CLINTON'S YATRA

President Clinton's passage to India went off as per script, but there is every reason for disquiet over whether in the ardour for a new role in world affairs, the BJP-led government is disarming the country of all the defence mechanisms it has to cope with an uncertain global environment.

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton's South Asian expedition went entirely by the script and then beyond the most optimistic expectations. Aside from all that he may have said, Clinton's manner and tone excited public fancy and invited adulation on a scale that few v isiting heads of state, least of all American ones, have managed in the past. Clinton in India showed one facet of the didactic techniques that the United States is bringing to bear in its new role as the principal arbiter of global affairs - winning inf luence through charm and moral suasion. The nation that today seems to recognise no prospective challenge to its global pre-eminence and seeks to define a new paradigm of international economic relations and political legitimacy has found the perfect amb assador for its cause in the conscientious objector from the days of the Vietnam war.

The immediate prospect for Indian Ministers and officials is a packed schedule of meetings with their American counterparts. The Vision Statement that was jointly signed by Clinton and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee sets out a charter for future pol itical engagement between the two countries. An agreed programme of "institutional dialogue" delineates a multiplicity of areas where bilateral interactions will be both intensified and regularised.

Beyond these matters of detail, Clinton was eloquent and evocative as he addressed an assembly in Parliament. He took in the enchantment of wildlife, the visual splendour of medieval India and the realities of pastoral life. In a gesture of touching empa thy, he met relatives of Rupin Katyal, the sole victim of the Indian Airlines hijack of December 1999. Also granted the benediction of the American President's attention were the high technology industries and the more mundane world of stock market trans actions in Mumbai. Bangalore and Hyderabad put forward their contesting claims as havens of high technology, and Clinton favoured the latter. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu is delighted that the claims he has made on behalf of Hyderab ad have won the endorsement of the U.S. President. But Bangalore has found comfort in being ranked with Seattle in Clinton's address in Parliament.

If there were any discordant notes in the whole visit, they arose only from certain Indian media analysts' exaggerated sense of deference towards the visiting dignitary's sensibilities. This is the perilous new spirit animating Indian foreign policy, apt ly expressed in External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh's statement that India is determined to put behind five wasted decades and craft a new idiom in its relations with the U.S. It is as if history is beginning anew with the visit of the U.S. President - that all precedent is to be effaced in the inspiration of a newly discovered concord.

THIS new disposition led to the unseemly spectacle of President K.R. Narayanan being dragged into an imagined spat with the Government over his remarks at the official Rashtrapati Bhavan banquet for Clinton.

Two of the themes that Narayanan raised allegedly caused offence. First, he made the point that though "global village" as a term had acquired a certain vogue, it was not as if world affairs could entirely be left to the adjudication of a single referee. The governance of the global village, in short, could not be left to a single "village headman". "Globalisation," said Narayanan, "does not mean the end of history and geography and of the lively and exciting diversities of the world." It meant, rather, that global governance should be in harmony with the diversities it was required to contend with. Reaching into India's own experience, Narayanan suggested that the global village in "this age of democracy" would be headed not by a "village headman" but by "the global panchayat". The only such collective body available on the world stage, said the President, was the United Nations, which needed to be "democratised and sustained".

Narayanan's remarks came, whether fortuitously or by design, a mere three days before the U.N. Security Council was scheduled to take up a discussion on the humanitarian situation in Iraq. In opening this sitting, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan began with the assertion that the degree and extent of human suffering in Iraq posed "a serious moral dilemma" for the world body. "The United Nations has always been on the side of the vulnerable and the weak, and has always sought to relieve suffering, yet h ere we are accused of causing suffering to an entire population," Annan remarked in his introductory statement to the Security Council. Kofi Annan went on to confront directly the alibi for inhumanity broadcast by the U.S. and conveyed through its media dominance to all corners of the world: "We are in danger of losing the argument, or the propaganda war, if we haven't already lost it, about who is responsible for the situation - President Saddam Hussein (of Iraq) or the United Nations."

This open admission of U.N. culpability in the humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq by one who was considered the U.S' own choice for the top job in the organisation should come as a reminder to Indian enthusiasts of the "new world order". All of Clinton's c harm apart, fantasies of a new deal that brings India into the same camp as the U.S. in the enforcement of global political morality may be rather premature when it is not misconceived.

