Obama’s India visit is Pakistan’s wake-up call: analysts

[ajtr]

Just 208 words about India​

India’s Points: 208 words
- Bush barely mentions nuclear deal in book

K.P. NAYAR

Bush signs a copy of his book. (AP)
Washington, Nov. 11:

First the euphoria, then the letdown.

In a 509-page book about his presidency published by George W. Bush this week, only half a page is devoted to India.

Decision Points, the book which shared the top news spot on American television during the weekend along with President Barack Obama’s visit to India, arrived on bookshelves here on Tuesday.

It will come as a shock to those Indians who believe that their country was a top priority for the Bush presidency that of its 195,456 words, the book has a mere 208 words about India.

It is a revelation which should put Prakash Karat’s mind at rest.

That in itself may not be the unkindest cut for Indians who supported Bush and have maintained that he transformed Indo-US relations because New Delhi became an anchor of the former President’s strategic vision for a post-9/11 world.

Even those 208 words figure in just three paragraphs only in the context of justifying a visit by Bush to Islamabad after his trip to India in March 2006.

Considering that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spent his entire political capital on seeing through a nuclear deal with the US and risked his very government causing a political earthquake in India, it is somewhat jarring to see that Bush dismisses civil nuclear co-operation with New Delhi in one and a half sentences.

Sentiment and any emotional distress apart, the true value of Decision Points for Indians now may be to understand why Obama skirted Pakistan in Mumbai until he was forced address that problem by Afsheen Irani, a 19-year-old student at St. Xavier’s College.

National interests of nations do not change merely because presidents or prime ministers have changed, and in any case, the core professionals who advise heads of state and government are the same, except a few political appointees at the state department or in the National Security Council in the case of Washington.

It is clear from the numerous pages in Decision Points devoted to Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Taliban and al Qaida that the US has been and will be tied to Pakistan by an umbilical cord which no President, howsoever in love with India, can cut in the foreseeable future.

The Bush memoir ought to help India to learn to live with the fact that Pakistan’s critical importance to America will persuade Obama — as Bush did — or his successor to arm, aid and mollycoddle whoever rules in Islamabad, be it a civilian or a man in uniform.

Decision Points details the reasons why Bush did so.

But reading the former President’s book side by side with Obama’s speeches in Mumbai and New Delhi also throws light on why there has been an unmistakable dehyphenation of India and Pakistan in the White House.

India is seen both by Bush and Obama as a growing market for US goods and a potential partner in strengthening America’s economy whose weaknesses can be overcome, albeit in part, by association with India.

That demands that Washington does not see its relations with India and Pakistan as a zero sum game. It can be inferred from the book that this is what has happened during the Bush presidency, a policy that is continuing under Obama.

What is startling though is that all this understanding comes from the accounts by Bush about what he did or did not do with Pakistan since there are no such reference points on India.

The book will be a sobering read for India’s strategic community, the bulk of which actually advocated surrendering New Delhi’s strategic autonomy in practice, a ganging up of the so-called Asian democracies in an alliance against China and endorsement of anything Bush proposed as President, including missile defence and the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).


The PSI would have required India to interdict ships suspected of carrying unauthorised nuclear material, which could have put the country at odds with China or Iran.

By not making even a passing mention of such initiatives in an Indian context, it is clear that the Bush administration was selling India a strategic pipe-dream, which was being celebrated in public discourse in New Delhi as the dawn of a new era and as a path to India’s great power status.

Naturally, many of these proposals died with the Bush presidency.

In a global survey which was conducted when he was at the White House, India was one of only three countries where Bush was popular as president.

That love seems to have been unrequited because the former President is almost condescending in a reference to India. “I believe India, home to roughly a billion people and an educated middle class has the potential to be one of America’s closest partners.”

In the only reference to the nuclear deal, Bush writes: “The nuclear agreement was a historic step because it signalled the country’s new role on the world stage.”

Sadly, here again, the nuclear deal is mentioned as a prelude to its impact in Pakistan and why Bush visited Islamabad. “The nuclear deal naturally raised concerns in Pakistan,” he writes.

 

[ajtr]

Time to be a better neighbor, India. If you don't, China will.​

President Obama's trip to India underscored India's importance in global security and global finances – a democratic counter to an aggressive China. But India's poor foreign policy and botched regional relations have been holding it back.


By Maha Rafi Atal / November 9, 2010

New York
On Sunday, President Obama met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi. They discussed opportunities for expanded Indo-American trade, and both leaders highlighted the strategic importance of a strong and prosperous India in the face of Chinese expansion. But Prime Minister Singh did not acknowledge, and President Obama did not bring up, the most important obstacle to India’s success: its poor regional relationships[/b].

From the outset, India’s promise as a rival to China has been that it is a power apart. It could not beat Beijing in a race for pure growth or military might. But in a contest over principles, India’s democratic progress offers the region a model that China cannot match. India should be a partner for countries seeking a fair alternative to alliance with its authoritarian neighbor.

But India is losing this contest, and it is losing it close to home. Now, as President Obama leaves India, it is worth asking: Why isn’t South Asia’s richest country leading more effectively in South Asia?

