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India-US Relations Blog

The Obama Visit and U.S.-India Relations

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During those remarkable years when Indian students were flocking to U.S. colleges, acquiring skills and reputations that eventually made them the highest earning ethnic group in the U.S, the two governments were doing their damnest to destroy the relationship. Many in both governments still don’t know any better, although it is the government in Delhi that is drifting closer into dangerous waters, led by a captain without the strength to curb odd ministers running their own foreign policy. The reasons the U.S. government didn’t like Delhi in those years lay chiefly in Indira Gandhi’s bizarre attempt to enter the nuclear club in 1974, and of course the CIA’s mischievous assessment that India was a Soviet ‘ally’. The end of the cold war and George Bush’s nuclear deal should have flattened those hurdles, once and for all. The hurdles are gone, but ending a bad relationship is not the same as getting into a new one. Manmohan Singh’s courageous and tenacious performance in Parliament on the nuclear deal saw Indian political leadership at its best. The U.S. government’s worldwide arm twisting to get India the NSG waiver, demonstrated what a super power can do, when it stretches itself for a friend. Since then it’s been all downhill.

France and Russia have got the civil nuclear contracts, after the U.S. did the heavy lifting. Russia has been given the fifth generation fighter contract after the U.S. promised 100 GE 414 jet engines for India’s collapsed jet fighter project. Despite the government’s directive to all ministries to crank up the agenda for President Obama’s visit, a huge hole was created by Antony’s Ministry of Defense which is facing in a different direction. The Ministry believes that the Communications Security Agreement (CISMOA) is a devious and deliberate American plot to eavesdrop on Indian communications, as if the National Security Agency in Washington has no other means to achieve the same objective. The Logistics Agreement would have been hugely beneficial to the navy and air force to extend their reach, using U.S. assets worldwide. It was an agreement that the PLA would have paid billions for. Reciprocal facilities for unpopular U.S. wars could always have been turned down in special circumstances as Turkey did in 2002.The Indian MOD has shut the Indian armed forces off from advanced world technology by refusing to consider both. The U.S. President’s visit was eventually carried off by President Obama and Michelle Obama’s hugely effective public posturing, and some heroic behind the scene actions by corporate India and the U.S.-India CEO’s forum. Even so, the French and the Chinese signed an equal if not larger clutch of business deals with India. The President of the U.S. has a limited charter, unlike New Delhi, where there are Ministers for Coal, steel, petroleum, water, fertilizer, shipping, airlines, roads etc. So New Delhi has not yet grasped the essentials of the new world that it has to live in.

China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second wealthiest nation. Its GDP is $ 5 trillion against India’s $1.3 trillion. By 2020 both GDPs could quadruple, thereby increasing the gap from $ 3.7 to 14.8 trillion (India $ 5.2 trillion vs. China $ 20 trillion). From dams on the Brahmaputra to the Tibetan border, to the Indian Ocean – China’s power and arrogance is something India will have to live with. But how?

Will we see another Krishna Menon cozying upto China, our great Asian ‘brother’, when eventually Nehru had to write to JFK for 12 squadrons of fighter bombers, ‘flown by U.S. pilots’? There are even more unanswered questions. Will the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy sit out a Himalayan war, as they did in 1962 in the collective belief that their contribution to help the army could only make things worse? We don’t need an alliance with the US. We don’t need to get into a fight with China- not now, not ever. But how do we avoid one? Only by playing to China’s belief in Real Politik. To do that, India needs the U.S’ world class defense technology. Israel, France and Russia are alright for the middle level stuff. To get the world class stuff from the U.S. we need a relationship run by governments. The U.S.-India business councils, the Indian-Americans and the CEO’s forum can only do so much. India’s MOD cannot run its own foreign policy either.

India-US Relations Blog

Musings on a Presidential Visit

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As the President’s visit draws nearer, the delicate dance being played out by both sides is fascinating to watch. While the American side would prefer the Tango, the hosts have decided that a carefully choreographed (with emphasis on choreographed) ballet is the way to go.  The managers of the visit seemed to have decided to err on the side of caution when drawing up the Presidential itinerary, major considerations being his way with words, what he symbolizes in his persona, and the volatility of the inter-governmental relationships in the region. So, out went the President’s visit to Chabad House on security grounds. Out also went the President’s visit to Wagah border where he would presumably have made a speech on the lines of Ronald Reagan’s 1997 entreaty to President Gorbachov at the Brandenberg Gate which brought the Berlin Wall crashing down.  Whether a speech would have had any result other than further burnish his Nobel Peace prize can only now exist in the realms of speculation.

As is the norm during such State visits, both sides draw up wish lists and there then ensues some hard bargaining with lots of give and take.  This worked when such visits were few and far between.  Whilst summit level diplomacy worked well in case of the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Deal (that has proved to be a flash in the pan), Prime Minister Singh’s State visit to Washington  in November last yielded very little by way of substance.  The increased frequency of these visits has meant that the list of issues that are yet to find closure for various reasons, from a totalisation agreement, to defense agreements is growing, even as new issues such as the legislation on H1-B visa and outsourcing are bringing new irritants into the relationship. The parlous state of the U.S. economy plus the fact that a Democrat administration is in power would mean that these new issues will also go into the intractable issues column on that list.

Reading between the lines, the Americans seem to have made it clear that discussion on issues that would impact American jobs is a no-go area.  The American argument seems to be that when the going was good, we welcomed thousands of Indians to the United States and provided them with jobs; and now it’s your turn to help us out by buying our goods and services in a big way. This argument is of course somewhat fallacious since the United States was responding to the needs of its own economy, as it has always done, when it opened the gates for foreign workers.

If the United States is bent on improving trade relations, then on top of its agenda should be the removal of the constraints on trade and collaboration in high-technology items. That however, does not seem to be the case, with the U.S. still stopping short of completely removing these impediments. The nuclear deal notwithstanding, this is still a transactional relationship with strategic considerations very much playing second fiddle. As the Prime Minister’s successful visit to Japan amply testifies, a strategic relationship finds traction only when there is a clear and overwhelming desire on both sides to take that relationship forward. Of course, one advantage with the India-Japan Strategic Partnership is the absence of domestic spoilers. The Japanese Prime Minister has no need to turn Bangalore into a bogeyman for domestic audiences nor do sections of India polity look on Japan with suspicion.

Administration officials have been tom-tomming the fact that this is one of only two visits by an American President to India in the first two years of his first term in office. Well, the earlier one was by President Jimmy Carter, and we all know how that went. For those too young to recollect, it began with “the biggest crowds [Carter] had addressed as President” assembling at the Ram Lila grounds in Delhi on New Year’s Day of 1978 and ended with Carter (caught off mike) telling his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance that “after we return, we must write a letter, very cold and blunt” to Prime Minister Morarji Desai. (This was in the context of Desai refusing to Carter’s request to open Indian nuclear facilities to international inspection.) The Indian authorities are no doubt hoping that the similarities between the two visits are confined to the positive.