"A more mature relationship with the US is now a possibility (with a likely visit of Bush to India)." S.K. Lambah, National Security Advisory Board
"What's going on with Iran is a complex game-part chess, part poker. But we have done our sums." Hamid Ansari, Advisor to Foreign Minister
"The US is reluctant to give India the same hi-tech access it is giving to China (which is an NPT signatory)." Brahma Chellaney, Advisor to Foreign Minister
Those in New Delhi who are excited at the victory of George W. Bush should know where and when came the first signs of a substantial foreign policy change under him—and why its potential wasn't realised to the full. For that, let's get back to a seminar at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in July 2000. Then the 2000 election in the United States was still nearly four months away. Speaking at the seminar—on 'US-India Relations in the 21st Century'—was Paul Wolfowitz, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies, JHU. Wolfowitz, who was to subsequently become the No. 2 in the Pentagon, said that though India had been the "black hole" of the US foreign policy, there was a sea change now. His other remarks presaged the coming qualitative change in the as-yet-unborn Bush administration's engagement with India.
In April 2001, months after Bush became president, foreign minister Jaswant Singh visited Washington to meet US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice. As Jaswant told Outlook, "I hardly sat down with Condi Rice than the President dropped in. It was a very deliberate statement. It was supposed to be a 15-minute drop-in. We were one-to-one for 45 minutes. I assessed that certainly the new US administration was just as committed to the relationship with India as the Clinton administration. But they wanted to move further and faster. Later Colin Powell joked: 'Well, my boss has upstaged everything. There is very little left for us to do'."
The signalling was unmistakable: Bush was going to push 'strategic' relationship with India. At last a US-India love fest was in the offing. A month later, deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage visited Tokyo, Seoul and New Delhi, indicating that the US was beginning to pull the relationship with India out of the foreign policy black hole. Armitage didn't visit Pakistan on that trip.
Then 9/11 happened. Along with the World Trade Center towers tumbled the edifice of a strategic relationship that India and US would ideally have liked to put together. The wtc bombing was followed by Afghanistan. General Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan became the fulcrum state in the war against terror. As Jaswant explains, "9/11 forced them to put aside their long-term plans because the first requirement was the defeat and containment of the Taliban."
Subsequently, Bush invaded Iraq, which highlighted some of the divergences between Washington and New Delhi. It was made clear to New Delhi that it couldn't hope for a slice of the Iraqi reconstruction pie unless it contributed substantially to the US efforts there. Washington's attention to India became at best episodic.
But people like Robert Blackwill, then the US ambassador to India, steadfastly advocated a more robust relationship with India. He never tired of proclaiming relations with India as a "strategic opportunity", and famously described the interaction between the Clinton administration and the Vajpayee government "as an intermittent dialogue of the deaf".
With Bush now firmly ensconced in the White House for four more years, there is optimism that his second innings will prove immensely beneficial for India. As Ken Juster, US undersecretary of commerce and a key player for the NSSP (Next Steps in the Strategic Partnership), told Outlook: "The strategic transformation occurring in US-Indian relations reflects the fundamental interests of our two countries. In that sense, our progress would continue regardless of election results—in the United States or in India. But the re-election of President Bush makes it more likely that we can move forward without missing a beat."
Even in New Delhi, the sentiment is decidedly bullish. Says S.K. Lambah, head of the National Security Advisory Board, which draws up blueprints on a range of issues for the government, "A more mature relationship with the US is now a possibility." The reasons for such optimism are many. For one, there is now a much greater possibility of Bush undertaking that long-talked-about trip to New Delhi in the first half of his tenure; that Bush will not be evangelical on the question of non-proliferation; the defence relationship, including defence supplies from the US, will be enhanced.
Areas of potential differences remain: a possible sale of F-16s to Pakistan and pressure on India's relationship with Iran, should Bush choose to raise the pitch there. But, Hamid Ansari, a member of the Policy Advisory Group (PAG) to foreign minister Natwar Singh, says, "What is going on with regard to Iran is a complex game—part chess, part poker. But we have done our sums with regard to Iran. It isn't an area where we will be pushed to resile our position."
Yet, New Delhi's optimism seems overstated. For one, it's unlikely that the Bush administration will evince interest in supplying India advanced weapons systems it claims could destabilise the region, challenge China or hurt Pakistan. The example of Weapons Locating Radars (WLR) that the US delivered to India last July is often touted as a breakthrough. But it doesn't breach any of the considerations listed above. Moreover, the US was willing to sell WLR way back in 1996.
Second, the US policy of constructive ambiguity on Pakistan will continue, as was demonstrated with the designation of Pakistan as a Most Favoured Non-Nato Ally. Third, the US has not backed India's quest for a seat in an expanded UN Security Council, though it has indicated its preference for the inclusion of Japan and Germany.
There also remains the matter of defining India's relationship to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in a way that satisfies the US. Indeed, sources say that when the NSSP was being initially discussed, then foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal took a nuclear wishlist to Washington in July 2003. Subsequently, in September 2003, Steve Hadley, deputy national security advisor, came to New Delhi with Washington's response. The Americans had responded positively only to about half the items on the wishlist. The major part they did not respond to pertained to areas that had the potential of breaching US laws and nsg (Nuclear Supply Group) guidelines. Hadley's response, incidentally, forms the core of the NSSP.
Brahma Chellaney, another member of the PAG, declares: "The US is reluctant to give India the same hi-tech access it is giving to China (an NPT signatory)." There are some who disagree with the assessment. One of them is former Indian ambassador to the US, Lalit Mansingh, who says he sought clarification on this point from Ken Juster. "Juster said that impression is not correct. India has better access." Yet again, Strobe Talbott quotes Steve Hadley as telling him, "We are not going to unravel the NPT for the Indians. The endstate will be within the context of the existing NPT and US legal structures." (see Talbott's book, Engaging India, p 230)
Jaswant Singh, too, is now critical of the NSSP. He told Outlook: "NSSP as delivered during Dr Manmohan Singh's visit to New York is, frankly, a premature baby. It needed much greater nurture." Jaswant suggests that the concurrent obligations that comes along with it diminishes its value greatly.
There are other variables New Delhi needs to watch. Bush's prospective visit to India could well be hyphenated with a parallel visit to Pakistan. Moreover, the quality of the Indo-US relationship will tend to depend a lot on the individual quirks of a possible new Bush bureaucracy, the composition of which is still unknown.