Aside from his remarks on village governance, Indian champions of the new American millennium found another reason to disparage President Narayanan. Well after the Cold War has passed into history, it was deemed simply inadmissible for the Indian Preside nt to remind his guest that "vestiges of Cold War strategies still return to haunt the world". Still more "discourteous" was his reaffirmation of a "discredited" tenet of Indian foreign policy. Where non-alignment should have disappeared as a principle f ollowing the collapse of the Soviet Union, Narayanan had chosen to resurrect it: "We believe, Mr. President," he told Clinton, "that in the post-Cold War period, the non-aligned concept of a pluralist world order is more relevant than the politics of mil itary blocs and alignments."

By another seeming coincidence, this presidential remark from India came just a few days before the first anniversary of the Western alliance's war of destruction against Yugoslavia. And it coincides with a moment when the Anglo-American media, a willing accomplice in the campaign to bomb Yugoslavia into submission, have begun to grapple with the campaign of disinformation that they eagerly participated in. It is now known, through the British television media, that the Clinton administration set out to create the basis for declaring war against Yugoslavia by actively sponsoring a separatist insurgency on its territory.

It is an index of the bizarre priorities of Indian foreign policy today that the President's effort to speak up for a principle that India and Yugoslavia were instrumental in crafting should attract slanderous insinuations, that he should be accused of e xceeding his constitutional authority.

Jaswant Singh has never made a secret of his belief that non-alignment has been a historic error of Indian foreign policy. In his 1998 book, Defending India, he said as much as he cast a retrospective eye on the build-up of border tensions with Ch ina in 1959. His attitude was very clear. If the defence of the nation's territory required a military alliance, then it was just as well that non-alignment as a principle was abandoned. This is because no principle could be allowed to enjoy "precedence" over the defence of the nation's territory and, by implication, of its status in the globe.

These locutions are absolutely clear in their purport. Global status lies not in upholding the principle of equidistance between various power blocs, but in an alliance with one or the other of them. And in today's context, with the U.S. claiming global pre-eminence as the sole superpower, there can be no arguments about which power bloc India should opt for.

In terms of concrete outcome, the Vision Statement signed by Clinton and Vajpayee on March 21 is perhaps the substantive part of the visit. This is a document that could lay claim to being the definitive charter for future political association between India and the U.S. And if the nuclear issue was expected to be the dominant motif of the Clinton visit, the Vision Statement inscribes into an agreed text the substance of the disagreements between the two countries.

"India and the United States share a commitment to reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons," says the statement, "but we have not always agreed on how to reach this common goal. The United States believes India should forgo nuclear weapons. I ndia believes that it needs to maintain a credible minimum nuclear deterrent in keeping with its own assessment of its security needs. Nonetheless, India and the U.S. are prepared to work together to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery. To this end, we will persist with and build upon the productive bilateral dialogue already under way."

The statement then proceeds to bind both countries to their voluntary commitment "to forgo further nuclear explosive tests", to cooperate with each other and with others "for an early commencement of negotiations on a treaty to end the production of fiss ile materials for nuclear weapons", and to strengthening controls on the export of nuclear materials and technology.

Overarching these partial agreements on the nuclear issue is a seemingly more solid understanding on global security compulsions: "In the new century, India and the United States will be partners in peace, with a common interest in and complementary resp onsibility for ensuring regional and international security. We will engage in regular consultations on, and work together and with others for, strategic stability in Asia and beyond."

IT is perhaps necessary to place this statement of intentions within current debates over the changing strategic balance in Asia. In particular, the U.S. has been engaged in a re-evaluation of its political engagements in the continent, under the impetus primarily of the right-wing element in domestic politics, which has in recent times shown a deep sense of disquiet over China's growing influence and power. Significantly, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took time off from the visit to South Asia to make an appearance at the U.N. Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, where she made a strong case for a tough stance against China. If India should go along with the new strategic posture of the U.S. in Asia, it could conceivably endanger a slow but fairly sure-footed process of reconciliation with China. For all the short-term rewards of a new engagement with the U.S., the costs for India in the longer term could be serious.

