptic, and has focused on increased public spending and taxation rather than incentives to the private sector in an attempt to kick-start the next economic surge. That second route is recognised as inevitable by many, including the Conservative-led government in Britain, and by ginger groups such as the Tea Party movement in America itself.
There are domestic implications for Obama. The Democrats are apprehending a setback in the Congressional elections in November 2010, which will be in the middle of Obama's presidential term and will give him an indication about his own re-election chances. That apart, in a polity deeply divided between the extreme right and the extreme left - between those who want to dance hand-in-hand with the Taliban and those who want to convert them into Bible thumpers, at gun-point if necessary - Middle America is crying out for a middle ground unifier. Obama doesn't seem to be that man, not for the moment at least.
To be fair, domestic perceptions of Obama need not bother India. It would help of course if a foreign leader - whether an American president or a Pakistani prime minister - were in absolute command of his country and carried credibility with key institutions such as the military or the foreign office. This would make him a serious interlocutor. His popularity ratings almost wouldn't matter.
For instance, in his final years in office, Bush worked the phones, bullied and cajoled American officials and global leaders alike, and rammed through India's once-in-a-lifetime nuclear deal. This happened in a period when the twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the emergent economic crisis had made him a deeply divisive character in American public life and when his poll numbers were abysmal. None of it made any difference to India.
However, New Delhi has no such luck with Obama. His speedily unravelling presidency - the one pragmatic man in his inner core, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has just resigned - makes both voters at home and American friends abroad wary of him.
That is why expectations of his visit are near zero. For example, there is little hope he will use his political capital to ease dual-use technology access to India, something Indian industry and Indian manufacturing urgently seek. Indeed, following his outsourcing rhetoric, Obama may not even visit Bangalore, a city that is home to the Indian arm of about every major US technology giant. An American president running away from Bangalore: who would have predicted this five years ago?
As things stand, far from being a successor to the Clinton and Bush visits, Obama's winter date with India is more likely to go down as Carter 2.0. Two years after his India trip of 1978, Carter was forced to move out of the White House. In India, land of auguries and clairvoyants, Obama may want to read the signs.
Ashok Malik is a journalist writing on, primarily, Indian politics and foreign policy, and inflicting his opinion on readers of several newspapers for close to 20 years. He lives in Delhi, is always game for an Americano and can be contacted at malikashok@gmail.com.
Obama's Winter Date With India - Yahoo! India
In almost exactly a month, the President of the United States will visit India. There was a time when such occurrences were so rare, you could count them by the decades. Dwight Eisenhower came to India in 1959, on a South Asia tour that also saw him stopping by in Pakistan, where he became the first American president to watch a cricket test match (Pakistan versus Australia). Ten years later, in the worst phase of India-US relations, Richard Nixon dropped by for less than 24 hours. It was another 10 years before Jimmy Carter landed in New Delhi in 1978 for a tepid interaction that saw disagreements on the nuclear issue.
The breakthrough came in March 2000, when Bill Clinton charmed and mesmerised India, making all the right gestures, saying just what his hosts wanted to hear. It was a landmark.
In 1955, Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin landed in India, with the Congress and the Communists competing to welcome them. The visit became emblematic of New Delhi's leftward tilt and, in a sense, took India into the Cold War. In 2000, Clinton's amazingly successful trip was, in effect, India admitting to itself that the Cold War was finally over.
Already Washington, DC, had begun to gently de-hyphenate India and Pakistan. In the previous year it had told Islamabad, at the height of the Kargil War, that the (Kashmir) border couldn't be redrawn in blood. Less than 24 months after India's nuclear tests of 1998, the two countries were locked in embrace.
Six years later, George W. Bush came to Delhi for a visit that was thinner on symbolism - unlike Clinton he didn't address Parliament and didn't have lifelong socialist MPs pushing and shoving to shake his hand - but weightier in significance. It sealed what now appeared to be a strategic partnership for the ages, and put the India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement in the fast lane.
Given this recent history, it is sobering that India's foreign policy establishment is responding to President Barack Obama's imminent arrival in a rather lukewarm manner. There are very limited expectations of the visit. Part of the reason is India does not see Obama as a âtraditional' White House resident, the sort who may have alarmed South Block in another era, one loaded with third world shibboleths, but who this country has come to find increasingly useful in a more pragmatic 21st century.
On business and free trade, on America's military muscle and strategic world-view, on Uncle Sam's old-fashioned sense of certitude, Obama is very different from Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. As Bob Woodward's recent book on the Obama presidency has underscored, he is only grudgingly a war-time president. He desperately wants his military commanders to give him an exit strategy from Afghanistan-Pakistan, even if they believe no such strategy exists.
India's two biggest constituencies in the US in the past decade have been the Pentagon (the Department of Defence) and American business. Between them they have pushed for a closer relationship with New Delhi, often lobbying against State Department veterans who have advocated a more cautious approach to a country that has not traditionally shared American foreign policy goals.
It is worth noting that neither of these constituencies is an Obama natural. He is not a favourite of the US military and is not popular on Wall Street. He is seen as a big-business sceptic, and has focused on increased public spending and taxation rather than incentives to the private sector in an attempt to kick-start the next economic surge. That second route is recognised as inevitable by many, including the Conservative-led government in Britain, and by ginger groups such as the Tea Party movement in America itself.
There are domestic implications for Obama. The Democrats are apprehending a setback in the Congressional elections in November 2010, which will be in the middle of Obama's presidential term and will give him an indication about his own re-election chances. That apart, in a polity deeply divided between the extreme right and the extreme left - between those who want to dance hand-in-hand with the Taliban and those who want to convert them into Bible thumpers, at gun-point if necessary - Middle America is crying out for a middle ground unifier. Obama doesn't seem to be that man, not for the moment at least.
To be fair, domestic perceptions of Obama need not bother India. It would help of course if a foreign leader - whether an American president or a Pakistani prime minister - were in absolute command of his country and carried credibility with key institutions such as the military or the foreign office. This would make him a serious interlocutor. His popularity ratings almost wouldn't matter.
For instance, in his final years in office, Bush worked the phones, bullied and cajoled American officials and global leaders alike, and rammed through India's once-in-a-lifetime nuclear deal. This happened in a period when the twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the emergent economic crisis had made him a deeply divisive character in American public life and when his poll numbers were abysmal. None of it made any difference to India.
However, New Delhi has no such luck with Obama. His speedily unravelling presidency - the one pragmatic man in his inner core, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has just resigned - makes both voters at home and American friends abroad wary of him.
That is why expectations of his visit are near zero. For example, there is little hope he will use his political capital to ease dual-use technology access to India, something Indian industry and Indian manufacturing urgently seek. Indeed, following his outsourcing rhetoric, Obama may not even visit Bangalore, a city that is home to the Indian arm of about every major US technology giant. An American president running away from Bangalore: who would have predicted this five years ago?
As things stand, far from being a successor to the Clinton and Bush visits, Obama's winter date with India is more likely to go down as Carter 2.0. Two years after his India trip of 1978, Carter was forced to move out of the White House. In India, land of auguries and clairvoyants, Obama may want to read the signs.
Ashok Malik is a journalist writing on, primarily, Indian politics and foreign policy, and inflicting his opinion on readers of several newspapers for close to 20 years. He lives in Delhi, is always game for an Americano and can be contacted at malikashok@gmail.com.
Obama's Winter Date With India - Yahoo! India
