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When I was in Washington in April 2000, Stephen Cohen invited me for
dinner at his Watergate Apartment. He was then Director of the
Brookings Institute and a key adviser on South Asian affairs to the US
Administration. During the course of the evening, I asked Stephen what
book he was currently working on. He said," India, an Emerging Power."
I laughed and said, "You are pulling my leg. You wrote that one some
years ago." He replied, "That book was India: an Emerging Power? This
one will have no question mark. America will ensure that it happens."
I sensed that Stephen was not joking.
When I returned to India I reported this conversation to influential
bureaucrats and politicians in Delhi. They were unconcerned by my
information. This is not surprising because, in spite of the National
Security Council being set up in 1998, India has no tradition of
developing long range assessments of international security
developments and making this the basis of both a national consensus as
well as our long term policies. This is evident even years later, when
our response to the US policy announcing its intention to help India
build itself as a major world class power in the 21st Century has been
confused. There has been no attempt to assess what the US interests
and expectations are.
US Cold War Strategy
In 1947 Americans, brainwashed by the British, believed that Islam
would bind Pakistan firmly while India with its multifarious
languages, cultures and religions would not remain united. Their lack
of faith in India was enhanced by knowledge that the country could not
feed itself and was heavily dependent on PL-480 inputs. The 1962
Sino-Indian Conflict made it evident that India could not even defend
itself. The Americans were convinced that Pakistan would win a future
war against India. They were surprised that this did not happen in
1965.
India's victory in the 1971 Indo-Pak War altered America's image about
the country. Thereafter, India conducted a nuclear test in 1974,
survived an emergency and produced a democratic change of regime,
reached settlements with Shiekh Abdullah, the Nagas, and Mizos, had a
successful green revolution and launched a satellite. It was Islamic
Pakistan which broke up. Whilst accepting that India has the highest
number of poor and illiterates in the world, it is also admitted that
there is no other example of a de-colonised country building itself
into a modern industrial state and also into a multicultural,
multi-religious and multilingual democracy.
For the US, the Soviet Union was a military adversary and the Cold War
was a power struggle. The Soviet Union had to be confronted and
contained ideologically, militarily, politically, economically and
technologically. Winning over China, an ally of the Soviet Union, was
part of that strategy. Since India would not allow itself to be part
of the containment plan, the US tilted towards Pakistan against India.
In 1990 the Cold War ended with the Paris Agreement. Historically, it
was a unique event. Two adversaries armed to the teeth with missiles
and nuclear weapons, confronting one another militarily for over four
decades signed a treaty to disarm without having fought a war. Both
powers realised that the role of the military in a nuclear age was not
to fight wars but to prevent wars from breaking out.
Post 9/11 Strategy
The nineties saw India's growth rate rise to 6 per cent. In 1998 India
demonstrated at Pokhran that it could produce thermonuclear war-heads.
It launched a geo-synchronous satellite into space. Its poverty level
came down and its scientific community started making a significant
impact on the Information Technology revolution. The contribution of
Indian scientists to US research and development came to be recognised.
India started accumulating a sizeable foreign exchange reserve. It
also demonstrated that its coalition governments provided political
stability to the system. India fought to regain the Kargil heights
from Pakistan with remarkable restraint. The 11 September 2001
incident was a turning point in the US approach to India, which was
acknowledged as one of the nations with a very large Islamic
population free of al-Qaida and jehadi influences though the country
was being subjected to externally inspired terrorism.
By now the course of events in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq had
demonstrated that in today's world it is easier to invade a country
than to keep it occupied. War is, therefore, no longer an instrument
of politics as it was considered earlier. Nor are nuclear weapons and
missiles a currency of power, which they were earlier. This did not
mean that armies could be disbanded. That cannot happen while there
are rulers who have not reached this conclusion.
Today's globalised world gives rise to many problems, but
globalisation is an inevitable result of the electronic age. The
world's economy is so integrated that the value of the Chinese
currency has its impact on the US economy and outsourcing both in
manufacturing and services has become the order of the day. The
currency of power is knowledge. The US would like to continue to be
the pre-eminent nation in the world. However, a recent forecast by the
National Intelligence Council of the US has assessed that the US,
China and India would be among the first three markets of the world by
the year 2020.
Dealing with China
Given China's inevitable rise of per capita income, there is nothing
to prevent it becoming the richest nation of the world. Since wars are
no longer cost effective, the rivalry between the US and China for
pre-eminence in the world is not likely to be solved by war. Since the
future currency of power is knowledge, US efforts are concentrated on
ensuring that it stays ahead of China in terms of knowledge
generation, inventiveness and technology. After having fought a war
with China in Korea [1950-53] in which thousands of Americans
perished, the US made a complete U-turn in its policy towards China.
After 1971, it began dealing with China not as an adversary but as a
rival. This strategy is the exact opposite of confrontation or
containment and implies engagement. While the US had avoided trade and
economic links with Moscow during the Cold War, it has become the
largest trading partner of China and is heavily involved in the
Chinese economy.
China responded enthusiastically to this US strategy and embraced
American investments on a massive scale. They sent their students in
thousands annually to US universities. The Americans have succeeded in
persuading the Chinese leadership to abandon Communism in economic
terms. Today, Chinese Communism is only a cover for authoritarian rule
by the Communist Party. By so doing China did not lose its sovereignty
or give up its vital interests. On the contrary, today the US worries
about China becoming a serious rival. US efforts are on how to bring
about change in China to make it accept democracy and abide by the
rules of the international game. The US hopes to bring China around
through its relationships with Japan, South Korea and India. Towards
that end, Asia must have a balance of power. The US initiative to help
India to develop itself as a world class power is related to the
creation of this balance of power in Asia in which all major economies
will be interactively engaging with and not containing or confronting
China.
