Asia-Pacific, Global, Global Geopolitics, Global Governance, Headlines

INDIA: ‘No Reason For Unease at Obama Presidency’

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Jan 20 2009 (IPS) - As much of the world jubilates in the swearing in of Barack Hussein Obama as the President of the United States of America, Indian diplomats are uneasy about what his presidency would entail for relations between the two countries.

Former Indian diplomats and independent experts believe that India has no reason to be particularly apprehensive about the Obama presidency given the breadth and the depth of the U.S.-India relationship.

“In fact, in keeping with its past tradition of support for the civil liberties movement in the U.S. and for the cause of multiculturalism and pluralist democracy, New Delhi should extend the heartiest welcome to the first Black president of the country,” said a former senior diplomat who declined to be identified.

He added: “Obama represents the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King who was greatly inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and had a special relationship with India. Obama is himself an ardent admirer of Gandhi, whose autobiography is one of his favourite books. Besides, Obama has repeatedly committed himself to further build a close relationship with India.”

Indian officials’ apprehensions about Obama arise on three counts. First, unlike George W. Bush, who made Iraq the centrepiece of his foreign policy and war on terrorism, Obama will focus strongly on South Asia and Afghanistan.

Indian leaders had developed a strong equation with Bush to the point of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh publicly telling him that “the people of India love you”.


Besides deepening the “strategic partnership” with India, Bush had taken the extraordinary step of offering India a nuclear cooperation deal, completed last year, which resumes civilian nuclear trade with it although India is a self-confessed nuclear weapons-state.

Indian officials are less sure about building a similarly close relationship with Obama. Although Obama eventually voted for the nuclear deal, he had moved an amendment in the Senate which would cap the amount of imported nuclear fuel that India could stockpile.

In general, they believe a Democrat administration is likely to be less friendly with India than the Republicans, and will emphasise the nuclear non-proliferation agenda with proposals to ban nuclear explosions through the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and an agreement to stop the production of bomb fuel (Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty or FMCT).

Secondly, Indian officials fear that President Obama may link a resolution of the Kashmir issue with its strategy of stabilising Pakistan. In recent interviews to “Time” magazine, Obama made such an explicit link and said that addressing Pakistan’s security concerns on its eastern border with India would be the key to securing Islamabad’s cooperation in the war on terror along its western border.

Obama is expected to appoint a special envoy to the South Asian region, including Afghanistan and Kashmir. Former president Bill Clinton and diplomat Richard Holbrooke have been mentioned as possible candidates for that position.

India has conveyed its reservations about bringing Kashmir into this agenda and emphasised that it is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.

“It seems likely that in deference to India’s stand, Washington will drop an explicit reference to Kashmir as part of the special envoy’s mandate,” says Qamar Agha, independent expert on Central and West Asia.

“But there can be little doubt that Obama will want to rework the India-Pakistan relationship in order to ensure stability in the entire region between the Indus River and the Hindu Kush,” Agha added.

”India would do well,” Agha said, ”to prepare itself for this. But it need not be apprehensive that Washington will thrust mediation over Kashmir down India’s throat. Mediation would only become possible if India demands it or accepts it.”

Kashmir is no longer the “hot” issue that it was until recently and Pakistan has by and large taken a hands-off approach to Kashmir. It did not try to disrupt the legislative assembly elections that were held there last month by encouraging separatist militants.

Nor has Islamabad commented adversely on the elections, with their relatively high voter turnout of 62 percent, or on the formation of a coalition government that would support the India-Pakistan dialogue process.

A third source of India’s apprehension is the perception in Washington that the top priority as regards Afghanistan is to secure Pakistan’s cooperation in the war against the Taliban-al-Qaeda, and that this would mean reducing the pressure on Islamabad to act decisively against the jehadi networks that have been staging terrorist attacks in India.

Obama plans to intensify the Afghanistan war by doubling the number of U.S. troops there. A precondition for prosecuting the war is the active cooperation of the Pakistan army with the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force.

Indian policymakers believe that the main motive behind the Nov. 26-29 terrorist attacks in Mumbai by Pakistan-based jehadi groups was to provoke a military response from India, which would create conditions for the redeployment of Pakistani troops away from the Afghanistan border – to ease pressure on the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

“India is banking heavily on the U.S. to put pressure on Pakistan to crack down on the militant groups working from its soil,” says Achin Vanaik, a professor of international relations and global politics at the University of Delhi. “But the amount of pressure that Washington can actually exert on Islamabad will be limited by its preoccupation with the Afghanistan war.”

Adds Vanaik: “India must develop an independent strategy, both bilateral and multilateral, to get Pakistan to act against the jehadi groups. It must try to revive back-channel or Track II contacts with Pakistan, which can be useful in crises as well as in peacetime.”

India has developed a multi-layered relationship with the U.S., encompassing defence and strategic cooperation, and joint projects in numerous areas such as agriculture, trade, energy, water management, and outreach and distance education. Obama is unlikely to want to downgrade this relationship.

India can also play a useful role in facilitating contacts between the U.S. and Iran, with which New Delhi has a friendly relationship in spite of recent problems caused by India’s votes against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and non-completion of the much- vaunted Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project.

Similarly, India can offer cooperation in relief and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan, where it has run a successful aid programme worth 850 million US dollars. .

“However, the last thing India should do,” says Vanaik, “is to get drawn into sending troops to Afghanistan or seeking a strategic presence there as a means of countering Pakistan’s influence.

Last week, India’s army chief Deepak Kapoor hinted at this option. But that course risks getting India into a fraught Cold War-style relationship with Pakistan on Afghanistan’s soil, to the detriment of all three states.”

 
Republish | | Print |


mindful eating books