New Delhi and Washington have already embarked on
preparatory work for a possible visit by the US President, Mr.Bill Clinton, to India early
next spring. According to as yet unconfirmed indications, he may spend four days in
India---two in New Delhi and two outside, possibly including Mumbai and Chennai--and one
day in Bangladesh.
A visit to Pakistan is doubtful unless, in the meanwhile, the
military regime announces a definite time-table for the restoration of democracy and meets
US concerns on the nuclear non-proliferation, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden issues.
Otherwise, his going to Pakistan may prove politically controversial in the US.
If he ultimately decides not to go to Pakistan, he might go to
Vietnam from Bangladesh before returning to Washington. A visit to Sri Lanka is reportedly
not on the cards.
There is expectation in both the capitals that the visit could
break the psychological barrier, which has dogged the bilateral relations since India's
independence.
If shared values alone could bring two nations together, India
and the US should have been the closest of partners in regional and global affairs, but
this is not so.
A psychological barrier resulting from complexes among
policy-makers and opinion-moulders, a lack of shared interests and concerns and inadequate
understanding of each other's policy-motivation has stood in the way of better relations,
despite the shared values.
Complexes in India arose from the USA's perceived softness
towards Pakistan, its alleged failure to appreciate and act on India's concerns regarding
China's nuclear and missile co-operation with Pakistan and the perception that in its
policy formulation in the region, Washington attached greater importance to China than to
India.
Bilateral ties also became a victim of perceptions in New Delhi
that while Washington encouraged China's aspirations to emerge as a major regional power,
it thwarted similar Indian aspirations, by denying it advanced technologies, by preventing
Russia and other countries from giving comparable technologies to it, by refusing to
accept it as a nuclear weapon state etc.
The post-Cold War emergence of the US as the sole superpower
added to these complexes. Policy-making and influencing circles in India have always had a
tendency to look for ulterior motives and hidden agendas in US policies and actions and
this has only been further aggravated by the USA's emergence as the sole superpower.
One tends to forget in India that while the US interest in India
only dates from the Second World War, there has been a certain fascination for China, its
culture and civilisation not only in the US official circles and elite, but also in the US
civil society as a whole from the days of the KMT Government, if not even earlier.
This fascination has been further strengthened by China's
remarkable post-1979 economic achievements and by what the US views as the balance and
maturity shown by China in its external policy making, despite its periodic sabre-rattling
towards Taiwan.
India has thus far failed to evoke a similar interest and
fascination in the American mind. The Americans are a pragmatic, result-oriented people,
allergic to hype and unpredictability.
The US has not consciously sought the sole superpower status.
Power flows to a nation that performs and the US has been the most performing of all the
nations in the world today, in all spheres of human activity.
If power and status in Asia seem to be flowing more towards China
than towards India today, it is because post-1979 China has been excelling in whatever
activity it has been taking up--economic, science and technology, sports etc. Even after
eight years of our giving a new orientation to our economic and external policies, India's
image not only in the US, but also in the rest of the world is still that of a nation that
talks more and performs less.
If we think that we can change this image just by flaunting our
nuclear and missile capabilities (sakthi), we are sadly mistaken. We can do so only by
projecting India, through performance and not spins, as a nation that means business in
economic matters, that has the right priorities in its development agenda, that is
sensitive and responsive to the views and concerns of others and that is predictable and
balanced in its policies and actions.
Actions such as the delaying of the Enron project by politicising
it through baseless pre-election allegations, telling the US that a nuclear test was
unlikely till the strategic defence review was completed and then surprising it with the
test, immature gloating over our deceiving the US, springing upon a surprised world a
draft, unimplementable (for financial reasons) nuclear doctrine without worrying about its
adding to the concerns of Pakistan and other countries, the extreme touchiness shown by
India towards even good-intentioned suggestions from outside, even from non-governmental
circles, on the Kashmir issue, the unfortunate controversy over the Pope's visit and so on
definitely do not help in creating this new image of India.
India has to accept the reality that the US has important
national interests in China and Pakistan just as it has in India. It wants to help China
make a success of its economic open door policy, while, at the same time, nudging it
towards political liberalisation. It seeks to help Pakistan come out of the extremist
quagmire in which it has been caught because of its active association with the US in
Afghanistan while, at the same time, ensuring that a rejuvenated Pakistan does not add to
India's concerns.
It would be unrealistic on our part to expect the US to dilute
its focus on these objectives just for the sake of closer relations with India. However,
it would be reasonable for us to expect that in pursuing these objectives, Indian
interests are not jeopardised by the US.
Past Indo-US relations were devoid of external warmth, but not of
significant internal content. Unfortunately, the public has little knowledge of this
content. Right from India's independence, the security bureaucracies of the two countries,
with the approval of the political leaderships, had closely co-operated, away from the
glare of publicity, in monitoring possible threats to India's security from external
attempts to export the armed communist revolution.
After this threat ceased in 1979, this co-operation was extended
to counter-terrorism. The capability, which the Indian security bureaucracy has built up
for electronic monitoring of external threats, would not have been possible but for
generous and discreet US assistance.
In India, one tends to harp on the US softness towards Pakistan,
its reluctance to declare Pakistan a State-sponsor of international terrorism and to act
against Pakistan's clandestine nuclear and missile deals with China and so on, but how
many of us highlight the determined manner in which Mr.George Bush, the then President,
implemented the sanctions under the Pressler Amendment, which have to a great extent
contributed to Pakistan's present economic difficulties or Mr.Clinton pressurised the
Nawaz Sharif Government to sack in 1993 Lt.Gen. Javed Nasir, Director-General of the ISI,
and many other senior officers for their suspected links with terrorist organisations
involved in India and elsewhere and other reasons..
The perceived Indian proximity to the erstwhile USSR during the
Cold War only partly explains the complexes in the US vis-à-vis India. In the past, US
political leaders and bureaucrats had never felt comfortable dealing with their
counterparts in India. They had the impression of dealing with an incomprehensible,
suspecting, sulking mind.
They were also peeved at the way India saw conspiracies behind
everything the US said or did and kept criticising it at every conceivable opportunity,
while rarely acknowledging the US assistance to India on many occasions---whether it be
the wheat supplies in the 1950s and 1960s or the security assistance, which, though not as
spectacular as that to Pakistan, was not devoid of significance.
As Mr.Clinton's visit approaches, analysts, opinion-moulders and
the spin-masters in both the bureaucracies would work overtime finding new labels for
Indo-US relations--strategic partnership, new security architecture and so on.
These are concepts which defy understanding, colourful
expressions without real meaning.
What is important is that the two countries shed their past
complexes and mind-sets and bring to bear a new co-operative approach on their bilateral
relations, with a better understanding of each other's policy-motivation, compulsions and
constraints and with a greater willingness than in the past to accommodate each other's
concerns and interests subject to national constraints.
Once this is achieved, the nuts and bolts of the relationship on
matters such as nuclear non-proliferation, attitude to Pakistan, counter-terrorism
co-operation etc would automatically fall into place.
