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India-US Relations Blog

The New Normal

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US – India relations have now settled into a stubborn pattern of routine interactions and small-bore ideas.

The inaugural session of the annual US-India Strategic Dialogue in Washington last summer imparted new energy to bilateral affairs following a period of treading water.  President Obama used the occasion to announce his visit to India and emphasized that partnership with New Delhi was one of his “highest priorities.”  In the meeting’s warm afterglow, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns (now nominated as Deputy Secretary of State) remarked that “even the sky is not the limit for our ambitions and our possibilities.”

Clinton-Krishna_photoThe Strategic Dialogue had its second convocation last week in New Delhi, co-chaired by Secretary of State Hillary Rodman Clinton and Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna.  Judging by its modest output, bilateral relations are now on a low-flying trajectory.  Not too long ago, soaring rhetoric and visionary initiatives were the staples of such high-level confabs.  But ties between the two capitals have now settled into a stubborn pattern of routine interactions and small-bore ideas.  In its wrap up of the Dialogue’s events, the Hindustan Times observed that “There is a clear and obvious sense of drift in relations” and that the bilateral exchanges the countries have established in a myriad of fields “don’t seem to generate much in tangibles.”  Call it the new normal in US-India relations.

Secretary Clinton noted that her meetings with Krishna “felt like we were in a monsoon with all of the many issues and reports that were being made by our officials outlining the extraordinary progress that has occurred.”  But it was hard to avoid the monsoon-sized cloud of mutual frustration hanging over the proceedings.  Even the Bush-Singh nuclear deal, intended to be the capstone of a new partnership, has now become a source of acrimony, with both sides accusing the other of breaches of faith.

From the U.S. perspective, India’s nuclear liability law is inconsistent with global norms and has the effect of all but blocking the involvement of U.S. companies in the country’s lucrative nuclear energy sector.  Washington wants New Delhi to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC), a multilateral accord regulating liability for nuclear accidents, apparently in the belief the Indian government will submit to the notion that international law should somehow override the strictures of newly-enacted domestic legislation.  Mrs. Clinton even went so far as to suggest that the International Atomic Energy Agency vet the liability law for its compliance with international practice.  Both ideas are quixotic, as they represent a severe misreading of what the political market will bear in India’s sovereignty-conscious democracy.  Moreover, since the CSC is far from gathering the requisite number of ratifying countries to trigger its entry into force, it is unclear why Washington thinks New Delhi’s ratification will have any practical result.

For its part, New Delhi is peeved about U.S. sponsorship of restrictions just promulgated by the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, an informal cartel regulating global nuclear commerce, regarding the export of uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing (ENR) technologies. Much of the future expansion of India’s nuclear energy sector is premised upon access to such equipment, something which many in the country thought was secured via the nuclear accord.  The United States has assured New Delhi that the new restrictions will not undercut the special status India now has in the international nuclear order.  But the Bush-Singh deal never extended to the delivery of ENR technology, a point that Prime Minister Singh’s government found expedient to obscure during the tumultuous vote of confidence three summers ago. Mrs. Clinton departed India hinting that unresolved problems still plague the issue.

The discussions also did little to assuage Indian concerns about the impact of the U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan, or persuade New Delhi that it should assume a greater leadership role in Asian security affairs as a bulwark against China’s growing power. Of course, the two issues are linked: New Delhi is very unlikely to be more active further afield when its security position in the subcontinent is under mounting threat. The assassination of two of Hamid Karzai’s closest confidants – one of whom his half-brother – just days prior to the Dialogue’s convening rattled New Delhi, and the Obama administration’s progressive disengagement from Afghanistan will only complicate Indian security calculations.

Although the Clinton visit produced an announcement of a new trilateral dialogue involving New Delhi, Washington and Tokyo – as well as the establishment of formal bilateral exchanges on the Middle East and Central Asia – the innate caution of India’s foreign policy elites will most likely disappoint American expectations about what the Indian government brings to the table.

Two items involving the itinerary of Mrs. Clinton’s traveling party illustrates the US-India policy disconnects.  First, a few months ago New Delhi rejected Washington’s efforts to broaden the Dialogue by involving the two countries’ defense ministers. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was reported all set to accompany Clinton to New Delhi in April when the Dialogue was originally slated to take place. And as it turned out, Gates’ successor, Leon E. Panetta, was in Kabul just a week before the Dialogue and could presumably have rearranged his schedule to attend the gathering in New Delhi had the Indians wanted to expand the forum’s remit.

