India is realizing it’s difficult to be out of the limelight after getting used to it. For the last eight years under the Bush Administration, India occupied a pride of place in the strategic calculus of the US. India was wooed as a rising power, it was seen as a pole in the emerging global balance of power, it was acknowledged as the primary actor in South Asia, de-hyphenated from Pakistan, and then it was given what it had long desired-- a de facto status as a nuclear weapon state. From a problem state that could never say yes, India emerged as a state that the US could do business with. It was all too good to last for long. And now one of the architects of the US-India strategic partnership during the Bush period, Shyam Saran, who was the Indian Prime Minister’s Special Envoy during the negotiations over the nuclear pact, is asking India to hedge its bets in light of what he views as Sino-US strategic convergence.
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Clearly, the new Administration in Washington has little time for New Delhi. From a nation that was just a few weeks back seen as an emerging power that can provide answers to global problems, India is now viewed primarily as a problem that the Obama Administration needs to sort out. It is instructive that the only context in which Obama has talked of India yet is the need to sort Kashmir out so as to find a way out of the West’s troubles in Afghanistan. Most astonishingly, the Obama Administration has asked India to make the first move towards peace in the region by pulling back troops from its Pakistan border. This is just so that the US can get more Pakistani support when it decides to launch a bigger military offensive in Afghanistan in a few months time. The talk of a strategic partnership between the two democracies, meanwhile, has all but disappeared. The new Administration is so busy fighting day to day battles that it has little time for grand strategy.
Moreover, whatever foreign policy hands it has displayed so far reveal an Administration that actually has little time for friends. Growing emphasis on US ties with China has alarmed Japan. A letter to Russia suggesting a bargain whereby the US would not go ahead with missile defence in return for Russia helping to convince Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons programme has alarmed Poland and Czech Republic. An eagerness to negotiate with Iran has alarmed the Gulf States and Israel.
Asia is clearly emerging the new pivot of US foreign policy but it doesn’t look like India has a place in the new priorities. When Clinton decided to make Asia her first destination as Secretary of State, the original Policy Planning Staff transition memo apparently suggested that India should be included in the itinerary. But it was an idea not deemed worthy of execution.
The Bush Administration had started looking at India as part of the larger Asian strategic landscape. The new Senior Director of East Asia, Jeff Bader, who will now be looking at India is a China expert and knows little about India and/or South Asia. While the previous Administration’s love-fest with India was driven by Bush himself, Obama seems to have little interest in South Asia beyond the obvious in getting US troops out of Afghanistan at the earliest. Hillary Clinton was seen as the great hope for India, but it was she who made it clear early on that the most important bilateral relationship in the world is the US-China relationship. Richard Holbrooke went to India as part of his effort to carve a new policy for Afghanistan and howsoever Indians would like to think that India and the US share a common interest in tackling terrorism and extremism from the turbulent territory between the Indus and the Hindu Kush, the US has so far been lukewarm to the idea of involving India in its larger strategy towards Afpak. Meanwhile, the appointment of Ellen O. Tauscher as the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security will have implications for India on the proliferation front. She has described India as a "country with a dismal record of non-proliferation" which had been "denied access to the market for three decades and for good reason."
What this sudden change in tone from Washington indicates is that despite what the media and strategic elites in India would have liked to believe, India is nowhere near the kind of profile that China today enjoys in global polity. While China has been enjoying double digit growth rates for the last two decades, the Indian story is not even a decade old. Moreover, the tragedy is that the Indian government’s inability to responsibly manage the economy when the going was good may have put India’s future growth prospects at risk. Defying initial expectations that India can remain immune from the global economic slowdown, the Indian economy is witnessing a downward trajectory with the Asian Development Bank warning that India’s large fiscal imbalance poses daunting challenges of economic management before the nation in the coming years.
Meanwhile, the chaos that passes for foreign policy in Delhi does a great disservice to Indian aspirations. The dithering in New Delhi over the US–India nuclear deal made it clear that the Indian polity stands divided on fundamental foreign policy choices facing the nation. Left in the fray are serious doubts emerging about the nation’s ability to leverage the present economic and strategic opportunities to its advantage. India’s response after the Mumbai terror attacks may have garnered some kudos for the restraint but it also revealed a nation that is happy to outsource its security to other powers, denting Indian military credibility from which it will not be easier to recover anytime soon.
Even as Indian elites have been talking of a chimerical Chindia, China has been expanding its global presence from Africa to Latin America and even in India’s own backyard. China is today viewed indispensable in solving global problems from North Korea and Iran to the financial turmoil. The NATO is reportedly even planning to ask for China’s help in Afghanistan. The fact remains that India is of little help to the US in addressing its immediate foreign policy priorities. Yet, it would be exceedingly short-sighted of the Obama Administration to ignore India in searching for a balance of power in Asia. India, however, needs to put its own house in order before crying hoarse over the changing winds in Washington. Global reassessment of India is primarily predicated on its recent economic rise, but India’s rise will remain incomplete in the absence of a credible vision with a larger purpose. It’s that vision that India needs right now. The rest, including the Obama Administration, will follow on its own. The tragedy, however, is that the current Indian political class seems utterly incapable of providing the kind of leadership that this moment in India’s history demands.
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Harsh V. Pant teaches in King’s College, London.
