American embrace

V. SUDERSHAN

FOREIGN policy issues do not usually figure prominently in Indian elections. This time too, the issues that have gained prominence in the run-up to the general elections are domestic ones. The Congress party, which heads the government, had until recently touted the India-United States nuclear deal as one of the major achievements of its United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Not too long ago, the Congress staked the future of the government to secure the nuclear deal. But, as the countdown to the general elections began, the much-touted nuclear deal, which cements Indias close strategic links with the U.S., is not being highlighted either by the Congress or by its allies in the UPA.

The Left parties, which are expected to play a key role in the formation of the next government at the Centre, are giving a lot of prominence to foreign policy issues. They have demanded a radical reorientation of the countrys foreign policy. The election manifesto of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) says the party will work towards an independent and non-aligned foreign policy. It specifically opposes the U.S. war on terror and military interventions in the region. The CPI(M) has also demanded an amendment to the Constitution to make legislative sanction mandatory for any international treaty. The UPA government signed the nuclear deal with the U.S. without taking Parliament into its confidence.

Critics of the government allege that in the five years of UPA rule India has been reduced to the status of a junior partner of the U.S. Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs praise for George W. Bush when he was President for his key role in securing the nuclear deal is cited as an illustration. Manmohan Singh, in his last official meeting with Bush, said that the people of India deeply loved the latter for all that he had done for the country. Abhishek Singhvi, the Congress party spokesman, even went to the extent of suggesting that the Bharat Ratna, Indias highest civilian award, be conferred on Bush. In its five years in power, the UPA governments foreign policy focus was almost exclusively on the U.S. As for Bush, the only significant achievement he can claim after his eight years at the helm is the nuclear deal with India, which significantly enhances Americas strategic interests in Asia.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party was the first to shatter the broad domestic political consensus that existed on foreign policy issues, first with the Pokhran nuclear tests and then with its unabashed catering to the interests of Washington in the region. Brajesh Mishra, National Security Adviser to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, even talked about the need for a Washington-Tel Aviv-New Delhi axis.

When the UPA government was sworn in, it was hoped that the domestic political consensus would be restored. Once in power, however, the Congress party followed the same path. The Common Minimum Programme (CMP), which was framed before the formation of the UPA government, specifically mentioned a nuanced foreign policy. The CMP called for good relations with all major powers, including the U.S., but at the same time stressed on strengthening non-alignment and multipolarity.

But the Congress from the outset was determined to implement its own foreign policy blueprint. The late J.N. Dixit, the first National Security Adviser to the UPA government, told this correspondent that it was the Congress government under P.V. Narasimha Rao that initiated the pro-West tilt in the countrys foreign policy in the early 1990s in keeping with post-Cold-War realities. He said that the NDA government was only emulating the Congress.

As soon as it was in office, the Congress went about further strengthening its strategic ties with the U.S. and its surrogate in the region, Israel. This, despite the fact that the UPA government was dependent on the Left parties for its survival. At most there was only muted criticism of U.S. and Israeli policies in West Asia during the UPAs five-year stint at the Centre. The violation of the sovereignty of countries such as Lebanon and Syria by Israel and the horrendous atrocities in Gaza that followed did not prompt a strong response from the Indian government. The Left parties called for the snapping of strategic ties with the Zionist state after the massacre in Gaza. Instead, the UPA government further intensified its security and military links with Israel.

The neoconservative Bush administration had charted a special role for India in the region. After 9/11, senior American officials were quoted as saying that the U.S. had only India and Israel as allies for the long haul in its global war against terror. The U.S. gave Israel the green signal to sell high-tech weaponry to India, including early warning systems and anti-missile systems. By the end of the UPA governments term, Israel had emerged as the top weapons supplier to India, replacing Russia. Many multi-billion-dollar defence and aviation deals have already been signed with the U.S. The U.S. and India now closely cooperate in the fields of intelligence and surveillance. The chiefs of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have already visited India to liaise with their counterparts here.

Leon Panetta, the newly appointed CIA chief made a high-profile visit to the subcontinent in the third week of March. American intelligence chiefs are used to getting a red carpet welcome in Islamabad and Kabul. But such is the importance being accorded these days to security cooperation with the U.S. that New Delhi too went overboard in welcoming Panetta. For the first time, a CIA chief was granted a meeting with the countrys Home Minister, P. Chidambaram. Panetta also met with other top officials of the Indian security establishment during his familiarisation trip. This was his first trip outside the U.S. after taking over his new post.

The CPI(M) Polit Bureau in a strongly worded statement said that the meeting between the CIA chief and Chidambaram marks a new stage in Indo-U.S. collaboration. The statement highlights the fact that this is the first time that a CIA chief has been received at such a high political level, signalling the new status of the CIA in India. The statement said this was further evidence that under the Manmohan Singh government, India was fast becoming like Pakistan where the CIA and FBI chiefs meet with the Interior Minister and the Prime Minister. The CPI(M) statement pointed out that U.S. security and military agencies had a long history of destabilising governments viewed as inimical to American interests.

The role being played by U.S. security and military agencies in the country and the manner in which the Congress-led government is promoting such ties should be a matter of serious concern for all those who wish to protect national sovereignty and the integrity of our democratic system, the statement said.

Many countries in the region have started viewing the extremely close ties between India and Israel as a tacit alliance between the two strongest military powers in the area. The biggest backers of closer ties between India and the U.S. are the neoconservatives and those with ties to the right-wing Likud Party in Israel, which had a lot of clout with the Bush administration. They argued that the Pakistan Army was unreliable in the war against terror.

The U.S. also wants to build India up as a counterweight in the region to China. It is no secret that the U.S. views China as the new emerging superpower that in due course will challenge its hegemonic policies.