Second, Mrs. Clinton gave public emphasis to her point about India stepping up its security role in Asia in an address in Chennai (formerly Madras). According to U.S. officials, Chennai was chosen as the ideal platform for this message given its strong commercial ties to Southeast Asia.  But The Telegraph reports that, due to Washington’s desires to expand U.S. commercial interests in West Bengal, Clinton had at first wanted to visit Kolkata (Calcutta). This proposal was nixed by the Indian government, however, fearful that it would be seen as a provocation to the Indian Left.  Clinton’s second choice of Amritsar was quickly dropped due to a lack of local enthusiasm. The decision to go to Chennai was hastily done and came as a surprise to U.S. diplomats in India.

In the run-up to last week’s meetings, some experts in Washington (see here and here) exhorted the Obama administration to use the gathering as a means of expanding strategic engagement with India. But the opportunities for doing so are quite constrained by the domestic distractions both governments confront. In India, the Singh government is engulfed by various corruption scandals that have all but paralyzed decision making. The titanic political struggle to push the nuclear accord through parliament has resulted in “Washington fatigue,” sapping any readiness to undertake similar high-profile initiatives. And despite Singh’s personal commitment to furthering bilateral ties, he is neither the master of his own government nor of his party.  Many of his Congress Party colleagues are not fully invested in the future of the relationship.  Even in the foreign policy area where he once had some latitude, Singh cuts an increasingly isolated figure. The recent WikiLeaks revelations have added to his political problems, as some interpret the cables as depicting him being excessively accommodating of U.S. interests.

In Washington, predicaments at home and abroad have combined to push India fall down the Obama administration’s priority list.  A reciprocal sense of “India fatigue” is also spreading. New Delhi’s rejection of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its $11 billion fighter aircraft competition and the prolonged inability of U.S. companies to cash in on the nuclear deal have made Washington policy elites increasingly weary of India’s capacity for strategic engagement. It is no coincidence that Secretary Clinton arrived in New Delhi just as a debate erupted about whether India was or could ever be a genuine “ally.”

Given the state of things in both capitals, the “new normal” looks to be with us for the next few years, at least.

India-US Relations Blog

Yesterday, once more?

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And just like that, the much awaited, once postponed India-US Strategic Dialogue came and went, with not even the the tiniest frisson of excitement of that had accompanied previous Dialogues. Minders on both sides must have been secretly pleased that the Murdoch slugfest in London came in as a suitable excuse to explain away the limited interest and analysis of the Strategic Dialogue in the media. With new lists of grievances building up on both sides to replace the long-drawn out lists of the Cold War era, the Strategic Dialogue process has had the unintended consequence of focusing attention on these issues for which all available political capital has been expended or there is no solution even at the highest political levels.  Given this reality, the reports of half-hearted wagging of fingers and admonishments behind closed doors were more for the benefit of respective constituencies than to move the process forward. The overriding urge to prevent any SNAFUs meant that Mrs. Clinton proposal to visit Kolkata as part of itinerary was shot down by the hosts. And whilst Mrs. Clinton broke bread with all her leading interlocutors, from the Prime Minister downwards, the glaring exception was Defence Minister A K Antony, for whom the Dialogue that was to take place in April had been postponed since he was ostensibly busy with the Kerala elections.

01-1The U.S. side, in particular, has become a master at the art of coming out with comprehensive factsheets laying out the massive advances in joint projects, emphasizing the width and breadth of the partnership.   With many of the bilateral agreements signed over the years stuck at various stages of implementation, it is almost as if both sides were virtually scrapping the bottom of the barrel this time around to come out with agreements on cyber security cooperation and cooperation in aviation safety. This is not to belittle the importance of these agreements, and particularly the one on cybersecurity. However, the impression one gets is that there is still a sufficient amount of mistrust on both sides to ensure that even this initiative will live uptoits potential for some time to come. By way of comparison, the agreement between cyber adversaries Russia and the United States on cyber security cooperation signed just the previous week is much more specific on actions and timelines.

