(A modified version of this article was first published in Vijay Times, 12th November 2006)
With the prospect of the US Congress passing the nuclear deal bill on terms acceptable to India diminishing, there are growing doubts over the much-talked-about India-US strategic partnership and concern that it could be damaged. It would be a tragedy for both countries if things start sliding in that direction.
The nuclear deal is certainly important, but the India-US ‘strategic partnership’ should not be held hostage to it. For one, if the agreement does not come through, it will not be for lack of desire or effort on the part of either Executive to bring it to fruition, but because of the very democratic processes and institutions both nations cherish and, of course, their ambitions.
Two, India and America have come to have certain common strategic interests which will hold regardless of the fate the nuclear deal meets with. As can be discerned from the growing military relationship, already neither country wants to deny itself the advantages of working together on complex global issues, even if on some of them they disagree with each other.
Three, there is a slew of other important agreements that have imparted great ballast to the ‘strategic partnership’ in the past year. Among them, an unprecedented defence cooperation agreement under which America will assist India’s military by selling it some of the same transformational technologies and equipment that it prevents Europe and Israel from selling to China. India, in turn, has agreed to work with the US military in peace and democracy promotion operations, without insisting on UN approval for each such possible mission; an ‘Open Skies’ agreement signifying the strength of the business and social ties between the two countries; a growing partnership in space and dual use technologies; a $100 million agricultural knowledge initiative; an agreement to work together on non-nuclear clean energy technologies; a strategic dialogue on global economic issues; and a powerful India-US CEO Forum.
Indeed, taken together, the common strategic interests, the several agreements that are crucial to keeping both countries economically and technologically competitive, and the extremely positive level of the relationship constitute nothing less than the shaping of the first ‘post-Cold War alliance’ between two major powers. No two other major powers have -- since the end of the US-Soviet Cold War -- agreed upon a more purposeful and more encompassing relationship as America and India have.
Russia and China have tried to build a military alliance to balance American power and to keep it out of Central Asia, but have not succeeded. Many in Europe crave a multi-polar world order and wish to see China rise quickly to balance American power. But neither can Europe afford to move out of America’s protecting umbrella nor can those wishing for a multi-polar world get themselves to go beyond talking Airbus with China.
To be sure, the US and India have not signed up to defend each other militarily should either come under attack, and that’s one reason why they are not allies in the traditional sense. But it would be a mistake to expect that alliances in a globalising, post-Cold War, post-9/11 world would resemble those of the Cold War era.
The certainties imposed by nuclear weapons in the hands of all the great powers and the uncertainties imposed by complex economic interdependence among all of them together mean that India and the US are not preparing primarily for war with a rising China. Rather, they aim to shape the inevitable adjustments to the international hierarchy and the international order without either losing hold of the largely Anglo-Saxon-determined international system or precipitating war. In a sense, their partnership is aimed at pre-empting the formation of other alliances that would seek to wrest adjustments of a far more threatening kind.
Neither is it the case that India and the US have agreed to agree on all issues. Although it has seemed many times in the past six years as if India and the US are moving into a tight embrace, it is unlikely that they will. As Prime Minister Singh has himself acknowledged, the US is a global power with global interests and these do not always match with India’s more limited interests. The US therefore will act in its own interest, and it should expect India to do likewise.
But under the foreign policy direction of Condoleeza Rice the US, after having for a long time wanted India to become a direction-taking junior partner against China, has come to a new understanding of the Asian balance of power: an India capable of standing up to China would inherently be a counterweight to the latter whether it intends to be one or not, whether or not it seeks to do so in alignment with the US.
Equally importantly, English-speaking India is a good ‘culture fit’ for America, especially since it has moved from an era when it felt a ‘pre-modern’ sense of obligation towards the entire Third World to a ‘self-help’ and ‘me-first’ modernity. The US too, unlike the increasingly ‘post-modern’ Europe, remains grounded in modernity and realist traditions.
It is thus that the US has come to describe India as a positive force in global politics and to support, even desire, its rise to global power as one that would help America stabilise and preserve the international economic and security order. As Nicholas Burns told Europeans in June 2005, ‘‘India has so much in common with the United States and with Europe in what it wants to achieve in the world and what kind of world it wants to see…it will be the area of greatest dynamic positive change in American foreign policy.’’
Given these realities – on the one hand, the increasing common strategic interests and the ‘culture fit’ and potential capability, but on the other hand the fact that both India and the US each value nothing more than their own freedom of action – it would be reasonable to expect that given the right environment and decisions, the ‘post-Cold War alliance’ between them would develop into a mutually-beneficial ‘plug-and-play’ relationship, not a tightly-coupled Cold War-era alliance. The two countries will continue to build military interoperability and reinforce each other economically and technologically, but on the political level support will be contingent on their respective national interests, or as it happens often, on the exigencies of their domestic politics.
Even so, there is no mistaking it -- the India-US relationship is poised to be the most important bilateral relationship of this century. For one, the sheer fact of geography – America’s strategic sights have shifted from an inward-looking Europe to a resurgent Asia. China is seen as the potential challenger to American interests in Asia, and therefore to its global primacy. India lives next door to China.
For another, global political, economic and demographic trends indicate that America’s allies from the Cold War era might well fall out with it or fall by the wayside one by one even as the Chinese challenge to its primacy intensifies, leaving only India available to partner with.
Europe will continue to be busy for decades, widening and deepening integration and attempting to evolve and implement a common foreign and security policy for the continent. Moreover, a fundamental premise of European integration is the sharing of sovereignty and a shared goal of building a multilateral negotiation and rule-based European and world order. Europeans are in no mood to serve American interests, especially if that calls for anti-China policies and furthers American primacy. Most importantly, Europe is in demographic decline and is unlikely, in any case, to be able to stand up to the expected scale of the Chinese challenge. Japan, America’s other Cold War ally, too is in such deep demographic trouble that America would be foolish to regard it as its primary partner against China.
But there is a rather more important reason why the India-US relationship will be the pivotal relationship of this century. No two other major powers have such a degree of agreement on and deep stakes in the emerging global strategic order as these two have: while America wishes to preserve its global primacy, India seems to have decided that it in fact would be better for the American liberal order to prevail, until India itself can begin to have a bigger say in the reshaping of that order, rather than for the international order to acquire Chinese characteristics.
Pranab Mukherjee, as Defence Minister, said recently, ‘‘India-US ties are set to emerge as one of the fundamental inter-state relations of the current century that will help shape global norms and institutions’’. Hopefully, as foreign minister, he will not let the politics of pique to come in the way.
