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By HARSH V. PANT
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited India for the second annual U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue last week, in part to restore the luster that seems to have disappeared from diplomatic ties and in part to remove doubts about Washington's support for New Delhi's core concerns. Both sides have lately been struggling to give substance to a relationship that seems to be losing traction in the absence of a single defining idea.
As recently as 2008, the partnership between these two vibrant democracies seemed to be blossoming. For the U.S., India was the liberal counterweight to a rising authoritarian China. For India, the U.S. was the leader who could help it gain more international recognition and better access to global markets.
The one policy move that animated this relationship was the civil nuclear deal. Completed in 2008, this deal gave sanction to India's nuclear programhitherto treated as illegaland bolstered India's status as an emerging power and rival to China. This agreement was the idea that defined the relationship and helped both sides come together.
But now both the U.S. and India find a number of ideas separating them: terrorism, the ****** region, nuclear cooperation and India's role in the Asia-Pacific. On all these, there were disagreements in the latest round of the Strategic Dialogue.
First, on terrorism, Mrs. Clinton promised to lean "hard" on Pakistan, reiterating that the U.S. has made it clear to the Pakistani government that "confronting violent extremism of all sorts is in its interest." She underlined that the U.S. does not "believe that there are any terrorists who should be given safe haven or a free pass by any government," referring to India's fear that the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks were aided, abetted or are still being sheltered by Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
View Full Image
Associated Press
UHillary Clinton meets Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi.
While ties between Washington and Islamabad have worsened since Osama bin Laden was found and killed on Pakistani soil in May, New Delhi is still worried the U.S. isn't doing enough to curb the military-jihadi complex there. India wants the U.S. to put pressure on Pakistan's security establishment to stop differentiating among variants of terror groupsfor instance, between the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the former acting as a political umbrella for the latterand tackle all of them with equal zeal.
Second, on the question of India's role in its neighborhood, it's Washington's turn to be unhappy. In Chennai last Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton asked India to exercise political influence in consonance with its growing economic weight. Exhorting India "to lead," she asked New Delhi to do more to integrate economically with neighbors Afghanistan and Pakistan and to play a bigger role in the Asia-Pacific.
As the situation in Afghanistan has unraveled and as China's rise has upended the balance of power in East Asia, the U.S. expected India to help provide stability. Despite its military and economic weight, India is still a reluctant power even in its own vicinity and has shown little appetite to lead on regional security issues. Its grand strategy remains incomprehensible even to its friends; its military policy is mired in bureaucratese. Manmohan Singh's government has never been one to exert much strength abroad; now, paralyzed by governance problems at home, it hasn't articulated any policy response and has looked weaker.
Of course, many in New Delhi argue that Washington itself stymies India's emergence in its neighborhood. The Obama administration has been giving contradictory signals on ******. Mrs. Clinton wants India to step up, but President Barack Obama's plans to end America's combat role in Afghanistan by 2014 leave India with limited choices. Pakistan's army wants a pliable government in Kabul, so that it can exert strategic depth in Afghanistan vis-à-vis India. New Delhi has to fend for itself, Washington is suggesting.
As far as China goes, the White House has gone from appeasing China to thinking about a stronger response, especially with the South China Sea flareup. The ambivalence complicated New Delhi's own ties with Beijing.
Third, nuclear cooperation, the one big idea that transformed the bilateral relationship, is facing setbacks. Last week, though Mrs. Clinton maintained the U.S. remains "fully" committed to the civilian nuclear pact with India, she made it clear that there were "issues" which required resolution. She didn't go into specifics.
There is a specific obstacle for India's civil nuclear program. Late last month, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 46-nation nuclear cartel that includes the U.S., came up with new guidelines for tightening the exports of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies. Though the exact formulation of the new guidelines has not been made public, they seem to underscore that the transfer of sensitive ENR technologies will exclude nations which are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and do not have full-scope safeguards. Washington obviously supports this.
These guidelines have frightened New Delhi because they apparently go against the spirit of the NSG exemption granted in 2008. Then, thanks to Washington's maneuvering, the NSG unprecedentedly allowed India, which hasn't signed the NPT, to carry out nuclear commerce.
The problem is Mr. Obama's ideological rigidity. He believes in a nuclear-free world, as he has said repeatedly. But the White House's belief is in danger of destroying the hard-won gains from last decade's U.S.-India nuclear rapprochement. Its support for the new ENR guidelines also stems from its ideological commitment to the existing nuclear non-proliferation regime, as the NPT outlines. President Bush was at least willing to relax the international regime in favor of a democratic partner with a clean proliferation record, but Mr. Obama wants to strengthen it.
If this were to proceed, India's nuclear program will be threatened. It may be forced to sign the NPT, which it considers discriminatory, against its wishes. Mrs. Clinton has failed to allay these Indian concerns.
For all these reasons, Washington and New Delhi are constrained from taking their bilateral relationship any further. Where their bureaucracies were once unified by the idea of a nuclear agreement, they are now consumed by domestic challenges. As a consequence, the last two years have witnessed a lot of rhetoric but very little substantive movement. Mr. Obama's much-hyped visit to India in November is a case in point.
This partnership can only achieve its full potential if both sides address the substantive problems. India has to stop punching below its weight in Asia. And the U.S. has to take a firmer line against Pakistan-sponsored terror and drop its nuclear fantasies.