But it is not as if Mrs Clinton would be particularly disappointed by either the dampened expectations or outcome of her visit. From an American perspective, given the flux in the wider Asian region, accelerating the strategic partnership with India in the security and defence realms, especially if it is only on the back of unilateral concessions, will only fetch diminishing returns. One only needs replace India with the U.S. in the previous sentence to come up with the Indian view. On the American side, there is reasonable confidence that an increasingly powerful and belligerent China will eventually drive India into U.S. arms. In the meantime, there is plenty of other fish to fry, particularly when it comes to pushing the economic and people-to-people aspects, part of larger initiativesthat Mrs. Clinton has focused on since taking up stewardship of the State Department.  And therefore it is not surprising that out of the many factsheets brought out by the Department at the end of the visit, it is those on economic ties and education and people-to people ties that have the most substance. While the former leads with talks on a Bilateral Investment Treaty, there is a consolation prize in the establishment of the first ever Consular Dialogue to take place on July 25 “for a full discussion of visa and other consular matters”. From Tri-Valley to the harassment of H1B visa holders and diplomatic pat-downs, there will be much to discuss at this Dialogue. Considering that a similar Consular Dialogue has been part of the EU-IndiaStrategic Dialogue since 2000 and the India-Australia Dialogue more recently,one wonders why this did not come into being earlier even earlier.

On the education and people-to-people front, the noteworthy developments are the publication of the first request for proposals under the aegis of the Obama-Singh Knowledge Initiative with the fields of focus being Energy Studies, Sustainable Development, Climate Change, Environmental Studies, Education and Educational Reform, and Community Development and Innovation. How different this Initiative is from existing programs being carried out under the India U.S. Science and Technology Forum remains to be seen.  The other interesting program to watch out for would be the newly launched Passport to India which will facilitate increasing number of American students to come to India for periods ranging from three weeks to six months, to match the 100,000 odd Indian students in the United States. This, too, has an economic focus since the students will be here on internships with companies rather than for study programmes.

The silver lining in this particular cloud might be this; with both sides forced by exigencies to dial down the relationship a notch, this provides some breathing space to consolidate the initiatives that have been taken up in previous years. The U.S. State Department Inspector General’s office  has recommended that a separate office be established for India since “nations of comparable importance and with important bilateral relationships, such as China, Russia, Cuba, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, have their own offices”. A similar initiative on the Indian side would go a long way in implementing the many worthy initiatives of the Strategic Dialogue and make it less of the annual junket that it is being perceived to be.

India-US Relations Blog

Taking the Long View

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Over time, the expansion of Chinese strength will undoubtedly push New Delhi to tighten its security relations with Washington, though the process will neither be as smooth nor as speedy as many would like.

Just as US-India ties were at a nadir following New Delhi’s nuclear tests in 1998 – and just as the United States and China were declaring their own strategic partnership – Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee famously characterized Washington and New Delhi as “natural allies” who would form “the mainstay of tomorrow’s stable, democratic world order.” Two years later, Vajpayee reaffirmed this description.

Judging by the dense bilateral links the two countries have crafted over the past decade, Vajpayee phrase seems to have been vindicated. Not only have a landmark civilian nuclear accord and a spate of defense contracts been concluded, but the two countries have established some 30 bilateral dialogues and working groups on a wide gamut of issues, and the United States holds more bilateral military exercises each year with India than with any other nation.

Yet U.S. elites are suddenly shying away from the term “ally.” Assistant Secretary of State for South & Central Asia Robert Blake, for instance, states that “India and the United States will never be allies in the traditional sense of the term.”  Strobe Talbott, who as Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton administration began the first institutionalized dialogue between Washington and New Delhi, contends that the countries “are not now, and may never be, allies.” Stephen P. Cohen, dean of U.S. South Asianists, likewise maintains that “India is a friend, not an ally” and the new US-Indian strategic alliance is “still more symbolic than real.”

All three underscore the distinction between long-standing U.S. allies, such as the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea, and partners like India that are not bound by formal security commitments. And Blake’s statement was undoubtedly in deference to Indian sensitivities about being sucked into America’s strategic orbit, although he adds that India can no longer be considered a non-aligned country given the “increased convergences in strategic outlook” between Washington and New Delhi. But Talbott and Cohen are less sanguine on this count. The former argues that:

“One reason we may never be [allies] or not in the any foreseeable future, is because there is still a huge constituency in support of India’s non-aligned status, despite the fact that I would say that non-alignment and the non-aligned movement is very much an artifact of the Cold War. I remember having a conversation with Natwar Singh [retired Indian diplomat and Manmohan Singh’s first foreign minister] when Congress was out of power and him saying to me that the proudest moment of his career was being secretary general of the non-aligned movement. That sticks in my mind. I took that as a sign that there are still a lot of Indians who take non-alignment seriously.”

