US must not ignore India much longer

It’s time for the Democrats to cement America’s Bush-forged alliance with India. President Obama is sending his heavy-hitter secretary of state Hillary Clinton to New Delhi in July to woo India before it reverts to Russia for military hardware and France for nuclear reactors.

Sensing a growing nostalgia for Bush in New Delhi, Tunku Varadarajan, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and editor for opinions at Forbes, even said, “An effective way to dispel Indian apprehensions about an Obama administration would be for the president himself to visit New Delhi very early in his presidency.” The nostalgia springs from the fact that Bush is credited with “de-hyphenating” Washington’s longtime ‘India-Pakistan’ policy. Are Bush’s attempts to focus on India as the main ally in the region moving to the backburner?

Obama has pledged that deepening ties with India are a “first-order of priority”, but behind the platitudes New Delhi is disbelieving. It has been fretting for months that it could be pushed into the background as the US needs China to ride out the recession and Pakistan to fight the Taliban. Obama’s intervene-in-Kashmir instinct has also sowed alarm in New Delhi. Overall, the India-US relationship is a sturdy one. Still, Clinton will have a happier visit if she doesn’t mention Kashmir. She will, however, urge India to get talks rolling with Pakistan and share America’s manual for AfPak.

US foreign policy experts say Obama has been hands-off with India not because he has any reflexive inclination to treat India as “Bush country” but because he has a lot on his plate. His priorities as reflected in his trip to Egypt include ending the “clash of civilisations”, crushing the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and bandaging the US economy.  “India is not one of the fires that have to be put out. Unfortunately, this administration is faced with a lot of fires raging out of control,” Mira Kamdar, senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and author of Planet India, told DNA.

“With the Bush administration, India enjoyed a relationship it had not had prior and may never see again. It had a sort of ‘special ally’ status as the US wanted a reliable counterweight to China and a partner in the war on terror. This administration doesn’t even use that expression. There has been an ideological shift. Does that mean it thinks terror has disappeared? No. That’s why it is pouring money into Pakistan and trying to cope with the Taliban. This will be disappointing to India. But that is the glass half-empty side,” said Kamdar. On the glass half-full side of the equation, Obama’s new $7.5 billion aid package to Pakistan won’t be a blank cheque. US is keeping the pressure on them to crush the Taliban.

Pakistan can’t survive without American patronage and India has to be patient as an imploding Pakistan spells trouble for everyone. Obama has shrewdly named Timothy Roemer, a member of the 9/11 Commission, as the new US ambassador to India as he will be sensitive to India’s concerns.

Pakistan’s strikes against the Taliban don’t necessarily signal a policy shift. Islamic radicals like the LeT are still seen as strategic assets in some barracks. “India is being targeted by military-backed terror groups, like the LeT, that are of little interest to US policy. Washington intends to goad New Delhi to reduce border troop deployments, a step that would help Pakistan to infiltrate more terrorists into India,” warned strategic affairs analyst Brahma Chellaney in an article.

Singh will have to protect India’s interests while playing hardball with the US. Some wonder about America’s growing economic dependence on China which maintains claims on Indian territory and, some fear, plans to encircle India with military facilities.

Clinton declared US-China ties “the most important bilateral relationship in the world” during her maiden Asia trip to Beijing. Her comments on India  will be much awaited in July.