Of allies and adversaries

Upon the successful conclusion of World War II and barely five days into Hitler's postnuptial suicide, General William O Donovan, chief of the Office of Strategic Services, delivered a secret report to President Harry Truman outlining the dangers of this new conflict warning that "the United States will be confronted with a situation potentially more dangerous than any preceding one." Russia, he alarmed, "would become a menace more formidable to the United States than any yet known." The Cold War followed soon afterwards and on its final conclusion with the dissolution of the erstwhile USSR, the USA found yet another adversary with the wherewithal to become its adversary. It is no other than the Middle Kingdom.

And if President Obama’s visit to India was dictated by policies of strategic containment, there is, right from Franklin D Roosevelt's postwar plans, George F Kennan's original strategy of containment, NSC-68, the Eisenhower-Dulles "New Look," the Kennedy-Johnson "flexible response" strategy, the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of détente to the process of containment though the Reagan years, a chequered history of containment through the end of the Cold War.

Going by the speculations about the clutch of alliances India seeks to cement or is sought to be cemented with, it looks like India is being leveraged for a range of economic and strategic calculations. The Republic Day concert between Narendra Modi and Barack Obama and the visible bonhomie symbolising a ‘decisive’ Indo-American alliance – seen by many as the forging of a new one in the Asia Pacific region aimed at China – made no bones about the strategic inclinations of the new political dispensation under Narendra Modi and that being so, a balancing act in the visit of Sushma Swaraj to China has been necessary to smoothen the ruffled feathers. Modi is all set to visit China before the end of May this year. 

Caveats have already been entered. When Modi and Obama issued a joint statement in view of the Chinese shenanigans in the South China Sea, China sought to evince a clear diplomatic message by inviting Pakistan Army Chief Raheel Sharif to Beijing. China's State-run media while commenting on Obama's visit had warned India must not fall into the ‘trap of rivalry’ set by the west to support the US "pivot to Asia" strategy, mainly devised to counter China’s rise. Talking to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Obama exhorted all countries to abide by a “common set of rules and standards” that can lift up universal prosperity “not at the expense of others, but together with each other”. Western policy thinkers are already beginning to feel gung-ho about the ‘success’ of the “Joint-Strategic Vision” interpreting it as a move to wean India away from its long-pursued policy of non-alignment to join the global line-up drawn by the US. Henry Kissinger, in his appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, interpreted it as India entering the “Asia equation” and a ‘system’ of US-China relationship.

India, it looks like, has been assiduously wooed by a host of alliance-combinations for quite some time. Way back in 2007, Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe initiated the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) between the United States, Japan, Australia and India that was maintained by talks between member countries. The Quadrilateral was touted to set up an "Asian Arc of Democracy," encircling countries in central Asia, Mongolia, the Korean peninsula, and other countries in Southeast Asia, practically all the countries on the periphery of China. Already, Abe’s tireless efforts to push through the Asian region his 'Proactive Contributor to Peace' anti-China coalition building strategy, and to recruit India into that equation as a game-changer, besides the Philippines or Vietnam, has set the media abuzz with a new Japan-India strategic alliance aimed at containing Chinese “expansionism”. 

Already America’s “pivot to Asia” – once patrolling the Atlantic and Indian Oceans – was marked by a spectacle of entire US Navy fleets waddling across the Pacific and US Marines breathing down heavily on Darwin, Australia, mindful of Beijing. Should a combination of the United States, India and Japan, with Taiwan, ASEAN and Australia providing key support ever come into being, China figured out, India and Russia must be taken aboard to ‘neutralise’ the American stratagem to contain China’s ‘peaceful rise’. It is no less symbolic that the first telephone call Modi received following his May swearing-in in 2014 was from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang who for 40 minutes conveyed China’s desire to build “robust ties” with his new government. Many attribute former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov as first coming up with the idea of a trilateral alliance between Russia, China and India back in the 1990s, the major breakthrough being in July 2006 at the G8 summit in St Petersburg when President Vladimir Putin organised a meeting between the leaders of the three countries at the time.

On the flip side, there is much frustration in Pakistan about the US cherry-picking India for a civil nuclear deal. A few alarmists also expressed fear that the US decision to enter into a nuclear deal with New Delhi under Modi would be “as detrimental as was the case with the western support extended to ISIS, al Qaeda and other groups to dislodge the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria”. Roadblocks might lie ahead in India’s bid for UNSC membership – as part of a group of ‘G4 nations’ along with Brazil, Germany, and Japan –  materialising from Pakistan and China.

Is India unmindful of the trappings of the new alliance? Is it aware of the larger implications of being read as a stooge or worse, being dressed up to serve a western design that it is not very well equipped to play? For Modi the challenge must be to leverage the relationship with the United States to get the best deals out of the US-China rivalry. We must keep in mind that there is a venal America alongside a beneficial one as much as there is a colonial Russia alongside a trusted ally, a power-hungry China alongside a nation of entrenched business interests to India. 

In the best of times, we all seek the gravy train to power ahead with all the nations acting to our best national interests. But when they act at cross-purposes India must learn to do a tightrope walk, striking a balance between moralism and pragmatism and between opportunism and expediency. In this age of multipolarity, India cannot afford  a situation of having to choose a nation at the cost of others. 

The author is a teacher and social commentator