Cohen strikes a similar note: “New Delhi has a deep commitment to strategic autonomy, as indicated by its insistent use of the moderating prefix ‘natural’ to describe its U.S. relationship. In the end, India got what it needed from Washington, including recognition of its nuclear weapons program and support for its permanent membership on the United Nations’ Security Council, at little or no cost.”

Believing that strategic ties remain, at best, “aspirational,” Michael Auslin, at the American Enterprise Institute, likewise notes that the

“continued adherence to Jawaharlal Nehru’s non-aligned strategy clearly animates the worldview of most thinkers [in India], even if the language used to describe it no longer partakes of such Cold War imagery. There is a firm commitment in New Delhi not to have any firm commitments to any one state. It seems the Indians have taken to heart, far more than the Americans, George Washington’s warning against entangling foreign alliances.”

All of these comments come at a time of widespread disappointment in Washington that the bilateral relationship has not lived up to the strategic and economic possibilities that seemed so alive just a few years ago. As my last post noted, some observers are even questioning whether the Bush-Singh nuclear deal has succeeded in its primary aim of invigorating US-India geopolitical cooperation in the face of a rapidly growing and more assertive China.

The Bush administration devoted singular energy to courting New Delhi as a key part of its strategy of strengthening security links with China’s neighbors. In a widely-read article, Condoleezza Rice, then serving as chief foreign adviser to the George W. Bush presidential campaign, observed that Washington “should pay closer attention to India’s role in the regional balance.” She pointedly noted that “India is an element in China’s calculation, and it should be in America’s, too.” In his first major foreign policy address as a candidate, Bush argued that “we should work with the Indian government, ensuring it is a force for stability and security in Asia.”

Once the nuclear deal was unveiled at a July 2005 summit between Bush and Prime Minister Singh, Rice justified it by calling India “a rising global power that we believe could be a pillar of stability in a rapidly changing Asia.” At the summit, a senior Indian diplomat was quoted as saying that “Bush has a vision that we in India often don’t have. With Europe in decline and China rising, the U.S. sees India as a future global power with the ability to maintain [the] power balance in the 21st century.” A Bush administration official closely involved in the making of policy toward New Delhi commented that “China is a central element in our effort to encourage India’s emergence as a world power. But we don’t need to talk about the containment of China. It will take care of itself as India rises.”

Singh-Wen_PhotoIn the years since, has the growth of Chinese strategic power nudged Washington and New Delhi into tighter security collaboration, as many in the Bush administration expected? Or is Michael Krepon, one of the nuclear deal’s prominent detractors, correct in arguing that “New Delhi continues to titrate improved strategic cooperation with the United States” and that it “continues to improve ties with Beijing.  It is folly to presume that Washington can leverage New Delhi’s dealings with Beijing.”

There’s no denying the American disillusionment caused by India’s rejection of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its $11 billion fighter aircraft competition and by the prolonged inability of U.S. companies to capitalize on the nuclear deal due to an Indian liability law that does not conform to international norms. It is also true that India and China have aligned to thwart U.S. objectives in global negotiations on trade and climate change, and that they often take the same side in UN deliberations.

But stepping back a bit in order to take in the wider perspective, it is clear that some fundamental geopolitical forces are at work in spurring India-China strategic frictions.  Instead of being the fraternal titans that drive the Asian Century forward, as envisioned in the “Chindia” chimera, it is more likely that their relationship in the coming years will be marked by increased suspicion and rivalry. The relationship has never really recovered from the trauma of their 1962 border war, and the strains have only increased over the past five years or so. Beijing is now taking a much more hawkish line on territorial disputes in the Himalayans, including asserting a brand new claim that the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is actually “Southern Tibet.”  It is also expanding its presence in territory controlled by Pakistan, and trying to block New Delhi’s efforts to play a greater role in regional and international institutions.

