|
Bush Presidency : Its meaning for India |
 |
Ahead of Mr. George W. Bush moving into the White House, it is being held in foreign policy circles that India is unlikely to get the same attention from the new Administration as it did from President Bill Clinton. Yet, a leading US think tank, Rand Corporation, has urged the incoming Bush Administration to forge a special relationship with India and develop a foreign policy towards New Delhi independent of its south Asia policy.
Foreign policy experts at the Jane’s in London say their preliminary assessment is that New Delhi is going to miss the sensitivity which Mr. Clinton showed to its security concerns, particularly after the Kargil conflict. In an interview with the NEW YORK TIMES when asked his favourite foreign trip, the first name to strike Clinton after eight continuous years and innumerable foreign trips was the “rising tiger of South Asia”, India. Other countries including his mother’s native Ireland, followed later. He said, the best food he ever tasted was at the Bukhara restaurant in Maurya Sheraton, in New Delhi when he visited India last March.
The widespread perception is that Mr. Clinton often betrayed a “pro-India tilt” which gave New Delhi a diplomatic advantage in its difficulties with Islamabad. “This is going to change”, according to Paul Beaver, spokesman for Jane’s. He said, the Bush Administration is not likely to identify itself strongly with either side. To that extent, Islamabad has reason to be more comfortable with the new regime, Beaver said ins a year-end review of strategic affairs, organised for foreign correspondents in London.
The Pakistan lobby in the US is working to install a second Ms Robin Rahel to head the South Asia division in the US State Department, Shirin Tahir-Kheli. Since the 1990s, she has not hidden her preference for a Kashmir that is autonomous of India, if not directly a art of Pakistan. She has received support from pro-Pakistan businessmen such as Mansur Ijaz and Farook Kathwari, enabling her to make several trips to the region and organise round tables on finding “solutions” to Kashmir that would satisfy Islamabad. Her speeches and writings on South Asia are dominated by Kashmir and by other Indo-Pak conudrums, bypassing almost entirely the spectacular economic performs of India and its steady maturing as a democracy. Tahir-Kheli has a powerful patron in James Baker, Secretary of State under Bush Senior. Reports from Washington indicate that she is in front runner for the post of Assistant Secretary [South Asia] ahead of the well-respected academic, James Clad.
However, while it is too early to say which way the new President tilts and there are reports tat both India and Pakistan are going to be “on the self” for a while, a leading US think tank has urged the incoming George W. Bus administration to forge a special relationship with India and develop a foreign policy towards New Delhi independent of a South Asia policy that lumps India with all other nations in the sub-continent. The Rand Corporation, considered the pentagon’s own think tank, has in a study also called on the Bush team to urge Pakistan to show restraint on Kashmir and partner the international community in its fight against terrorism. The 61-page study is especially significant as it has been co-authored by Afghan-born Zalmay Khalizad, a former Assistant Secretary of Defence in the administration of George W. Bus’s father, George Bush [1088-92]. In its South Asia section, the report said, the new Administration’s policy towards the region should “begin by decoupling India and Pakistan” for starters and consequently Washington’s relations with New Delhi and Islamabad should be “governed by an assessment of the intrinsic value of each country to American interests.” It noted that “India is becoming a major Asian power and, therefore, warrants an increased level of engagement and appreciation of its potential for both collaboration and resistance across a much larger canvas than South Asia.
Bush’s National Security Adviser-designate, Condolezza Rice and the India Caucus’s democratic leader, Jim McDermott, have said in recent interviews that they saw a much larger regional role for India, incorporating Central Asia, besides just South Asia.
Also the coming days will show if Mr. Bush stands by his reputation of being an opponent of CTBT and thus not inclined to putting pressure on India to sign or to pressure Pakistan to be more forthcoming in its response to resolve the Kashmir problem with India. Some foreign policy analysts say, the Bush Administration is expected to give more attention to relations with Japan and India. Clinton had ruffled Japanese sentiments when he skipped a visit to Japan because he was visiting China and wished to emphasise the “strategic partnership” he was forging with Beijing. Bush’s first concern in the Asia-Pacific region would be relations with Japan. Bush has himself gone on record during is election campaign tat he would give priority attention to the US-Japan partnership. This has been the cornerstone of the East Asia policy of the USA until recently when Japan received a few diplomatic shocks generating a feeling that it was now balancing US-Japanese relations with US-Chinese relations. Bush is now telling the Japanese: perish the thought. It was with Japan, and not with China, tat the relationship was that of partnership.