China is flexing its muscle

China is certainly flexing its muscle. Last month, it sought to restrict exports of rare earth minerals to Japan, made overtures to a secession movement in southern Sudan, and wrestled with the G20 over its currency and trade imbalance.

Nowhere has China been more assertive than in South Asia. In a strategy it calls the “string of pearls,” China is building ports and infrastructure in Bangladesh and Pakistan; digging up minerals in Pakistan and Afghanistan; and refining hydropower in Nepal and Afghanistan.

According to the International Monetary Fund, China’s trade with India’s neighbors totaled $16 billion in 2008, growing at 14 percent annually. India’s regional trade was barely holding steady at $11 billion.

India's overconfidence

Yet China’s success in the Subcontinent reflects India’s own foreign policy blunders.

First, India has been overconfident, assuming that regional neighbors would naturally choose it over Beijing without providing them with positive incentives to do so. That is the case in Bangladesh, a desperately poor country created with the assistance of Indian forces, whose multiple requests for economic aid and greater bilateral trade India has rebuffed. While Bangladeshis wonder why India does not do more, India wonders why Bangladesh is not more appreciative.

Beijing capitalizes on the gap between them.

Interfering and overbearing

Second, India has been overbearing, giving selective support to political movements inside neighboring states.

In Nepal, India backed a feudal aristocracy for four decades, reinstating the monarchy by force after repeated popular revolts. It trained the Nepalese military, and orchestrated political marriages between Nepalese aristocrats and wealthy Indian families. Pushing India out became the top priority of the Maoist guerilla movement that has majority support and an informal alliance with China.

As the UN peace mission holding Nepal together prepares to close in January, India is pitted against China to control the postwar settlement, with Nepal’s critical water resources (about 83,000 megawatts of hydropower) at stake. The confrontation is reminiscent of the situation in Burma (Myanmar), where China and India spent $10 billion last year to secure the support of a military junta guilty of abusing its own subjects.

As the weaker power, India has more to fear from these confrontations.

Shutting out the region

Third, India has been suspicious, choosing to shut out the region when relations go sour rather than addressing underlying tensions.

Earlier this year, the government announced an immigration regime that will restrict multiple entry visas. Multinationals have protested the move as a blow to business travelers from the West and the Persian Gulf, but its greatest victims are migrant laborers from Bangladesh and Nepal. Many will turn to China for employment instead; others will enter illegally, bringing crime with them.

Nowhere has suspicion been more crippling to Indian policy than in the case of Pakistan. So long as Kashmiri militants – with historic ties to Pakistan – continue to operate inside India, India maintains it cannot meet with Pakistan over the disputed border, or over critical resources like water and gas. But it is the ongoing dispute that creates the very basis for this militancy. In a country with porous mountain borders, such threats are virtually impossible to block out by force.

Yet New Delhi means to try.

Unfortunately, the United States has been an accomplice to India’s regional isolationism. In 2008, pressure from Washington shut down a natural gas project involving India, Pakistan, and Iran. Last year, Present Obama briefly considered appointing Amb. Richard Holbrooke as a regional envoy, with the authority to conduct dialogue between India and Pakistan, but narrowed his brief to Afghanistan and Pakistan over Indian opposition.

Asked about Pakistan at a town hall meeting in New Delhi on Sunday, the president reiterated that the United States would not intervene in the Kashmir dispute. Yet without an Indo-Pak peace, no strategy for Afghanistan can move forward.

The trappings of global status, without the substance

The West has lavished India with the trappings of global status: a seat at the G20, a temporary seat at the UN Security Council that may open the door to a permanent one, a controversial US-India nuclear deal, and two pending defense trades worth more than $15 billion dollars.

To read Indian newspapers or speak to diplomats is to believe that these gestures represent global influence. But in fact, they signal the rise of a Potemkin hegemon. If India is encircled by China’s string of pearls, and if migrants and militants compromise its borders, then it will be forced to waste its economic resources putting out local fires, unable to project power further afield.

Moreover, as they watch this regional saga, potential partners in Africa, the Middle East, or Central Asia see India as a country that treats its neighbors with contempt. Indian leaders can argue that other great powers have done the same, but the argument misunderstands the very nature and purpose of India’s rise, the unique role that ideals must play in India’s success.


To be sure there are steps India can take to reverse this course. If it accepts international mediation in Kashmir, if it becomes a neutral partner for peace in Burma and Nepal, and if it opens its markets to greater regional trade, it may yet salvage its position as the democratic counter-power to China. But these are long-term solutions, and the window to pursue them is shrinking.

Maha Rafi Atal is a journalist in New York, recently returned from India, Pakistan, and Nepal where she was a correspondent for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

 

[ganimi kawa]

@ Unicorn, Paksher is taliking about this....

New Indian stealth warship halted by US

And this is what happened after that.....

US allows GE to work on Indian warship

 

[Gin ka Pakistan]

Well Obama didn't visit to so many countries in the region so why Pakistan should care.

Any how when India PM said "India not stealing US jobs" was the most funniest statements in the trip.

I think Obama was asking Indians to payback for the jobs moving into India from US.