Much is made of the fact that China is now India’s largest trading partner and that two-way trade soared from $12 billion in 2004 to $60 billion in 2010, and that the countries are on track to reach $100 billion in 2015. When Premier Wen Jaibao visited New Delhi last December, he brought along a larger business delegation than President Obama did a month earlier, and the $16 billion in resulting trade deals eclipsed the $10 billion-mark struck by the Americans. Yet compared to US-India economic links, there are far more competitive elements, and far fewer complementary features, operating in India’s business interactions with China.

All of these developments have not gone unnoticed by the Singh government.  Famous for his cautious, taciturn nature, Singh has caused a stir with his public expressions of disapproval regarding what he terms Chinese “assertiveness.” In a September 2010 interview he complained that Beijing sought to “keep India in a low-level equilibrium” and that “it would like to have a foothold in South Asia.” Three months later, he shocked his Chinese guests during the Wen visit by refusing to reiterate India’s traditional endorsement of the “One China” policy or customary recognition of Tibet being an inviolable part of the People’s Republic.

Indian military planning is also increasingly focused on the threat from its northern neighbor, from taking major steps to fortify its northeastern border to accelerating the development of the Agni-V ballistic missile. With a reach of over 5,000 kilometers, and capable of carrying multiple warheads, the missile puts China fully within range of a retaliatory nuclear strike.

The strategic entente with India is Washington’s first geopolitical partnership to be forged in the post-Cold War era, meaning that its rhythm is bound to be quite different from the security alliances the United States rapidly created in the aftermath of World War II. Back then, the national power of Washington’s new-found allies was in stark decline, while India’s current power trajectory is visibly upward. The structural dynamics of a bipolar global order also were simpler than today’s messy multipolarity.  Over time, however, the expansion of Chinese strength will undoubtedly push New Delhi to tighten its security relations with Washington, though the process will neither be as smooth nor as speedy as many would like.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Nuclear Dividends?

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Was the U.S.-India agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation worth all the trouble? Six years on, observers in both countries are accusing the other of perfidy.

Was the U.S.-India agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation worth all the trouble?  How have the expansive promises touted by its champions and dire warnings issued by its critics panned out? With the approach of the six-year anniversary of the landmark July 2005 summit between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, observers in both countries are at work tallying up the pay-offs and drawbacks.

PhotoThe Bush-Singh deal was momentous in both symbolic and material import. It implicitly recognized India as a nuclear weapons state, a gesture New Delhi very much wanted but which the Clinton administration refused to make. And by promising to end a decades-long embargo on nuclear energy technology against India, the Bush administration committed to overturning U.S. laws and global non-proliferation norms for New Delhi’s singular benefit.

At the time, U.S. advocates spoke of portentous opportunities in the strategic and commercial realms. A high-ranking U.S. official described the deal as “the big bang” designed to consummate a broad strategic relationship with a rising India that was aimed at balancing China’s burgeoning power. Ron Somers, the head of the U.S.-India Business Council, argued that “history will rank this initiative as a tectonic shift equivalent to Nixon’s opening to China.” Leading U.S. corporations quickly lined up, expecting that a grateful Indian government would reward them with lucrative contracts in the nuclear power generation and defense systems fields. Estimates were floated that access to India’s expanding nuclear energy sector would alone generate some 250,000 U.S. jobs.

Have the promised gains materialized? According to Michael Krepon (here and here), a prominent critic of the accord, they have not.  Pointing to India’s recent elimination – in the face of heavy U.S. lobbying – of Boeing’s and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its $11 billion fighter aircraft competition, as well as New Delhi’s failure to support U.S. diplomacy on the Libya and Syrian issues, he contends that the significant U.S. concessions made in the agreement have netted little in terms of a strategic or diplomatic return. Likewise, he notes the tough nuclear liability law adopted by India last year has the effect of all but blocking the involvement of U.S. companies in the country’s nuclear energy sector.

The accord’s advocates contended at the time that by granting India a special position in the global nuclear order, the nonproliferation regime would ultimately be strengthened. But Krepon believes the reverse has occurred. By bending the rules for India’s sole benefit, a pernicious precedent was set, one that China has just exploited in justifying its sale of two more reactors to Pakistan. And the failure to extract meaningful restrictions on India’s nuclear-weapon capacity has only spurred a paranoid Pakistan to undertake a significant expansion its own arsenal.

Krepon does not deny that bilateral diplomatic and economic ties have improved measurably in the last six years. But much of this, in his opinion, would have occurred even in the accord’s absence. From his vantage, the accord’s actual benefits are far from what was pledged, while the costs critics warned about have been substantiated.