A more powerful nation helping a less powerful nation to build itself,
happens when the more powerful nation calculates that the end result
would be to its advantage. At the end of the 19th Century, Britain
transferred technology to Japan and invested heavily there to build
Japan as a counter balance to Czarist Russia. Similarly, at the end of
the Second World War, both Germany and Japan were recipients of US
aid. They became security partners of the US. All the East Asian
tigers became strong because of massive US support. In the 1950s China
received massive aid for its industrialisation from the Soviet Union.
Building Up India
India's record of accepting military and developmental aid from other
countries and yet maintaining its independence speaks for itself.
There were those who denounced the Indo-Soviet Treaty of 1971 as
having made India a Soviet satellite. There were others who argued
that Soviet help was going to trap India to join Brezhnev's anti-China
security arrangement. Both those assessments proved wrong. Many oppose
present Indo-American co-operation. Underlying this timidity is an
exaggerated fear of the US as the sole superpower. To think of the US
as an all-powerful superpower able to impose its will on the rest of
the world on every issue is a continuation of the Cold War mindset and
does not represent the reality of today. Many in India have not
grasped this point, but the US leadership appears to have done so.
The Americans have done their homework. To stay competitive in
business, they need three things. First, increasing amount of brain
power that could sustain American inventiveness; second, an ability to
cut costs through outsourcing; third, a large market. The emphasis is
on India as a rising economic power, a potential third market of the
world and a reservoir of brain power available to be tapped. Those who
argue about the hidden costs in the American offer have a valid point.
But they should not stop at just raising fears and walking away. They
should try and spell this out in long and short terms. Our attempt
should be to have an objective assessment of the US offer and to carry
out a calculated cost-benefit analysis on it.
Let us do an elementary assessment of the global balance of power some
three decades from now. China will have overtaken the US in terms of
aggregate Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Unless China becomes
democratic it will face uncertainties and instability. India will be
the most populous country in the world and be comparatively younger
than China in age profile. In terms of skilled manpower generation
India will have an advantage. It is also likely that the Indian
population in the US will be many times what it is today and in all
possibilities will have commensurate political clout. As the US and
China compete for a pre-eminent position, India as a third market
power and the largest reservoir of scientific talent will be in a
significant position to influence the result. In India, this issue has
not been fully understood.
During the Cold War, the US applied pressure on India through support
to Pakistan. Today, all political parties in the US want to lead
Pakistan towards becoming a moderate Islamic state. General Musharraf
is considered necessary for this policy. Though Pakistan has not yet
dismantled its terrorist infrastructure, the US policy is committed to
a reduction in cross border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and
secessionists can no longer look for the US support. In the present
situation the US needs Musharraf for its war on terrorism just as our
Central Government needs tainted politicians to sustain its majority
in Parliament. The US is offering a measure of defence co-operation
with India which will in a few years leave Pakistan far behind.
Musharraf knows that the changes occurring on the international scene
are reducing Pakistan's utility for the US global strategy.
Many warn that the US is a hegemonic power and India can never have an
equal partnership with it. There is no denying that the US has been a
hegemonic power for the past six decades. But the arguments advanced
so far have demonstrated that the system is changing fast. The US will
have to accept the discipline of a global balance of power and a more
norm-based international system in future. Iraq is as much a new
beginning for the US as it is for the authoritarian Islamic states.
Anyway, the US is more of a liberal democracy in its domestic policies
than other major powers including India. Those who talk of hidden
costs involved in accepting the US initiative forget the past. India
was able to resist the entire international pressure between 1990 and
1998 when the US was all powerful. Since then, India has become a
stronger economic and political power and has developed new linkages.
There is no way that India can be made to accept discriminatory
controls over its nuclear or missile programmes. The US offer of civil
nuclear aid to India is related to President Bush's conviction that
energy requirements of the US, China and India cannot be met in the
future on the basis of hydrocarbon solutions.
Will US Initiatives Continue?
One cannot rule out the possibility of China moving towards
democracy. If this were to happen, the US will nevertheless try to
maintain its pre-eminence and mobilise Indian help for that purpose.
Some speak of millennia-old friendship with China in the hope that it
will prompt India to lean towards China on the basis of Asian
solidarity. In the coming years there will be a few million Indians in
the US. This factor will tilt India in favour of the US. Indians would
prefer a pre-eminent US to a pre-eminent China.
Will the US initiative towards India succeed? The US policy has two
components: to tap Indian brain power and mobilise Indian skills and
ensure US competence and inventiveness. If India does not respond
officially to this initiative, the US will deal directly with Indian
companies, universities and individuals. Will this initiative survive
the Bush Administration? There is likely to be a political battle
within America between those who look at outsourcing from the
short-term populist point of view and those who take the long-term
view. Pro-Chinese lobbies in the US, and anti-US lobbies within India
may raise objections and campaign against the policy. You can be sure
that the bureaucracies and Cold War warriors in Delhi and Washington
will keep trying to block the two countries from arriving at a
satisfactory agreement to both sides. Ultimately the result will
depend upon the two political leaderships and business communities.
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