The Bharati objectives for the trip to Washington were to secure firm US support for Bharat’s (aka India’s) applications for a UN Security Council seat, the final operationalization of the US-India 123 Nuclear Treaty, the beginning of a Bharat centric focus for the US in Asia, and a repudiation of Pakistan as an instrument of American policy. Bharat lost out on all four counts. Delhi did not get any assurances on support for the UN Security Council Seat. It got stone cold silence on the 123 Nuclear deal. It got rebuffed on Pakistan when President Obama told them that “Pakistan was an important ally of the US, and was doing well in its fight against the terrorists”. Cold water was poured on Bharati ambitions of playing counterweight to China. In fact the US which supposedly had divided the world into Chinese and American camps, let South Asia in the hands of Beijing.
The pageant & the thud of the jilt–that ended the romance: New rocky road in Indo-US relations. If the selection of wines offered at the State banquet was any indication of a brush off to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh–he surely should have gotten the message. Why ‘Chinusa’, Chipak will rule the world & Chindia failed–An Indian perspective.
Bharat did get lecture son climate control, nuclear proliferation, the importance resolve disputes with her neighbors, mending fences with Pakistan (read resolve Kashmir) and pressure to vote against Iran. Mr. Manmohan Singh also got admonished for activities in Pakistan and Delhi was asked to curtail its activities in Afghanistan.
The US administration had the choice of choosing between the Gargantuan economic behemoth China or the Lilliputian economic upstarts eternally tied up in squabbles with all her neighbors. It wasn’t a question of sleepless night. President Obama weighed his options, on how to win in Afghanistan. The choices were stark but very clear. He could curry favor with Delhi, and infuriate his banker in Beijing and antagonize an already angry Pakistan. The choice became clearer as the corrupt Mr. Karzai failed to win a rigged election. The news from the Afghanistan battlefield was grim. There was only one choice–work with the Chinese and the Pakistanis. US offers Taliban Kandahar, Zabul, Hilmand, Orazgan Nooristan & Kunar
M.J. Akbar. Deccan Herald
Obama was happy to project China as a benevolent partner in the effort to resolve disputes in South Asia, including Kashmir. Islamabad has not heard any music above the gunfire recently, so this particular aria must have sounded particularly mellifluous. would be to outsource the fighting completely to Pakistan so that American soldiers could return home.AfpakYou do not have to be psychic to read Obama’s mind: he needs China on-side to prevent a collapse of the dollar; and his ideal end-game in
The big thud that one heard in Washington was Delhi being jilted. Bharat had hoped to convince Mr. Obama about how great and sexy Bharat was, instead of Beijing. Mr. Singh failed to do so.
- Mr. Singh did not get the Nuclear deal signed in Washington (how many times does this darn deal need to be signed anyway?!)
- Mr. Singh failed to convince the US about sanctions on Pakistan or at least no aid to Pakistan
- Mr. Singh failed to get support for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
- Mr. Singh did get a great dinner. However the choice of offerings for the Whiskey drinking Premier were simply limited-he got cheap California wine–vintage (well no vintage, but it was a year old)
There is increasing discontent in Bharati political circles about the state of affairs of Indo-US relations. here is a sampling.
”In a nutshell, Singh got a nice state ceremony, China got respect as an equal and Pakistan has got billions of dollars of additional US aid,” said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. ”India will have to be satisfied with the sumptuous dinner.”
While we [India] were deluding ourselves with Chindia (that China and India will call the shots in the future) and hetting paranoid about Chi-Pak (China and Pakistan are encircling India from two sides), US and China forged a new relationship. And the basis of this relationship is: that they will have their spheres of influence – east, south east and south Asia and Africa for China; and Europe and Latin America for the US. So, it was not just a coincidence that Obama gave China the role of monitor in South Asia. Shobhan Saxena Times of India
The cynical interpretation is that India has been allotted 1.5 billion words a year and Pakistan 1.5 billion dollars. M.J. Akbar Deccan Herald
Strategically India and the US are growing apart–Great Delhi supporter and Indophile–Stephen Cohen
Why ‘Chinusa’, Chipak will rule the world & Chindia failed–An Indian prespective
Singh failed in the main objective of his visit – to ”operationalise” the nuclear deal concluded in the Bush era. While Obama pledged to ”fully implement” the agreement, potentially crucial details of nuclear technology transfers to India have not been finalised. Matt Wade Herald Correspondent SMH Australia
Obama rebuffs PM Singh–eulogizes Pakistan as important ally
So, what’s in store for India? The only option available to India is junior partnership with both US and China. We can only have a buyer-seller ties with them. They sell and we buy. They sell their nuclear reactors and fighter jets and bankrupt companies to us and we save their economy with our hard cash. It’s the same situation with China. Shobhan Saxena Times of India
Obama rebuffs PM Singh–eulogizes Pakistan as important ally
“It seemed to suggest that India had simply fallen between two stools – Pakistan and China were urgent priorities for different reasons,” Editorial in the Indian Express newspaper Monday, November 23rd, 2009.