Krepon’s critique arrives at a time of widespread disappointment in Washington that bilateral ties continue to fall far short of the promise that seemed so glistening just a few years ago. In an interview prior to his departure from New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador Timothy J. Roemer chided the Indian government’s failure to live up to its side of the bilateral relationship, adding that “There’s no doubt this needs to be a two-way street.”

The reasons for this sense of letdown are many, with fault lying both in Washington and New Delhi. Nonetheless, U.S. champions of the Bush-Singh deal were under no illusion that India’s signature registered its enlistment as America’s junior partner in global affairs or the surrender of its foreign policy independence.  For example, Nick Burns, who as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the last administration played a key role in crafting the new U.S.-India relationship, cautioned at the time that “the United States must adjust to a friendship with India that will feature a wider margin of disagreement than [Washington is] accustomed to.”

And even as the deal was proceeding, the two governments were at loggerheads in multilateral trade talks, an impasse that helped bring about the Doha Round’s collapse.  Paradoxically, the U.S. Congress gave its preliminary assent to the nuclear deal in December 2006 at the same moment that frustrations with New Delhi’s position in the Doha negotiations caused legislators to cut some of India’s trade privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences. And in the months prior to Congressional approval of the implementing “123 Agreement,” a high-ranking Bush administration official publicly accused New Delhi of stymieing negotiations and “working behind the scenes for Doha’s demise.”

India’s decision on fighter aircraft was a sharp disappointment to an Obama administration that lobbied strenuously on behalf of the U.S. contestants – so much so that the decision may have even hastened Ambassador Roemer’s resignation.  And it undoubtedly deepens the perception in Washington that New Delhi has not lived up to its side of the bargain by reciprocating the huge commitment the United States has made over the past decade to bolster India’s great power prospects. But as Ashley J. Tellis demonstrates in a superb piece of analysis, the decision was sui generis, involving the Indian air force’s rigid application of technical desiderata, rather than the anti-U.S. move some have described it as.

The proliferation-related arguments Krepon reiterates formed the core of the criticism against the accord when it was originally announced. But these points were difficult to sustain at the time in view of the strong support Mohamed ElBaradei, then director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave to the deal. He called the agreement a “win-win” as well as “a milestone, timely for ongoing efforts to consolidate the non-proliferation regime, combat nuclear terrorism and strengthen nuclear safety.” He has reaffirmed this view in his new book. And in case anyone missed the significance of ElBaradei’s endorsement, this is the same man who butted heads with the Bush administration over nuclear weapon allegations regarding Iraq and Iran – actions that helped earn him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.  In the end, most nations were persuaded by his view that it was better to welcome New Delhi into the nuclear clubhouse, even if somewhat awkwardly, than to continue leaving it out in the cold.

It should also be noted that as the nuclear accord was being debated by the international community, Beijing explicitly assured Washington that it would not exploit India’s special carve-out in the nonproliferation regime to provide more reactors to Pakistan. It is also unclear how large a factor the deal looms in the rapid expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon capabilities. Most likely, Islamabad’s anxiety about India’s “Cold Start” military doctrine – which focuses on deterring Pakistan’s use of jihadi proxies by holding out the threat of swiftly-mounted but calibrated military offensives against Pakistani territory – plays at least as significant a role.

While Krepon accuses India of failing to live up to the broad spirit of the Bush-Singh deal, Indian observers are presently charging Washington with an outright breach of faith. Specifically, they see restrictions just promulgated by the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an informal cartel regulating global nuclear commerce, as undercutting the privileged perch the accord gave India in the international nuclear hierarchy. The NSG prohibitions are designed to prevent the spread of uranium-enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing technology to countries, like India, that have not signed on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Technically speaking, the provisions, which were advanced by the Obama administration, are not country-specific. However, there is little question they are aimed squarely at India, and this has revived cries about American perfidy that were at fever pitch in New Delhi’s tumultuous debate over the nuclear accord three years ago. Once again, the Communist Party of India and the Bharatiya Janata Party are making allegations about Mr. Singh’s lack of candor in revealing the agreement’s details.