Similarly, Bush may turn the focus a little more towards India. There can be no doubt that Clinton had been tilting towards China more heavily than any other US President. He virtually invited China to share suzerainty along with the USA over the South Asian region. A notable feature of the last two decades has been the heavy US tilt towards China and Pakistan. Clinton himself strove to redress this imbalance during the last year and half of his term. Bush would in all likelihood further redress this imbalance. This does not mean, and could not mean, any renewed Sino-US hostility, but a more even handed US approach between India and China. There is, thus a window of opportunity for India.
There has been a general impression that Democrat presidencies in the US are good for Indo-US ties compared to Republican presidencies. The second is that Bush does not have much experience or interest in foreign affairs, and therefore, he is not likely to have a foreign policy vision beyond the immediate strategic and foreign policy vision beyond the immediate strategic and foreign policy priorities which are brought to his notice by his advisers. As remarked by former Foreign Secretary,J.N. Dixit, neither of these assessments is entirely accurate. Indo-US relations were terribly good or substantive during the Truman and Carter administrations, both Democrat. Though President Kennedy gave prompt help to India during its military debacle against the Chinese in 1962, he was not terribly impressed with Nehru’s persona and his vision of a world order. Indeed, it is only towards the end of Clinton’s second term that there was a qualitative improvement in Indo-US relations, which have been described in Vajpayee’s message to Bush as the new warmth and vibrancy that have been introduced. The point being made is that there is no validity in the assessment that the outgoing Democrat administration was more friendly towards India than possibly the incoming Republican one. The interaction between governments in the US and India has been influenced by perceived national interests, by political, strategic and security considerations. There was, of course, the undercurrent of ideological complexes of the US rooted in the Cold War which affected its perceptions about India. Says Mr. Dixit, tat this undercurrent is no longer a factor is an over-arching and positive development.
What foreign policy concerns of the new Bush Administration will factor India? Bush, says Mr. J.N. Dixit, is not an internationalist in the conventional sense of the term. His foreign, economic and strategic policies would be centred on the primary interests of the US. One can, therefore, expect a duality in US nuclear non-proliferation policies under Bush, an issue of primary concern to India. He is already on record that he is not in favour of CTBT. But, he has at the same time, reiterated his commitment to furthering the cause of non-proliferation amongst non-nuclear weapons States. His administration is likely to be more active in utilizing WTO mechanisms to generate pressure on western Europe and on countries like India on issues of special economic interest to the US. Given the ethos of the Republican Party, the new US administration would be more active advocate of liberalisation and privatisation and of free market prescriptions to structure the world economic order. It is reasonable to expect that the Bush administration would use issues like human rights, environment and multilateralism more as instruments of US foreign policy than as causes to pursue devotedly. It is on the basis of this matrix that the US will structure its policy towards India and South Asia as a whole.
In his election campaign, Bush has given some specific indications about his policies towards India which merit recall. He stated that if he were elected, he would be in favour of immediately lifting all sanctions against India. This view meshes in with his lack of interest in the CTBT and therefore his inclination to generally accept India’s nuclear and missile weaponisation, though he may not endorse it. His Administration will continue to argue in favour of India pulling back from its nuclear weaponisation programme, but it would be more in the nature of advice within the framework of the US’s global non-proliferation policies rather than an exercise of direct bilateral pressure. This will give India more political space to negotiate this issue with the US.
Bush has stated that the US has often overlooked the great land mass lying to the south of Eurasia in its strategic calculations. He has asserted tat the US should take note of and react to democratic India’s emergence as a major influence in world affairs in the 21st century. He has specially advocated more trade and investment relations with India, giving the assessment that a close relationship with India would be a force for stability and security in Asia.
However, political analysts anticipate the Bush Administration inclined to generate the type of pressure the Clinton Administration did on Pakistan since j1999. Gen. Colin Powell as Secretary of State is likely to activate the traditional interaction between the Pentagon and the Pakistani military establishment in certain political dimensions. The US Government will assume a more partial position on the Kashmir dispute but it will be more assertive in pressuring Pakistan to cooperate with the West to counter national terrorism and narco-terrorism. But, this would be linked to security concerns of the US and the West and not so much the impact of these phenomena in Jammu and Kashmir.
|
