Indo-US Relations: Need for a New Look
Saumitra Mohan

Indo-US relations continue to reel under the aftershocks of Pokharan II. Only when the bilateral relations between the two countries looked set to attain new heights of cooperation in various fields, nuclear tests by India in May 1998 saw the nosedive in Indo-US relations. The US has not only clamped economic sanctions over India, but has pulled plug on her cooperation with this country in fields such as military-technological cooperation.

Despite India's declamations of her intentions of going nuclear, a determined United States has gone ahead with penalizing India even though opinion has varied in the US itself over the extent and magnitude of the sanctions. While a section displayed sympathy with India's justification of its nuclear tests, another section was quite vociferous in its demands to punish India for her defiance of the so-called world opinion on non-proliferation. There has been voice of dissent in President Bill Clinton's Democratic Party itself and a peeved US President himself described the US as sanctions-happy. It seems that the US sanctions were reluctantly imposed as the obtaining US laws on non-proliferation warranted such sanctions to be imposed upon India. Notwithstanding this reluctance and differences in the US, Uncle Sam does not seem to be relenting now in her bid to penalize India and seems all set to go the whole hog as reflected in its decision to expel Indian scientists from the US.

Hypocritical and unprincipled though the US stand is (the US is not ready to concede nuclear power status to other counties while she herself continues to possess these deadly weapons), one really does not understand as to why the US gives a communist China preference over a democratic India. No doubt, China does provide the US multi-national companies with a far bigger and prosperous market and good relations with China makes better economic sense, but China has been violating all that the US has stood for and has been championing for, namely human rights, non-proliferation and democracy. Human rights violations by China is a common knowledge today be it in Tibet or in Xinxiang.

China's export of missiles and related technology to Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and many other countries is well-documented. Even Pentagon and the US Department of State have reported Chinese infraction of Missile Technology Control Regime and Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, but it seems that economics seems to be getting better of the ethics relegating all that hot air over human rights to the back-burner. The United States has also been winking at the Chinese complicity in the suppression of democratic movements within the country and in such neighbouring countries as Myanmar and Cambodia.

Today, the US quite foolishly has been propping China at the expense of a democratic India and may be creating its Frankenstein which would finally gobble up its own creator. China's global ambitions are very well-known and if she continues to get the encouragement from the United States, it may emerge as a very strong rival to the US herself and may pose a threat to her superpower status. Who knows the Cold War which ended with the onset of this decade, may start lurking again and rush forth like the Godzilla to stomp on all the peace initiatives and disarmament moves. But it seems that the US policy-makers and think tanks refuse to see the writing on the wall as is evident from the observations made in a recent book titled, "The Grand Chessboard" by the strategic advisor to the While House, Zbigniew Brazinsky.

Quite strangely, Brazinsky in his book refers to the People's Republic of China as a natural ally of the United States and India as a potential rival. This despite the fact that India has never been known for its hegemonic ambitions and has always stood for world peace and security. India's support for noble principles of the United Nations has been very well-known. India's adherence to the major international instruments on disarmament and international understanding is an example for the world. Also, India has always been on the forefront to participate in any peace-making and peace-keeping activities round the world. But now if the US has her way, then India might not get what legitimately belongs to her, namely a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and this is because of India trying to secure her boundaries by aspiring for a nuclear deterrent of her own.

It is to be noted that India went nuclear only after all her attempts to secure a non-discriminatory treaty to end all nuclear weapons within a stipulated time-frame failed. But in a world where her adversaries have nuclear weapons (China openly and Pakistan surreptitiously), India can not count upon their goodwill to protect her sovereignty and integrity.

Despite all the hullabaloo over India's nuclear tests, the fact remains that even today the United States is the largest trade partner of India and the last few years have seen exponential rise in bilateral trade between the two countries. There is still further scope for such cooperation to attain new milestones if only economics could be kept out of politics. If the US could do business with China, why not so with India? After all, India is one of the projected great powers of the 21st Century. International politics observers including Barry Buzan, Henry Kissinger (in his Tour de force ‘Diplomacy’) and former premier and senior statesman of Singapore, Goh Chok, Tong have all been predicting that India would be one of the major powers to reckon with in the coming century. India's economic profile is also likely to improve tremendously with the dawn of the coming millennium, if the current and projected economic performance of the Indian economy is anything to go by.

The way the US has been prodding international agencies to cancel aid to India, it bodes ill for better relations between the two countries. Should the US understand the implications of denigrating and deprecating the largest democracy of the world, it should roll back its anti-India decisions. An investment in India with strong democratic institutions and third largest scientific pool in the world would be beneficial not only for the United States, but also for the international peace and security. The United States policy of treating Pakistan at par with India is also not advisable. India is far greater and much more important to deserve parity with Pakistan. During the Cold War, the US armed Pakistan to an extent which is proving suicidal to itself now as is obvious from the recent bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These bombings were reportedly executed at the behest of the Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden operating from Taliban-governed Afghanistan and it hardly needs to be mentioned that Taliban is being supported by Pakistan which is channeling its drug-money and US-weapons (tunneled into Pakistan during the Cold War) to the former.

Even as the talks between the US and India continue over the nuclear issue, the US should also review its own nuclear policy and try to see the logic of India's arguments over her Nuclearisation. If the US could co-opt China into the nuclear club to counter her Cold War rival. i.e., the former Soviet Union, there is no reason why it should not co-opt India and Pakistan, if only to maintain her hegemony in the world. But this very step would further expose the US double standards in the eyes of the world. So the only way-out left for the US is to move towards the global nuclear disarmament in a time bound manner.

One only hopes that future would see a better Indo-US relations and the US would understand the folly of propping a communist China at the expense of a democratic India, an India with whom the US has so much in common. Both the US and India has a common stake in promoting international peace and disarmament in the world in countering terrorism and narco-terrorism, in curbing religious human rights and democratic institutions globally.
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(1999)