The first concrete illustration of the Congress partys betrayal of the foreign policy pledges made in the UPA was the signing of the key India-U.S. Defence Framework Agreement in June 2005. The Left parties warned the government at the time that the fine print in it along with the Hyde Act, approved by the U.S. Congress in connection with the nuclear deal, would make Indian foreign policy congruent to Americas foreign policy. The prediction was not off the mark. In a volte-face, rarely witnessed in the annals of Indian foreign policy, the Indian government voted with the U.S. at the International Atomic Energy Agency Board meeting in September 2005 to refer Irans nuclear file to the United Nations Security Council. A spokesman for the Iranian government said that Iran was particularly surprised with Indias vote.

A year later, the India-U.S. nuclear agreement was formally inked during Bushs visit to India. During that visit, the two countries also signed the Logistics Support Agreement, which gives the U.S. military the privilege of using Indian facilities for maintenance, servicing, communications and refuelling. The two countries also set up a Global Democracy Initiative to highlight to the world that the partnership was based on shared values. The democracy initiative was essentially the brainchild of the neoconservative American think tank the National Endowment for Democracy. For many Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member-countries, U.S.-sponsored democracy is a code word for regime change.

Under the UPA government, India distanced itself considerably from its traditional friends in the region and from groupings such as NAM a trend that had started under the NDA government. In its quest for the nuclear deal with the U.S., the UPA government put the gas pipeline project with Iran on the back burner. Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State in the Bush administration, explicitly warned the Indian government against going ahead with the deal with Iran. In fact, Washington had prevailed on New Delhi to implement many of the tough sanctions the West had clamped on Iran for continuing with its civilian nuclear programme. Pakistan, despite being among the U.S. closest allies, has gone ahead and signed a gas pipeline deal with Iran. All this is not surprising.

Condoleezza Rice, in a speech in June 2007, advised the Indian government to distance itself from groups such as NAM. She also said that NAM had lost its meaning. NAM is the only forum that unites all developing countries. It is one of the few groupings that question the untrammelled military spending of the U.S. despite the Cold War having ended more than a decade and a half ago. It has been critical of the preventive wars and regime changes the U.S. has resorted to. India has been very circumspect in reacting to U.S. adventurism. An opinion poll taken last year and published in Financial Times showed that the majority of Europeans viewed the U.S. as the biggest threat to international stability. But the Indian elite seems fixated on the desire of turning their country into a regional superpower with U.S. help.

The UPA government preferred to make the U.S. the arbiter in South Asia. In neighbouring Bangladesh, the army was allowed to take over the government with the tacit approval of the U.S. and India. It was Washington on behalf of New Delhi that did most of the diplomatic heavy lifting to persuade Islamabad to cooperate fully on issues relating to terrorism. It is Washington that is trying to facilitate a breakthrough in the continuing political impasse on Kashmir.

In other parts of the world, governments are going out of their way to keep Washington out of the picture while resolving bilateral disputes. This is especially true in Latin America, which the U.S. has for long considered its backyard. The resolution of the serious dispute in Zimbabwe through the efforts of regional states is another illustration. The Southern African Development Council (SADC), despite arm-twisting from the West, prepared the grounds for political cohabitation between hitherto sworn enemies.

The changing realities in South Asia in the post-9/11 period forced the Pakistani leadership to be more accommodative to Indias concerns. When General Pervez Musharraf was at the helm of affairs and was in a position to deliver, he offered India a lot of concessions on the Kashmir issue. But the Indian government dithered, fondly hoping that more concessions would come from a beleaguered government in Islamabad, which was under increasing pressure to deal with India. A resolution of the Siachen issue was very much on the table.

Now, after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and with a weak civilian government in Pakistan, the dialogue process between the two countries seems to have lost its momentum.

The UPA governments Afghanistan policy seems equally confused. While some Western governments have accepted the inevitability of a Taliban military victory in the long run, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee insists on categorising the Taliban as a terrorist group and a threat to civilisation. His statement came at a time when the Barack Obama administration was trying to open talks with the good Taliban.

Relations with China, Indias other important neighbour, during the five years of UPA rule were marked with a degree of mutual distrust. Beijing had reason to be upset by the sudden surge in the activities of the Dalai Lama and his supporters in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics last year. China has been adopting an even-handed attitude on the Kashmir issue. The Indian media went overboard in their coverage of the disturbances in Tibet early last year. In contrast, the Chinese media showed restraint while reporting on the widespread violence that occurred a few months later in the Kashmir valley.

The India-U.S. nuclear deal generated some diplomatic friction between the two countries. Beijing had initially raised some queries about the special treatment being meted out by Washington to a state that was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But in the end, Beijing did nothing to endanger the deal and did not upset the consensus in the crucial Nuclear Suppliers Group meet in Vienna late last year.

China had reasons to be upset. The UPA government signed up with the Quadrilateral Forum in 2007. It is a U.S.-Japanese initiative to firm up an anti-China alliance. The group consists of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India. Under the auspices of the group, military exercises involving the navies of the four countries took place in 2008. The Bush administration had planned an Asian NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)-like grouping with India as one of its major pillars.

If the electorate opts for a progressive government at the Centre, there will have to be a drastic overhaul of foreign policy. The focus should be on strengthening multipolarity and South-South cooperation. More diplomatic efforts should be expended on improving trilateral cooperation between India, China and Russia and on strengthening groupings such as BRICS, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Concerted moves are necessary to strengthen cooperation among South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members and promote closer relations with Indias immediate neighbours. The unifocal obsession of the Indian elite with the U.S. should come to an end.