We may aspire to a seat at the high table of world power but China is already sitting at the head of the table along with the United States,”…”It has enough IOUs in its pocket to stop anyone from pushing it around. We also are a billion-strong nation, a democracy to boot and growing economically at a still impressive rate given the global conditions. But, realistically speaking, we are a second or perhaps third tier force in the eyes of the United States.” Journalist Gautam Adhikari in the Times of India Monday.
The deal was a leap in faith, promising India access to advanced ENR (enrichment and reprocessing) technologies. But negotiations are proving difficult. Delhi did everything to “incentivize” the American side by offering two sites where nuclear power plants imported from the US would be set up and showing willingness to legislate that the liability of the US companies would be limited in the event of accidents involving imported American reactors. Bhadrakumar. Asia Times
But the US side is just not ready to conclude an agreement on ENR. It is not that Obama is retracting. The US compulsions are twofold: any ENR agreement needs to be situated within the new nuclear non-proliferation architecture that the world community may agree on, and secondly, it may complicate Obama’s strategy with regard to the analogous issue of Iran’s right to have reprocessing technology.
On balance, Washington lacks the strength to assert it will have an ENR with India and will still enforce its writ on the non-proliferation regime.
M.J. Akbar of the Deccan Herald adds:
Behind the smiles demanded by ‘teleview’ international relations, Singh and Obama will find their flexibility hedged by compulsions. Obama inherited an economic catastrophe and a military crisis. He took advantage of both to win his election, but his victory was someone else’s punishment. Answers are more difficult to get than votes. It is evident from the time invested during ten months in office that Obama’s axis of interest is a direct line between Beijing and Islamabad.
He has been forced into a tightrope walk between his banker and his security subcontractor. It was entirely appropriate, therefore, that while Obama was walking the talk on the Great Wall
Matt wade of the Australian Herald is one of the many who has written about jealous India trying to get the US eye–but got jilted. Here is part of the story told from Australia.
Barack Obama’s meetings with the leaders of India and China over the past fortnight have underscored challenges for the US President in balancing the competing interests of Asia’s twin giants.
There are suspicions in India that recent warmth in relations between Washington and Beijing may compromise its own aspirations as a global power.
These fears were reinforced by US overtures to China during Obama’s visit to Asia last week. There has also been some displeasure in New Delhi about the amount of attention the US is paying India’s rival, Pakistan.
This week’s visit to Washington by the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has been high on symbolism – Singh was the chief guest at Obama’s first ever state dinner on Tuesday. But it has not dispelled fears in New Delhi that India has slipped down the US priority list.
”In a nutshell, Singh got a nice state ceremony, China got respect as an equal and Pakistan has got billions of dollars of additional US aid,” said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. ”India will have to be satisfied with the sumptuous dinner.”
Delhi’s suspicions were stoked by the joint statement issued during Obama’s visit to Beijing. It referred to India-Pakistan relations and said the US and China would ”work together to promote peace, stability and development” in South Asia.
The reference was met with howls of protest in New Delhi and the Indian Government responded by saying any ”third country” role in its relations with Pakistan was not ”envisaged nor … necessary”. ”The Indians were certainly hurt by this slight,” Chellaney said.
Recent border tensions between India and China have heightened sensitivities.
Singh revealed that he and Obama had discussed the ”greater assertiveness from China” during their meetings this week. ”We did not, as such, seek any help. It came up as we reviewed the world situation.”
A flurry of editorials about Singh’s visit to Washington in China’s state-run media suggest it has been closely scrutinised in Beijing. An article on the front page of China’s influential Global Times had the headline: ”India can’t disguise its envy towards China.”
Relations between India and the US improved dramatically during the presidency of George Bush, culminating in a co-operation deal that legitimised India as a nuclear power and gave it access to nuclear commerce even though it is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
”Bush and [former vice-president Dick] Cheney were much more willing to appear to be building India up against China but it’s quite clear Obama wants to have his cake and eat it too,” said an Australian National University strategic analyst, Sandy Gordon.
Obama’s recent talks with Singh and China’s President, Hu Jintao, have been compared unfavourably by many in India. Commentators on India’s tabloid news channels complained that Beijing got what it wanted from Obama when he visited China but when Singh went to Washington he got very little.
