Why the US gave up India as a Strategic partner?

Posted on 23 February 2009.

Why the US gave up India as a Strategic partner? The answer to this complex question can be summed up in a Clintonian cliche “its the economy stupid”. The Obama Administration has taken a page out of the Nixon playbook–build a relationship with China at the expense of India. The Bush administration had tries to build up India as a counterweight to China with a strategic partnership with India “as a natural ally”. This report in the New York Times is a poignant reminder of where the world of US-China relationship is headed. One never thought that we would see a US Secretary of State in Beijing literally begging the Chinese for “loans” (actually buying Treasury bonds). Its a new world–let the begging and groveling begin.

BEIJING — Hillary Rodham Clinton said she wanted to spend her first trip as secretary of state listening. But she ended up saying a lot, and in blunter terms, than many of her pinstriped predecessors. The Clinton Straight Talk Express made its last big stop in Beijing on Sunday, with Mrs. Clinton explaining to a Chinese talk show host why China had better keep buying United States Treasury bonds. “It’s a good investment, it’s a safe investment,” she told Yang Lan, the host of a show on Dragon Television.

The Chinese government, she said, has an even more compelling incentive to keep buying: it needs the United States to recover as a market for Chinese goods. To jolt the economy back to life, she added, the United States needs to be able to take on more debt. “We are truly going to rise or fall together,” she said. “We are in the same boat and, thankfully, we are rowing in the same direction.” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner could not have said it better.

Speaking of Mr. Geithner, Mrs. Clinton cleared up the question of how the two of them were going to divide China policy. Speculation about who would control China policy has crackled since it became clear she was not ready to cede it to the Treasury Department, as happened during the Bush administration. Mrs. Clinton said she and Mr. Geithner would share leadership of a high-level consultation between China and the United States that would be balanced between strategic issues like North Korea and economic concerns. The New York Times. A Clinton Listening Tour, but China Gets an Earful By MARK LANDLER Published: February 22, 2009

The British once said referred to China with the prodigious forecast “Don’t wake the the sleeping giant“. Well according to the signals coming out Asia—the Red Dragon in Beijing has woken. Those who thought that Communism was dead and Capitalism is kicking butt take a look at four cities–Beijing, Moscow, New York and London. There is celebration in two and malaise in two. The world take note. While President Barack Obama is funding bailouts, spending US Dollars like it is going out of style other realities are creeping into the picture. In a sign of the times, America is at the doorstep of the Chinese money lenders literally on its knees asking for help from the Chinese in propping up the government. Everything has a price. For the first time, the center of gravity on finance has moved away from New York. From this day onwards, it will not always be the New York or Zurich bankers that dictate how the world will be structured.It’s not as if the switch has been turned on and the Chinese are in control–that reality is about 3 or 4 decades away. For now there is stoic quite celebration in “the Middle Kingdom” in the fact that some of the decisions will be made in Beijing.

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The relationship between the “worlds largest democracies” has been sacrificed once again for the sake of the almighty Dollar and the other small irritant in West Asia–aka “defeat in Afghanistan”. India finds itself on the wrong side of history once again. For the first half century of its existence Bharat supported the Evil Empire. Then in the 80s when the USSR imploded and Yogoslavia imploded, the Indian policy makers worked overtime to come up with a strategy of survival on this third planet from the sun. Egged on by a Democratic Congress, Mr. Clinton encouraged India to explode a nuclear device. The Pokran explosions had a affect on India like the world has never seen. It allowed the youthful nation to being thinking big–beyond the confines of reality and beyond the realm of imagination. Within a decade of meager growth, Indian had not only proclaimed themselves a Superpower, but also convinced themselves of the death of Pakistan, the subservience of Bangladesh, the destruction of Lanka and the erosion of Nepal as a political entity. In this dream world, Bollywood stopped filming movies in India and brought world capitals, skyscrapers and modern amenities into the theatres and homes of ordinary Indians. Pretty soon a fog enveloped the nation–they actually started believing the Bollywood baloney and got swollen heads. Like the Michelins man full of air, the Superpower began to think of its borders beyond Uzbekistan and its Navy beyond the Pacific and Atlantic.