"Strategic stability" in U.S. national security doctrine only comes from overwhelming superiority in numbers. This includes the maintenance of a nuclear strike capability that is demonstrably greater than any potential rival's. So far, the U.S. has had t o factor in four other nuclear powers into its calculations, of which only two - Russia and China - could be categorised as potentially adversarial. The BJP-led government's insistence that it intends to build up a "minimum credible nuclear deterrent" no w introduces a fresh source of strategic instability into the calculus. Inevitably, since nuclear weaponisation in India would impel Pakistan along the same path, the U.S. would have to take both the South Asian nations on board its new equations.

Much of the future of the new strategic engagement between India and the U.S. would depend upon how the terms of this equation are balanced. How would India harmonise its aspirations for a nuclear weapons capability with the U.S' own compulsions in deter mining a balance of power that is to its best interests? The results, which could include the acceptance of American tutelage in areas of strategic consequence, may not be the most appropriate way of promoting the country's global status.

In an article published in the media the day he arrived in Delhi, Clinton expressed his hope that India and Pakistan would soon sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), "as they have committed to do". But addressing Parliament, he chose prudently n ot to hint at any such commitment, which conceivably could have only been made in the secret confines of Jaswant Singh's long-running "strategic dialogue" with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Rather there was an effort at persuasion to bri ng India around to the view that accession to the CTBT and the forswearing of the nuclear weapons option would have no adverse security implications.

Political observers are convinced that behind the facade of disagreement, India is working hard to assure the U.S. that accession to the CTBT is only a matter of time. Congress Working Committee member K. Natwar Singh, for instance, puts political partis anship behind when he describes the Clinton visit as the most fruitful bilateral contact ever between the two countries. But he also suggests that more ground has been yielded on the CTBT than is being publicly acknowledged.

The accretion of tactical advantage in relation to Pakistan is read by most political observers as the principal gain of the Clinton visit. The Vision Statement makes a clear affirmation in this respect: "That tensions in South Asia can only be resolved by the nations of South Asia." The American President's address in Parliament went beyond this: "I have certainly not come to South Asia to mediate the dispute over Kashmir. Only India and Pakistan can work out the problems between them. And I will say t he same thing to General Musharraf in Islamabad... In the meantime, I will continue to stress that this should be a time for restraint, for respect for the Line of Control, for renewed lines of communication."

In referring to Vajpayee's trip to Lahore last year as a "courageous" initiative, Clinton seemed tacitly to be urging a return to that agreed framework of dialogue. This, of course, misses the point that the "Lahore Declaration", crafted by Vajpayee and then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was one of the initial sources of tension between the civilian establishment and the military in Pakistan. Evidently, as Gen. Musharraf has put it, the "apologetic" tone of the references to Kashmir in the Lahore Declara tion impelled the Pakistan Army into the Kargil misadventure. The motivations were clearly to emphasise that India continued to be vulnerable on that flank and that the world community had a stake in taking a more active interest in Kashmir.

In the course of his March 21 interview with the U.S. television network programme ABC World News, Clinton showed a clear awareness of the consequences his intervention had brought about: "You know, I spent last July 4th trying to persuade former Prime M inister Sharif to withdraw back behind the Line of Control. He did. I think it weakened him when he did, frankly; but it was the right thing to do."

This is as close as an American President can get to accepting that the Kashmir issue has ramifications that penetrate into the power structure in Pakistan. With minor changes of context and nuance, Clinton's locutions on Kashmir during his brief halt in Islamabad were broadly similar to what he had said in India. Yet, Musharraf placed on them a construction that seemed to serve all of Pakistan's interests. He pronounced himself "satisfied" with the discussions on Kashmir, disclaimed any responsibility for infiltrations across the LoC, and described the militant camps on Pakistani territory as a popular democratic movement which he could not conceivably throttle.

Clearly, there is a residual ambivalence in the U.S. posture on Kashmir, which stems directly from its commitment to Pakistan as an ally from the days of the Cold War. And while the military remains in control in Islamabad, it would be sheer self-delusio n for India to imagine that there has been a defusing of the potential for confrontation on the border, with all its gruesome possibilities of escalation.

DAYS before he left on an expedition that he had made no secret of his eagerness to undertake, an "independent task force" sponsored by two influential advocacy groups - the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations - addressed an open l etter to Clinton. The purpose was to define the parameters and scope of American political engagement in South Asia.