Singh and Obama announced a counter-terrorism co-operation initiative. But critics say Singh failed in the main objective of his visit – to ”operationalise” the nuclear deal concluded in the Bush era. While Obama pledged to ”fully implement” the agreement, potentially crucial details of nuclear technology transfers to India have not been finalised. Jealous India jostles with China for US favour MATT WADE HERALD CORRESPONDENT November 28, 2009
The US Ambassador is working with the Pakistani generals, the ISI, and the stealth Saudi machinery to bring about a face-saving peace deal in Afghanistan. This is the beginning of the end of the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban have been offered at least six provinces—US recognition of the sovereignty of the provinces is the US offer for a safe exit and inclusion in the Central government. Mullah Omar has already offered a peace deal—“safe passage to withdrawing forces—a deal ridiculed by Bruce Riedel. As a hawk, Mr. Riedel once wanted break this confidence of the Taliban. Now the US is dealing exactly with this confidence. Ironically America is negotiating with the ex Afghan Ambassador to Islamabad, the person who was bundled off to Gitmo and tortured and kept in prison without trial for months.
M.J. Akbar in the Deccan Herald says is succinctly.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s American month began with a warm lunch for George Bush in Delhi and will end with a more constrained dinner with Barack Obama in Washington. Always happy to oblige on cosmetics, the White House has awarded this meeting the status of a State visit, although in India’s parliamentary system the prime minister is not head of state.
But there is a hard question behind the glitter. Singh signed a landmark nuclear deal with Bush last year. Was that a mere sentimental knot with a ‘best friend’ or was it a substantive document capable of survival beyond the predilections of a president?
The value of the nuclear deal, which was about much more than peaceful nuclear energy, lies in its tactile strength, but Delhi and Washington have begun stretching in different ways. Singh expected it to be the launchpad of strategic and economic privileges. Condoleezza Rice did, a trifle gratuitously, promise to make India a superpower.
But that was so last year. This year, the broad Democrat view is that Bush surrendered too much on core issues like proliferation for too little, and this is payback time for India. This is compounded, in Delhi, by the apprehension that India does not occupy primary space on the specific Obama agenda. The cynical interpretation is that India has been allotted 1.5 billion words a year and Pakistan 1.5 billion dollars.
It was the worst of times for Delhi. Obama rebuffs PM Singh–eulogizes Pakistan as important ally. After the song and dance in Washington, Mr. Singh will return with a “nuclear deal” which severely restricts its atomic ambitions, arrests the program, prohibits any new nuclear tests (to overcome the fizzles at Pokhran II). The announcement of the fizzles at Pokhran are emblematic of the fizzle in US Indian relations.
Just like the Pokhran fizzles, the notion of IndiaUS (USIndia) has been overtaken by ChiAmerica. The recent belligerency on along the McMohan line in the Himalays has totally destroyed any possibility of Chindia. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was trying hard convince Presidnet Obama that ChiAmerica was a bad idea and that democracy and pluralistic vision, hatred for terror whould be the prime ideals binding the countries together—as such America and India were “natural allies”. President Obama played the good host with laudatory comments to Mr. Manmohan Singh, and to Bharat as a whole—but—but—(its always the but kills the mood), as the CEO of America, Mr. Obama was beholden to the bankers of USA Inc—the ones in Beijing who hold more than a trillion Dollars of US debt. Mr. Obama also listened to Mr. Singh’s rhetorical diatribes on Pakistan, but politely rebuffed him by proclaiming that Pakistan was an important ally of Pakistan.
The pugnaciously superpatriotic and Anti-Pakistan writer M.J. Akbar is very skeptical of the Indo-American relationship.
The value of the nuclear deal, which was about much more than peaceful nuclear energy, lies in its tactile strength, but Delhi and Washington have begun stretching in different ways. Singh expected it to be the launchpad of strategic and economic privileges. Condoleezza Rice did, a trifle gratuitously, promise to make India a superpower.
But that was so last year. This year, the broad Democrat view is that Bush surrendered too much on core issues like proliferation for too little, and this is payback time for India. This is compounded, in Delhi, by the apprehension that India does not occupy primary space on the specific Obama agenda. The cynical interpretation is that India has been allotted 1.5 billion words a year and Pakistan 1.5 billion dollars.
with a ‘best friend’ or was it a substantive document capable of survival beyond the predilections of a president? But there is a hard question behind the glitter. Singh signed a landmark nuclear deal with Bush last year. Was that a mere sentimental knot ? M.J. Akbar, Deccan Herald.
This is what Ambassador Bhadrakumar says.
Overarching this, Delhi harbors disquiet about Obama’s “reset” of regional policies. The US’s Afghan strategy remains predicated on Pakistan’s cooperation. Washington needs a collegiate Beijing to cope with the crisis in the US economy, which precludes the scope for “containment strategy” towards China. In sum, Delhi feels disheartened that from a tall pedestal as an Asian “balancer” on which Bush installed India, Obama brings it down as a sub-regional power. Asia Times. Ambassador Bhadrakumar
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