Thursday, March 09, 2006

Srdja Trfkovic- India: A Rare "A" for Mr. Bush

Tuesday, March 07, 2006
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org

It does not happen very often in world affairs that an event described as “historic” at the time of its occurrence proves to have a truly lasting significance. Many “historic” summits between Soviet and American leaders in the 1970’s and 80’s are as little remembered today as the documents they signed and the words they exchanged at that time.

Last week’s visit by President George W. Bush to India is an exception, however: already hailed as historic by many pundits and Mr. Bush himself, it may prove to be as significant as Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972. The agreement on nuclear energy cooperation announced by Mr. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh herald a new strategic partnership between the United States and the country that is America’s natural partner vis-à-vis China and the Islamic world.

Reversing more than 30 years of U.S. policy, President Bush legitimized India’s entry into the nuclear club. He has agreed to share nuclear reactors, fuel and expertise in exchange for Delhi’s acceptance of international safeguards. India’s hitherto closely guarded, dual-use nuclear facilities will be divided into 14 reactors that will be earmarked for commercial use and 8 designated as military. The U.S. will transfer atomic know-how for the former, and the civilian side will operate under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The deal undoubtedly violates the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but Washington has routinely turned a blind eye to its other friends’ and allies’ nuclear ambitions—notably Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa, which have never ratified the NPT. By relaxing the formal rules governing the acquisition of nuclear weapons, the United States is finally discarding a stance that was as hypocritical as it was harmful to American interests.

Those interests demanded an agreement with India for four main reasons:

• A nuclear China, which will soon become the world’s second largest economy, will be more easily counter-balanced by India if its military nuclear capability is legitimized, and its strategic partnership with the United States firmly cemented.

• India has over a billion people and its booming economy—growing at 8 per cent a year—already exerts major pressure on the world’s oil and gas prices, but the development of a legitimate and U.S.-supported civilian energy sector will ease that pressure.

• India has unlimited potential as America’s trading partner.

• India has been a major victim of jihad over the centuries, and this historical legacy, coupled with its stable democratic institutions inherited from the British Raj, make India an infinitely more reliable partner than Pakistan in the “global war on terrorism.”

This last point is particularly important. Pakistan is only the most prominent of several supposed “allies” against jihad terrorism that are inherently unreliable because of an endemic jihadist sentiment in society and official collusion. Their reliability is only as good as the supply of American largesse and the longevity of individual strongmen. India’s position on this matter by contrast is neither opportunistic nor subject to change.

It is idle to pretend that America can be equally close to both India and Pakistan, since the two are natural enemies ideologically and territorially. We have argued for years that General Pervez Musharraf’s has been able to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds for far too long. Mr. Bush’s clear signal to Islamabad, which he visited briefly after India, that America has new priorities in the Subcontinent is good news. He has quite properly indicated that Pakistan cannot hope for an equivalent nuclear deal, in view of its awful record on nuclear proliferation. On the disputed province of Kashmir, the cause of two wars between India and Pakistan, Musharraf did not get Mr. Bush to get involved in resolving the problem as he would have liked him to do. Pakistani commentators were right to conclude that the President had only visited Islamabad to give a semblance of balance, but “has not even given a lollipop to Pakistan.”

An India watcher in Washington says privately that Mr. Bush’s visit is not the product of a mere eight months’ negotiation of the nuclear deal but came as the result of a slow but steady political rapprochement between the United States and India that has progressed since the late 1990s despite changes in party control in both countries: “As amazing as it sounds, this may be an instance where the ‘permanent government’ actually got something right. While the [nuclear] agreement is significant in itself—rescuing the Indo-U.S. relationship from the dictates of the more dogmatic elements of the established non-proliferation punditry—it is widely anticipated that Congressional approval of the agreement will be the starting gun for a wide range of U.S. products and services to enter the Indian market.”

Last but by no means least, India’s role as America’s economic partner cannot be overestimated. China’s commercial development has depended on commands from above and, on the American side, from the desire of U.S. firms for a cheap manufacturing platform for exports back to the United States. India’s growth, by contrast, is not confined to heavy industry geared for the export market. Because India’s economic growth is being driven from the bottom up, satisfying the wants of a rising technical and professional class is an indication of a balanced commercial symbiosis with United States. Indeed, there has even been a counter-flow of Indians who had come to live and work in the United States returning to India, where their earnings go farther.

The administration of George W. Bush has made many mistakes and blunders over the past five years. In seeking to forge a strategic partnership with India, and in distancing itself from Pakistan, it has finally made a move that is geopolitically sound and in accordance with this country’s best interests.

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