Composed mainly of liberal foreign policy analysts like Stephen Cohen, Teresita Schaeffer and George Perkovich, the task force urged the President to "resist the temptation to place ambitious nuclear weapons-related goals at the centre of U.S. aims". The need, rather, was to adopt "more modest but still significant goals in the nuclear realm."

Considering the historical legacy of Kashmir, the task force urged that a "nuanced blend of private and public messages" be delivered. As far as Pakistan was concerned, Clinton was urged to tell the military authorities that the U.S. would "have little o ption but to designate their country as a state sponsor of terrorism (with all that it entails in the way of sanctions under current law) if they do not act more decisively against this threat".

The "private message" that was to be conveyed to India was nowhere near as intimidating. The task force suggested that "India would be wise to adopt measures that would provide the inhabitants of (Kashmir) with greater autonomy and civil rights." Moreove r, Clinton was advised to propose a "peace process involving India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir".

It is apparent that in the nuclear realm, Clinton followed the broad blueprint that had been laid out by the independent task force. Whether he did likewise on the question of Kashmir is yet unclear. But if there have been some private messages conveyed, these need obviously to be debated in the public domain.

OTHER areas of mutual concern that the task force identified for the Indian leg of Clinton's visit are worth taking note of. These include the "basic questions of post-Cold War international relations", such as the future negotiating mandate of the World Trade Organi-sation, the "ground rules for humanitarian intervention", "managing relations with Russia and China", and "the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region".

All these are issues on which India and the U.S. have had divergent perceptions. Where the WTO is concerned, the U.S. has been keen to initiate a new round of global trade negotiations that takes into its scope a wide range of subjects: core labour stand ards, environmental standards, government procurement and electronic commerce. India has been equally insistent that the WTO has enough on its agenda for the moment and should confine itself to a review of agreements arrived at in the last round of negot iations.

Shortly after the U.S. President left Delhi to take in the sights of Jaipur, Union Minister for Commerce Murasoli Maran sat down for a round of discussions with U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley. The immediate outcome was an agreement under which Ind ia acquired for itself the freedom to impose higher tariffs than currently enforced on a range of goods. This is vital for large sectors of the economy, since quantitative restrictions on imports that are maintained on these goods will soon be removed as part of a WTO-mandated deal with the U.S.

After the agreements had been signed, Daley also made it known that he would like to see a greater degree of cooperation from India when the U.S. sought to renew WTO trade negotiations on a greatly expanded agenda. There has yet been no formal response f rom the Indian government. But pointers to future sources of friction in the new entente are already evident.

An "institutionalised dialogue" between India and the U.S. with regular interactions at mutually agreed official levels is one of the substantive promises that the Clinton visit holds out. In the realm of trade policy, the Commerce Minister will hold reg ular consultations with the U.S. Trade Representative in order to "enhance cooperation". A working group would be set up, headed by these two high-level functionaries, which would "serve as a locus of consultation on a broad range of trade-related issues , including those pertaining to the WTO".

Other fields in which the "institutional dialogue" would be taken up at the ministerial level are foreign policy, security and nuclear non-proliferation and the economy. "Foreign Office consultations" would be periodically held between the Foreign Secret ary of India and the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. "Asian security" would be one of the principal themes to be addressed within this forum. As for the issue of terrorism, a Joint Statement issued by India and the U.S. affirms that a recently constituted "working group" will "continue to meet regularly and become an effective mechanism for the two countries to share information and intensify their cooperation".

TO say that the Clinton visit has yielded a packed agenda for future talks between the two countries would be an obvious understatement. Yet it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that in the flush of mutual rediscovery, both sides may have lost sight o f the legacy of deep-seated conflicts of interest in all these areas. Economic and financial instability are now global phenomena. The tendency for the U.S. to shift its strategic focus rapidly in response to contingent circumstances has also become equa lly common. As India rushes into what it conceives will be a new economic and strategic partnership with the U.S., there are sections that are unable to suppress a deep sense of misgiving. No country can afford an undue dependence upon the fickle moods o f another. And in its ardour for a new role in world affairs, the BJP-led government may well be disarming the country of all the defence mechanisms it has to cope with an increasingly uncertain global environment.