Mr. Pant is a professor of defense studies at King's College, London.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited India for the second annual U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue last week, in part to restore the luster that seems to have disappeared from diplomatic ties and in part to remove doubts about Washington's support for New Delhi's core concerns. Both sides have lately been struggling to give substance to a relationship that seems to be losing traction in the absence of a single defining idea.
As recently as 2008, the partnership between these two vibrant democracies seemed to be blossoming. For the U.S., India was the liberal counterweight to a rising authoritarian China. For India, the U.S. was the leader who could help it gain more international recognition and better access to global markets.
The one policy move that animated this relationship was the civil nuclear deal. Completed in 2008, this deal gave sanction to India's nuclear programhitherto treated as illegaland bolstered India's status as an emerging power and rival to China. This agreement was the idea that defined the relationship and helped both sides come together.
But now both the U.S. and India find a number of ideas separating them: terrorism, the ****** region, nuclear cooperation and India's role in the Asia-Pacific. On all these, there were disagreements in the latest round of the Strategic Dialogue.
First, on terrorism, Mrs. Clinton promised to lean "hard" on Pakistan, reiterating that the U.S. has made it clear to the Pakistani government that "confronting violent extremism of all sorts is in its interest." She underlined that the U.S. does not "believe that there are any terrorists who should be given safe haven or a free pass by any government," referring to India's fear that the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks were aided, abetted or are still being sheltered by Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
View Full Image
Associated Press
UHillary Clinton meets Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi.
While ties between Washington and Islamabad have worsened since Osama bin Laden was found and killed on Pakistani soil in May, New Delhi is still worried the U.S. isn't doing enough to curb the military-jihadi complex there. India wants the U.S. to put pressure on Pakistan's security establishment to stop differentiating among variants of terror groupsfor instance, between the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the former acting as a political umbrella for the latterand tackle all of them with equal zeal.
Second, on the question of India's role in its neighborhood, it's Washington's turn to be unhappy. In Chennai last Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton asked India to exercise political influence in consonance with its growing economic weight. Exhorting India "to lead," she asked New Delhi to do more to integrate economically with neighbors Afghanistan and Pakistan and to play a bigger role in the Asia-Pacific.
As the situation in Afghanistan has unraveled and as China's rise has upended the balance of power in East Asia, the U.S. expected India to help provide stability. Despite its military and economic weight, India is still a reluctant power even in its own vicinity and has shown little appetite to lead on regional security issues. Its grand strategy remains incomprehensible even to its friends; its military policy is mired in bureaucratese. Manmohan Singh's government has never been one to exert much strength abroad; now, paralyzed by governance problems at home, it hasn't articulated any policy response and has looked weaker.
Of course, many in New Delhi argue that Washington itself stymies India's emergence in its neighborhood. The Obama administration has been giving contradictory signals on ******. Mrs. Clinton wants India to step up, but President Barack Obama's plans to end America's combat role in Afghanistan by 2014 leave India with limited choices. Pakistan's army wants a pliable government in Kabul, so that it can exert strategic depth in Afghanistan vis-à-vis India. New Delhi has to fend for itself, Washington is suggesting.
As far as China goes, the White House has gone from appeasing China to thinking about a stronger response, especially with the South China Sea flareup. The ambivalence complicated New Delhi's own ties with Beijing.
Third, nuclear cooperation, the one big idea that transformed the bilateral relationship, is facing setbacks. Last week, though Mrs. Clinton maintained the U.S. remains "fully" committed to the civilian nuclear pact with India, she made it clear that there were "issues" which required resolution. She didn't go into specifics.
There is a specific obstacle for India's civil nuclear program. Late last month, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 46-nation nuclear cartel that includes the U.S., came up with new guidelines for tightening the exports of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies. Though the exact formulation of the new guidelines has not been made public, they seem to underscore that the transfer of sensitive ENR technologies will exclude nations which are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and do not have full-scope safeguards. Washington obviously supports this.
These guidelines have frightened New Delhi because they apparently go against the spirit of the NSG exemption granted in 2008. Then, thanks to Washington's maneuvering, the NSG unprecedentedly allowed India, which hasn't signed the NPT, to carry out nuclear commerce.
The problem is Mr. Obama's ideological rigidity. He believes in a nuclear-free world, as he has said repeatedly. But the White House's belief is in danger of destroying the hard-won gains from last decade's U.S.-India nuclear rapprochement. Its support for the new ENR guidelines also stems from its ideological commitment to the existing nuclear non-proliferation regime, as the NPT outlines. President Bush was at least willing to relax the international regime in favor of a democratic partner with a clean proliferation record, but Mr. Obama wants to strengthen it.
If this were to proceed, India's nuclear program will be threatened. It may be forced to sign the NPT, which it considers discriminatory, against its wishes. Mrs. Clinton has failed to allay these Indian concerns.
For all these reasons, Washington and New Delhi are constrained from taking their bilateral relationship any further. Where their bureaucracies were once unified by the idea of a nuclear agreement, they are now consumed by domestic challenges. As a consequence, the last two years have witnessed a lot of rhetoric but very little substantive movement. Mr. Obama's much-hyped visit to India in November is a case in point.
This partnership can only achieve its full potential if both sides address the substantive problems. India has to stop punching below its weight in Asia. And the U.S. has to take a firmer line against Pakistan-sponsored terror and drop its nuclear fantasies.
Mr. Pant is a professor of defense studies at King's College, London.