Anil Kakodkar, a former chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission who played a major role in drafting the nuclear deal, has also joined the present fray, characterizing the NSG move as a “betrayal,” while G. Parthasarathy, a leading light in the foreign policy establishment, concludes that “we cannot trust the U.S. as a long-term and reliable partner on nuclear issues.” The Hindu newspaper exclaims that “the Indian side has scrupulously adhered to its side of the broad bargain and has assumed the U.S. and the NSG would do the same. But if the latter are going to cherry-pick which of their own commitments they will adhere to and which they will not, India may well be tempted to examine its own options.” Indeed, the Indian government has threatened to withhold coveted reactor contracts from any country enforcing the new rules.

Beyond the perceived affront to national honor, made all the more palpable since the NSG was founded in response to India’s first nuclear detonation in 1974, it is unclear whether the restrictions will have any practical effect. India already can reprocess material from its fast-breeder reactor program to supply its nuclear arsenal. And the country’s chief nuclear partners – the United States, France and Russia – have rushed to assure New Delhi that the restrictions will in no way impinge upon their previous commitments. Still, it is curious why the Obama administration chose to press the new restrictions at the very same moment it was championing New Delhi’s membership in the NSG (read the U.S. paper on India’s candidacy here).

The growing irritations on both sides will be aired out at the mid-July convening of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in New Delhi. The confab was originally scheduled for April but was postponed, ostensibly at least, because Defense Minister A.K. Antony had to campaign in the Kerala state elections. More likely, Antony and others in the Indian leadership were looking for an excuse to dodge the Obama administration’s full-court press on the fighter aircraft decision. As it turns out, the meeting will now take place with both sides nursing grievances.

India-US Relations Blog

The Surge Recedes

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President Obama’s announcement of far larger and more rapid withdrawals of U.S. forces from Afghanistan than many had expected affects Indian security interests and the U.S.-India relationship in significant ways. While it is unfair to characterize the decision as a rush to the exits, it is clear that a deliberate pace is being set.

Obama Speech

Beyond the immediate numbers and timetables involved, the speech’s most memorable line – “America, it’s time to focus on nation building here at home” – signals a new era in South Asia’s geopolitics. U.S. involvement in regional security affairs has oscillated between deep engagement (as in the 1950s, 1980s and the post-9/11 decade) and relative indifference (the 1960s-1970s, and the 1990s). Mr. Obama’s remarks confirm that the pendulum has now begun its swing toward the latter position.

The address will set in motion a train of momentous events for all of Afghanistan’s neighbors. And it is noteworthy that Mr. Obama’s decision was driven more by the exigencies of domestic politics than by a careful assessment of U.S. security objectives in South and Central Asia. As the Washington Post comments , Obama “failed to offer a convincing military or strategic rationale for the troop withdrawals.” The debate inside the administration was reportedly intense but brief, and White House political operatives have not even tried to disguise the fact that the President ignored his top Pentagon advisers.

Parallel to the troop drawdown, President Obama sounded the end to U.S. nation-building efforts in Afghanistan, stating that “we won’t try to make [it] a perfect place.” He underscored Washington’s burgeoning disenchantment with Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul by once again prodding it to “step up its ability to protect its people, and move from an economy shaped by war to one that can sustain a lasting peace.” Both objectives, however, will prove impossible in the absence of strong U.S. support. A new report by the Democratic majority staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee offers a very bleak assessment of Afghanistan’s economic viability in a post-withdrawal era. Yet a day after Obama’s remarks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave notice that the “civilian surge” – which dispatched a thousand U.S. officials to work on governance and development projects in Afghanistan – has likewise peaked.

Karzai’s antics have played a role in this fundamental shift in Washington, with one analyst concluding that “the United States has now clearly washed its hands of the Karzai government.” Tellingly, there was nary a word of praise in Mr. Obama’s remarks for the Afghan president, and one wonders how committed Washington will be to his regime’s survival in any political settlement with the Taliban.

Of course, this is the same government in which New Delhi has invested so much over the last decade. Only six weeks ago, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh traveled to Kabul with the aim of broadening India’s engagement in Afghanistan . He unveiled a significant expansion of Indian aid, with a further commitment of $500 million over the next few years. He and Karzai also issued a joint declaration that the two countries intended to move towards a strategic partnership. According to one analyst , Singh’s purpose was to demonstrate that, unlike Washington, New Delhi has no “exit strategy” in Afghanistan.

