US Woos India
With
"World Power Illusions
By Keith Jones
22 July 2005
World Socialist Web
In a joint statement Monday, Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W. Bush proclaimed their
resolve to transform the relationship between their countries
into a global partnership.
For several years
now, Indian and US officials have been speaking of an Indo-US strategic
partnership, including increased economic, scientific, technical
and military ties. That this partnership has suddenly taken on global
dimensions, with Bush and Singh touting it as a means to promote
stability, democracy, prosperity and peace throughout the world,
points to the rapidly shifting world geo-political and economic landscape.
The Bush administration
is anxious to court India, hoping that through increased Indo-US economic,
geo-political and military linkages, India can be transformed into a
viable counterweight to China and one malleable to US objectives and
pressure. Buoyed by Indias emergence as a major center for outsourced
business processing, research and manufacturing operations and the countrys
growing military prowess, Indias economic and political elite
is eager, meanwhile, to lay claim to world-power status, including a
permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Bush administration
officials were at pains to demonstrate the importance they attach to
the burgeoning Indo-US relationship during the four-day visit Manmohan
Singh made to the US this week. Bush greeted the Indian prime minister
with an elaborate ceremony on the White Houses South Lawn, then
feted him at a state dinner that evening. On Tuesday, Singh addressed
a joint session of the US Congress, an honor rarely accorded foreign
leaders.
On his first official
visit to the US since becoming prime minister in May 2004, Singh went
to extraordinary lengths to praise Bush and his administration. He hailed
the president who, in the name of fighting terrorism ordered
the US conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq and sweeping attacks on democratic
rights, for his steadfast determination and leadership in meeting
the challenges of international terrorism.
Putting paid to
the traditional anti-imperialist posture of Indian governments, to say
nothing of his own Congress party, Singh repeatedly spoke of the common
values that India and the US reputedly share, including the openness
of our societies and economies ... our pluralism, our diversity and
our freedom. It was not lost on Singhs audience that his
depiction of India and the US as twin victims of international terrorism,
who share a common interest in promoting democratic values around the
world, echoes the rhetoric of the Bush administration.
In a speech Wednesday
to the National Press Club, Singh did make brief mention of the Indian
governments official opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, but
only to say that this controversy was a thing of the past.
He thereby ignored the fact that Iraq remains under US occupation and
that the Bush administration remains committed to the doctrine of pre-emptive
warsthat is, the USs unfettered right to run roughshod over
international law and attack any country it deems a potential threat
to its interests.
The joint statement
issued by Bush and Singh calls, among other things, for: the establishment
of a CEO forum, uniting Indian and US business leaders to promote increased
trade and investment; India to take steps to enhance its investment
climatea euphemism for privatization, deregulation and regressive
changes to labor lawsif it wants to tap into US capital in modernizing
its infrastructure; US-Indian cooperation in developing stable
and efficient energy markets in India; public-private partnerships
in the space and high technology sector; and the creation of a US-India
Global Democracy Initiative in which the US and Indian government will
work together to provide assistance to states wants help in developing
democratic institutions.
The statement also
reiterated both countries support for the New Framework
for the US-India Defence Relationship signed last month by top
Indian and US officials, including Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee
and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Framework has provoked
much controversy in India. The Left Front, which provides the votes
to sustain the United Progressive Alliance coalition in power, and broad
sections of the Indian political and military-security establishments
are opposing the Framework, or sections of it, on the grounds that it
threatens Indias political and military independence. In particular
they are opposed to the suggestion that the Indian military could be
deployed overseas alongside US forces in non-UN approved operations,
and clauses that tie or potentially tie purchases of US military equipment
to acceptance of certain US policy stipulations.
A unique status for India
However, the most
important feature of this weeks joint statement was an agreement
between Washington and New Delhi that has as its aim the removal of
the international ban on sales of civilian nuclear technology and fuel
to India that has been imposed since 1974, when India first exploded
a nuclear device.
The Bush administration
stopped short of recognizing India, which officially proclaimed itself
a nuclear weapons state in 1998, as a state having the legal right to
possess nuclear weapons (a violation of the terms of the 1968 Non-Proliferation
Treaty). But it has effectively announced that it favors India being
accorded a special status in the international treaty and regulatory
system governing nuclear technologywhat the Bush-Singh statement
calls a responsible state with advanced nuclear technologyso
long as India agrees to certain restrictions and international oversight
of its civilian nuclear program and the other nuclear countries
and the US Congress agree.
Indian government
officials are proclaiming the statement a major advance. Foreign Secretary
Shyam Saran boasted to a media briefing, What has been achieved
is recognition by the US that, for all practical purposes, India should
have the same benefits and rights as a nuclear weapons state.
India, which is
heavily dependent on foreign oil, is eager to expand its nuclear power
generation capacity and for this needs greater access to foreign nuclear
technology and fuel.
A second major consideration
for both New Delhi and Washington is the fact that the sanctions imposed
on India for being outside the international nuclear regulatory regime
have included prohibitions on the sale of advanced US military equipment.
The US-based intelligence report Stratfor says official Pentagon leaks
have said India is poised to make up to $5 billion in purchases from
US arms manufactures once the sanctions are lifted, including advanced
anti-submarine and anti-missile technology to protect its Indian Ocean
fleet.
The Bush administration
has a double purpose in seeking to boost arms sales to India. Needless
to say, it wants to boost the US arms industry, but it is also extremely
anxious to render India dependent on US military technology.