If Obama will lose the election it would be because of high unemployment and more the India will grow more it will suck jobs from US example:- HP is moving to India while firing hundred in US and even US tax department out source tax return process to India while they could have hired unemployed fresh accounting college graduates to do the same work inside US.

Hey even my payroll is in India so I hope they won't make any mistake in my pay this week , why can't my pay be made in my own country by my own fresh college graduates, looking for jobs

 

[MYSTIC]

That in something that India is not in a position to decide. Feed your 430 million people below the poverty line first before thinking of Pakistan.

That we are already doing. A few more years and you will start seeing the difference. Meanwhile Pakistan has a blurry future ahead of itself. Stop worrying about our poor. The world has acknowledged the fact that the present growth has lifted millions out of poverty.

There is nothing wrong in learning from the enemy. India is learning from China.

 

[karan.1970]

Well Obama didn't visit to so many countries in the region so why Pakistan should care.

None of those countries ex presidents made silly noises about how its unfair and he is disappointed about Obama not visiting Pakistan.

Any how when India PM said "India not stealing US jobs" was the most funniest statements in the trip.

Why do you say that. ? Did you understand the context? or are just yapping away to satisfy an urge to lash out..?

I think Obama was asking Indians to payback for the jobs moving into India from US.

What kind of payback? The 10% kind or reciprocity in trade?

If Obama will lose the election it would be because of high unemployment and more the India will grow more it will suck jobs from US example:- HP is moving to India while firing hundred in US and even US tax department out source tax return process to India while they could have hired unemployed fresh accounting college graduates to do the same work inside US.

But then if India did not get the money from outsourcing, it couldnt have placed the billions of dollars of orders on US companies resulting in 50000 jobs.

I know Pakistan has not been able to make much headway in this kind of International trade since most Western countries are skeptical due to the risk of terrorism in Pakistan, but since you are in Canada, I assume you would know that the international trade works this way only..

Hey even my payroll is in India so I hope they won't make any mistake in my pay this week , why can't my pay be made in my own country by my own fresh college graduates, looking for jobs

If you mean Canada as your own country, look at my previous paragraph for response. If you meant Pakistan, then again look at the previous paragraph

 

[Rafi]

india still has many many problems, indian arrogance aside, there is a growing alienation between rural and urban centres.

BBC News - Audio slideshow: India's insurgents

These people are the ones that india has to convince, the Maoist's in india are the only ones in the world that are increasing in strength. Everywhere else the Communist creed has been discredited but in india it is increasing, food for thought.

 

[Rafi]

The new poster shows, the brilliant job his parents have done in raising him lol

 

[Rafi]

I find it quite strange that indian's find opinion or editorial articles, that favour their world view and get too exited. Pakistan has a free and vibrant press, which articulates every conceivable view, right from very liberal, lets all be friends. To extreme right wing people who want to nuke any one in sight.

There is no homogeneous view on anything, in fact most Pakistan's views fall on the middle ground.

 

[Capt.Popeye]

what are telling what engines are u talking...any source

Stealth Engines- engines that can't be heard or seen; engines which are so stealthy that they don't exist.

 

[SQ8]

There have been a lot of wake up calls for Pakistani's..
But all of us seem to love that big "snooze" button.. for that extra 5 years of sleep...
But let us wake up(IF).. and you will see the massive change.

 

[Vajra_Yuddh]

@Pakistani members:

Folks, chill. It was one visit seriously. And that too most of it was based on economic trade. We didn't eve discuss defence in detail. What wake-up call are you talking about? US still is a significant supplier to you and China is not a camp yet big enough for you to jump into (another 10 years and yes perhaps).

There's nothing to choose. For economic, military and political development, you will need both countries as much as we've balanced between Russia and US. The Obamamania was so much because it was his first visit and the largest ever deals signed between the two countries between around 500 CEOs of both India and US.

I don't think you people should be talking of getting alarmed. The article is talking as though we got 500 raptors, 1000 JSFs, 5 aircraft carriers free from Obama.

 

[Vajra_Yuddh]

Pakistan is actually a confused state.We dont know who to trust. We do not lack the courage or talent to meet the challenges. Its just that we have'nt got a sincere leader after Quaid-e-Azam to guide us. .

Trust yourself. Don't wait for others to come and offer help. Look at examples like Switzerland. They're severely neutral countries in terms of politics. Whatever they made out of their already beautiful country, they made it on their own. Whether watches, chocolates banking or whatever, they identified their core capabilities and that was these industries developed them and tried to avoid military engagements wether overt or covert.

They refused to comment on Western behalf for any of US wars, abstained maximum in UN for sanctions and other restrictions and kept to themselves. And even if they are not a big power, they're a peaceful state, self-reliant in terms of economic development, have stable and high currency etc.

Any alliance they make is only limited to the business contract they signed. Pakistan has to understand not to jump baskets and instead remain in one that it has created for itself.

I might not have pleasant words for Chinese being both a part Bhutanese part Indian, but even if they are friends, friendship is never permanent. Be friends; not allies. Because allying with any major power at any time means if it starts crumbling so do the smaller allies.

You are what you make out of yourself. Good luck.