The diplomatic process leading to a possible political settlement of the Afghan conflict is only just beginning. But as it unfolds, it is likely that key differences will emerge between the United States and India. Looking towards the exits, Washington may not be too picky over the settlement’s exact details, while New Delhi will be all too focused on how the strategic terrain in its neighborhood is shifting.

Speaking of political settlements, Obama assured all that “the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance.” But he was virtually silent on the principles he would pursue in the diplomatic endgame. What would constitute such a peace and how the United States would seek to effect it were items left unmentioned. Nor did Obama address how the Taliban and its Pakistani benefactor could be persuaded to support such an outcome when he has so plainly telegraphed America’s disengagement from Afghanistan.

The coming period will witness an intensified regional scramble for influence in a post-withdrawal Afghanistan. India has strong strategic interests in ensuring that any government in Kabul is strong enough to be a bulwark against Pakistan as well as a gateway to trade and energy links in Central Asia. Both goals would be undermined if a Taliban-dominated regime were to come to power. Yet India’s own capacity to shape the course of events is quite limited in a country with which it shares no borders. For this reason, India will seek to move closer to Iran, whose interests in Afghanistan are roughly congruent.

Indeed, this process has already started. A year ago, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao (now slated as India’s new ambassador in Washington) highlighted the “unique” civilizational ties and “the instinctive feeling of goodwill” between India and Iran. She spoke of how links with Tehran are a “fundamental component” of New Delhi’s foreign policy and how there has been a recent “convergence of views” on important policy issues. Regarding bilateral cooperation in Afghanistan, she argued that India and Iran “are of the region and will belong here forever, even as outsiders [read the Americans] come and go.” A senior Indian official described the outreach to Iran as a policy “recalibration” necessitated by the “scenario unfolding in Afghanistan and India’s determination to secure its national interests.”

Earlier this year, India’s national security advisor, Shivshankar Menon, visited Tehran seeking to shore up strategic ties. In early June, the deputy secretary of Iran’s National Security Council was in New Delhi to continue the talks. New Delhi now has even less incentive to go along with U.S. economic sanctions directed against Tehran, and both countries may go so far as to revive their cooperation during the 1990s that provided critical support to the non-Pashtun militias battling the Taliban regime. The Americans will surely grumble about the cozying up with Iran, but the geopolitical logic of the Obama withdrawal leaves New Delhi little choice.

As the United States progressively takes leave of Afghanistan, its dependence on the (epically dysfunctional) security relationship with Pakistan that the 9/11 attacks brought about will correspondingly lessen. The impact of this development on India is variable. The drawdown in U.S. forces will decrease the logistical requirement to run critical supply lines through Pakistani territory. And as the commando assault on Osama Bin Laden and the marked ramp-up in drone strikes testify, Washington is increasingly willing to do without Pakistani cooperation and conduct military operations on its own.

As the need for Islamabad’s collaboration diminishes, Washington will begin to pull back on the significant military assistance – nearly $20 billion so far – that has caused so much consternation in New Delhi. The Bush administration’s “de-hyphenation” policy – one that pursued relations with India and Pakistan independent of the other – will also re-emerge. Seeing Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan as a function of addressing its acute security anxieties, the Obama administration put the policy on hiatus and started making noises about the Kashmir issue and discouraging New Delhi from too deep an involvement in Afghanistan . With Washington’s solicitude vis-à-vis Islamabad’s sensitivities coming to an end, the U.S.-Indian security partnership will more and more run on its own dynamics.

On the other side of the ledger, however, the Pakistani military establishment could try to offset the loss of U.S. support by entering into an even tighter security alliance with China. This prospect, which would exacerbate India’s strategic concerns, cannot be ruled out, though Beijing so far has shown a reluctance to be encumbered by Pakistan’s deep internal problems . The rather bizarre trip Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani undertook to Beijing in late May is a case in point . Despite Gilani’s profession that Pakistan and China “are like two countries and one nation,” Beijing appeared discomforted when Islamabad put out the word that the Chinese navy was welcome to take up residence in Gwadar, a strategic port at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

A more worrisome possibility is that U.S. strategic disassociation with Islamabad will also be expressed in a sharp reduction of economic assistance, leading to even greater volatility in Pakistan. In that event, India would find that Pakistan as a failed state is much more of a security headache than it ever was at the peak of its national power.

As the United States markedly reduces its presence in regional security affairs, some hard choices await New Delhi policymakers.