The transformation in US-Indian relations
The Bush administrations
scheme to give India a special status within the international nuclear
regulatory regime is clearly an attempt to give substance to the offer
that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made when she visited India
last March of US assistance in making India a world power.
Here is not the
place to recount the complex history of US-Indian relations. But it
must be noted that for four decades India and the US were estranged,
because the Indian national bourgeoisie, having won independence from
Britain, refused to submit to the USs demand that its foreign
policy should be framed by the USs Cold War confrontation with
the Soviet Union. Subsequently, Washington made Indias bitter
South Asian rival, Pakistan, a linchpin of its Cold War alliance-system,
which led India to develop close military and economic relations with
the USSR. The Indian bourgeoisies foreign policy was, it should
be added, bound up with its attempt to pursue a national economic development
strategy that sought to lessen the economic domination of the advanced
capitalist powers through import substitution and a fair measure of
state ownership.
With the end of
the Cold War and the growing crisis in Indias economy created
by its relative isolation from the resources of world economy, the Indian
bourgeoisie has since 1991 pursued a radically different strategy, aimed
at soliciting foreign investment so as to make India a cheap-labor haven
for world capital. The dismantling of the traditional nationally regulated
economy and accompanying assault on the limited concessions made to
the working class and oppressed masses in the first decades after independence
has been accompanied by a major shift in Indias foreign policy.
The US has emerged as Indias single largest trading partner and
foreign investor and increasingly New Delhi and Washington have developed
a gamut of ties, including joint military exercises.
The US for its part
has increasingly embraced India as an ally. Already under the Clinton
administration there was a major change in the US attitude towards South
Asia, with Washington tilting away from Pakistan and toward India. Because
of its apprehensions about the growing power of China, the Bush administration
from the time it came to office in 2001 sought to place relations with
India on a new plane. The US decision to invade Afghanistan and subsequent
revival of Washingtons close relations with Pakistan, especially
the Pakistani military, complicated the Bush administration efforts
to draw India into a strategic partnership.
But leading figures
in the administration have indicatedas exemplified by Rices
offer of help in making India a world powerthat the
pursuit of a partnership with India is central to its world geo-political
strategy.
In May, the number
three man in the State Department hierarchy, Nicholas Burns, the Undersecretary
for Political Affairs, said of US-Indian relations, I think youll
see this as a major focus of our president and our secretary of state,
and it will be the area of greatest dynamic change in American foreign
policy.
The worlds most important swing state
One indication of
the importance powerful sections of the Washington establishment attach
to the India card is demonstrated by a recent CIA report
which reputedly identified India as the most important swing state
in the worlds geo-political systemthat is to say a state
that could either ally with the US or become a party to anti-US alliance.
Doubts as to whether
India is destined to be allied with the US in the intensifying struggle
among the great powers for resources, markets and geo-political advantage
are not misplaced. Many in the Indian political and national-security
establishment remain deeply skeptical of US intentions and objectives
and these concerns have only been heightened by the Bush administrations
bellicose and unilateralist course.
India has maintained
close diplomatic and military ties with Russia. Shortly after the 2003
US invasion of Iraq, Indias National Democratic Alliance government,
led by the strongly pro-US Hindu supremacist BJP, launched a concerted
drive to repair relations with China. In April, the Chinese Premier
visited India and the two countries announced a strategic partnership.
India has also taken steps to join the Chinese and Russian-led Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, through which Moscow and Beijing are seeking
to counter US influence in the Asia, especially Central Asia.
While Manmohan Singh
has shied away from joining Moscow and Beijing in counterposing a multi-polar
world to the current geo-political order, he has repeatedly spoken out
against unilateralism in world affairs, in other words Washingtons
current policy. And he and his government have been forced to speak
out forcefully against US attempts to coerce India and Pakistan into
giving up their plans for a gas-pipeline connecting the two South Asian
countries to Iran.
What Indias
multiple strategic partnerships with Russia, China, and the US indicate
is that the current Congress-led UPA is trying to exploit Indias
status as a state that is being courted by other great powers. However,
this is a dangerous game. Others within the Indian establishment fear
the current government is too accepting of the embrace of an increasingly
volatile and provocative US and may already be seriously eroding Indias
room for maneuver.
At the same time
there are significant divisions within the US political and national-security
establishment over the wisdom of so openly pursuing the building of
an Asian counterweight to China and placing so much stock in an India
which has a long history of opposing US objectives and a political and
economic elite that has jealously guarded its independence from Washington.
Even in the immediate term, the Bush administrations hot pursuit
of India complicates the USs relations with Pakistan.
Significantly, while
the US has embraced the demand of longtime ally Japan, a state that
shares its concerns about the rise of China, for a permanent UN Security
Council seat, it has failed to officially endorse Indias similar
quest.
Overall the response
to Singhs visit within the US media was highly positive, not least
because US corporations are increasingly focusing on using India as
a low-cost platform in winning world markets. But the jury remains out
on the most important decision announced during the summitthe
Bush administrations willingness to accord India a new special
status in the world nuclear regulatory regime. Many question if this
will not further undermine the USs credibility when it claims
to be upholding the authority of international law in opposing the efforts
or alleged efforts of powers deemed unfriendly by Washington to obtain
nuclear weapons.
The Washington Post
was especially biting in an editorial titled A new nuclear era.
The Bush administration, begins the Post, is known
for gambles, and Mondays about-face on nuclear cooperation with
India qualifies as such. The editorial concludes by observing
that as the Bush team has discovered before, announcing a bold
new policy is easier than implementing it.