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But there is another aspect in Obama’s new foreign policy that worries India even more. Obama’s China policy renders obsolete the Indian strategic calculus built around the US containment strategy. Hardly two to three years ago, the Bush administration encouraged India to put faith in a quadrilateral alliance of Asian democracies – the US, Japan, Australia and India – that would strive to set the rules for China’s behavior in the region.

According to reports, State Department officials had originally proposed that India be included in the itinerary of Clinton’s current first official tour abroad, but she struck it out. As things stand, Clinton meant every word of what she wrote last year in her Foreign Affairs article that “our [US] relationship with China will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century”.

In a major speech at the Asia Society in New York last Friday before embarking on her tour of Asia, Clinton said, “We believe that the United States and China can benefit from and contribute to each other’s successes. It is in our interests to work harder to build on areas of common concern and shared opportunities”. She argued for a “comprehensive dialogue” and a “broader agenda” with China.

The Washington Post cited State Department officials as saying, “It is symbolically important that Clinton is the first secretary of state in nearly 50 years to intensely focus his or her maiden voyage on Asia”. The story is easily comprehensible. The US needs to have new opportunities to export more to China; it should persuade Beijing to accept a realistic dollar-yuan exchange rate; and, it should convince China to keep investing its money in America. But what is unfolding is also a phenomenal story insofar as a new chapter in their mutually dependent relationship is commencing where the two countries become equal partners in crisis. This was simply unthinkable.

Dennis Blair, the newly appointed director of national intelligence, in his testimony before the US senate intelligence committee on January 22, struck a fine balance when he said,

While the United States must understand China’s military buildup – its extent, its technological sophistication and its vulnerabilities – in order to offset it, the intelligence community also needs to support policymakers who are looking for opportunities to work with Chinese leaders who believe that Asia is big enough for both of us and can be an Asia in which both countries can benefit as well as contribute to the common good.

However, this is precisely where a serious problem arises for India. In the Indian perception, South Asia and the Indian Ocean just aren’t “big enough” for India and China. Asia Times. India grapples with the Obama era By M K Bhadrakumar. M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

India had hoped for severe sanctions on Pakistan in a post-Mumbai era. The exact opposite has happened. While lip service was paid to Indian concerns, Pakistan is now being rewarded with a $7.5 Billion 5 year iron clad aid package. Additionally Pakistan will get about $5 Billion in immediate aid to Islamabad. Richard Holbrooke has invited ten Pakistani economists for proposals for a “Marshall Plan for Pakistan. One economist has submitted a $60 Billion wish list to Washington which the US is reviewing. Japan has doubled the aid to Pakistan. The “Friends of Pakistan” will come through. Pakistan wants preferential treatment in trade and seeks an FTA with the USA and the EU.

The Indians are livid.

The Republican gravy train lasted for a decade, and Indians could do no wrong and. The Indian Midas touch enabled them to really begin thinking beyond their imagination. There was one slight problem with this flight of fancy. It had nothing to do with reality. In a country in which more than 80% live below the poverty line and the fist thing you see outside the Mumbai airport is scores of people taking a dump, the reality of the situation took some time. ON the hunger index Bharat was below Barkino Faso–the hungriest country in South Asia. Behold the Superpower where 40% of the land is controlled by the Naxalites, and there are 89 insurgencies raging. Behold the Superpower where 450 million Dalits don’t struggle for a better life, but the right to be accepted as Human Beings. Behold the dreams of a Superpower where it takes half the Indian army to hold on to Kashmir. It took some time for the world to realize that the horse they were betting on was no more than an ass, incapable of achieving anything for several centuries.