Indias six migraine headaches

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New Obama universe: India’s six migraine headaches​

Just a few weeks ago, India was on top of the world as if there was no tomorrow. As India was struggling with the tectonic shift in Washington and West Asia came the news that President Clinton had been assigned as President Barack Obama’s special envoy on Kashmir.

Above all, Delhi will face a new situation if Obama revisits the “war on terror”. As well-known Lebanese commentator Rami Khouri thoughtfully wrote, “US-backed governments in half a dozen countries are losing their battles and political confrontations with Islamist-led indigenous oppositions, and have to form national unity governments or explore other means of power … The American-Afghan tentative move to engage the Taliban politically is … a welcome sign that Washington is finally learning the value of seeing and resolving conflicts in their wider local and regional context. We may well see something similar happen in Iraq, including American-Iranian-Saudi-Syrian contacts in the near future.” India seeks ‘velvet divorce’ from Iran By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times

The Indian think tanks, Indian Americans and the Indian public at large put all their eggs in the Republican basket. The Hindustan Times public admitted the the Indian government had made its predisposed proclivity for a McCain Administration known to all. Now that may be in jeopardy again. With the return of the Taliban a distinct possibility in Kabul, the Singh Doctrine is going up in fumes and giving migraine headaches to Delhi. Yet again, India finds itself on the wrong side of history in Afghanistan.

Indian foreign policy Titanic hits several icebergs. India dissents from Obamania -Pramit Pal Chaudhuri.The new Obama administration will seek to restore an international status quo that preceded the Bush presidency. This includes restoring ties with Europe, tightening the nuclear non-proliferation regime and possibly a restoration of China as the centrepiece of US policy in Asia. The question for India will be whether this is accomplished by reducing the international space that the country gained under Bush

India is among the few dozen countries, largely clustered in Asia and Africa, where sentiment in favour of the United States actually rose during the administration of George W Bush. Nonetheless, more Indians favoured the election of Barack Obama than they did John McCain. What explains this seeming contradiction?

At the heart of the Bush administration’s success with India was a belief that India was a nation whose rise was beneficial to US interests. This led Bush to seek to adjust the international order to India’s benefit, most notably by negotiating an exemption from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty for India. The net result was a closer Indo-US relationship and a positive view of Bush that overrode unpopular actions such as invading Iraq.

Obama’s election - the success of a member of a non-white minority in the world’s oldest democratic polity - has seized the imagination of many Indians. He is exhorted in the media and among the intellectual classes. Among the most fervent supporters of Obama in the US have been the nearly three million-strong Indian-American community. “You can’t swing a dead cat in the Obama camp without hitting an Indian-American,” said an Obama advisor.

In the run up to the election, many Indians could not believe that an African-American would ever be chosen to reside in the White House. His election inevitably enhanced the standing of the US as a land of genuine opportunity, a nation whose multicultural credentials were as great if not better than polyglot and poly-ethnic India. DT-PS. Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is the senior editor of the Hindustan Times and a member of the Asia Society International Council

Today’s India’s policy of supporting the puppet regime in Afghanistan against the popular will in Afghanistan and India’s policy or supporting terror groups in Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan will create a huge backlash against new Delhi. Rupee News has already reported that the Indian analysts are predicting a cacodemon situation for India in Kabul. General Patraeus already has started talks with the Taliban. The Brits and the Europeans want to get out of Afghanistan now. A major reassessment of the Global War on Terror is inevitable. President Barack Obama would clearly withdraw from Afghanistan if he could do it with a trophy–possibly the body of Osama Bin Laden.

The greatest scepticism about an Obama presidency lies among Indian strategic elite, who are focused on promoting India’s economic and political interests in the wider world. They found an ally in that cause in Bush. Whatever Obama’s ethnic credentials, India’s government has detected in his statements reason to believe that he will be less supportive than Bush.

First, India is wary that any Democratic administration will include the same proponents of nuclear non-proliferation who opposed Bush’s exemption for India. Obama has publicly said he intends to push for a comprehensive test ban treaty, a treaty that India opposes because it feels its own nuclear deterrent remains incomplete.

Second, Obama has attacked the outsourcing of service jobs to places like India and the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs to Asia as a whole. His advisors also indicate that they will seek to incorporate social provisions, like labour standards, into future international trade negotiations. Though candidates tend to rollback from protectionist stances once they come to power, the Democrats’ control of both houses of Congress may not give Obama that leeway.

Third, a Democratic administration has said it will put climate change at the forefront of its global policy concerns. If the focus is about mitigating carbon production through technological means, there will be few concerns. However, if the policy slips into more coercive measures such as carbon tariffs and the like, the result is likely to convert climate change into an energy security struggle. It will also pit the big carbon emitters of the future, like India and China, against present polluters like the US and Europe.

Finally, conversations with a few Obama advisors and his own speeches indicate that Washington’s number one security concern in the coming years will be Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Iraq is yesterday’s problem,” said one advisor to an Indian audience several weeks ago. DT-PS. Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is the senior editor of the Hindustan Times and a member of the Asia Society International Council

President Elect Barack Obama a day before he was elected President in a visionary statement admitted the disputed nature of Kashmir and has probably assigned President Bill Clinton as a special envoy of the US to resolve the Kashmir issue. Indian policy makers already stung by the new policy review of General Patraeus, got huge migraine headaches at the prospect of the return of the Taliban. Now the world is breathing down India’s neck on Kashmir.

For another, the prospect that the U S might offer incentives on Kashmir is bound to encourage the Pakistan Army to harden its stance against the current peace process with India.

Finally, the sense that an Obama Administration will put Jammu & Kashmir on the front burner would give a fresh boost to militancy in Kashmir and complicate the current sensitive electoral process there. Kashmiri separatist lobbies in Washington have already embraced Obama’s remarks.

(C. Raja Mohan is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University and a Contributing Editor of The Indian Express.)