Mr Varadarajan writes about the American propensity to put pressure on India and thereby wring out concessions that are detrimental to our interests. He brings out the American modus operandi of nuanced diplomacy that offers sweeteners while squeezing out our consent on issues of concern to the US. There is even a description of how the Americans have adopted a policy of creeping emergence of a new defence framework.
In a sense, the history of the Nimitz’s visit goes back to 1991, when Lt. Gen. Claude C. Kicklighter, erstwhile commander of the U.S. Army Pacific, handed over a set of proposals for army-to-army cooperation with India. These involved reciprocal staff visits and schooling and training for commanders as building blocks for more comprehensive U.S. access to Indian facilities. The 1995 ‘Agreed Minute on Defence Relations’ added joint exercises and held out the prospect of greater technology transfer but the Indian side soon discovered the U.S. was interested only in deepening service-to-service relations...
After India’s offer of military facilities to the U.S. for offensive operations in Afghanistan, the relationship took a new turn. The Pentagon preferred Pakistan as a staging post but used India’s offer to push for a logistics support agreement, as was acknowledged by Admiral Dennis C. Blair in February 2002. The pace of naval and air exercises shot up. However, the U.S. side realised a new charter was needed to tap the full benefits India offered. In particular, Pentagon planners knew a more relaxed policy on arms transfers was needed, not just as a sweetener for the Indian side but as a vital element in the pursuit of interoperability. As early as December 2001, senior U.S. military officials also floated the idea of an adjustment to American domestic nuclear legislation as an incentive for the Indians to cooperate.
Two weeks before the July 2005 nuclear deal, India and the U.S. signed a ‘New Framework for the Defence Relationship,’ which envisaged an action plan ranging from joint exercises, collaboration in multinational operations, “expand[ing] interaction with other nations” (i.e. U.S. allies such as Japan and Australia), enhancing capabilities to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, collaboration in missile defence, and so on. Two years on, several elements of this action plan have begun to fall into place. Though India remains opposed to the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), the last two ‘Malabar’ naval exercises have seen PSI-related drills such as maritime interdiction and VBSS (visit-board-search-seizure) operations. Quadrilateral security meetings have begun. The recent sale of the USS Trenton (rechristened the INS Jalashwa) — now the second largest ship in the Indian inventory — will allow the Indian Navy to deploy a landing platform dock for the kind of multinational operations the new defence framework envisages. Hercules transport aircraft have also been purchased from the U.S. On the anvil now is the contract for 126 multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) for which Washington is mounting an aggressive campaign...
That is why the bargain it proposes is this: the U.S. will ‘help’ India become a major world power in exchange for India doing all its can to ensure the ‘American century in Asia’ becomes a reality. The July 2005 nuclear deal was partly motivated by this aim and the same rationale is propelling the incredible bonhomie on the military front.
I have no problem with this bargain, if the deal is that US "helps" India become a world power, while India help promote US interests in Asia. The only note caution should be that the promotion of those US interests in Asia should not come at the expense of India's core national interests in the same region. We can accept this line argument only if we give up our ideologically tinted pre-conceived notion, that any US role in Asia will be detrimental to the geo-political balance in Asia and the interests of Asian countries. For this we need to acknowledge that Asian and Indian interests need not necessarily be the same, and also that the balance of power game is not a zero-sum one. If the US has goals that squarely conflict with our interests, the onus is on us to not accommodate them. But I am sure that the US is too mature and seasoned a player to understand India's strategic importance to hold the bilateral relationship hostage to any single issue.
Indian foreign policy has yet to realise the importance of "engagement dipomacy", where outcomes do not emerge in binary black and white terms, but is often the result of long drawn out dialogue. Such dialogues are characterised by pressure tactics and brinkmanship, compromises and mutual adjustments, so as to accommodate differring view points, while at the same time not ceding ground on the core national interests. Any engagement diplomacy would be a series of two steps forward and one step backward movement. Every compromise has to be accompanied by a commensurate gain. The final outcome of any such engagement process is generally beneficial to both sides and is rarely a zero-sum game.
I cannot see anything wrong per se with American fighter planes or warships entering India as part of a diplomatic exchange nor in formalizing the bilateral relationship through treaties and agreements. It is in America's interest to institutionalize the engagement with India by means of legally binding agreements. It is in our interest to also do the same, but by negotiating out favorable terms which do not compromise our national interests nor constrain our ability to act in accordance with it.
American national interest in relationship with India would have many dimensions. India is an emerging economic powerhouse and hence presents many challenges and opportunities for the US. India's political stability and deomocratic polity means that it is a valuable and potentially reliable ally. India's own geo-political compulsions, especially vis-a-vis China and Pakistan, provides the US interesting opportunities to promote its own geo-political interests. The emergence of China and the dynamics of the new Asian balance of power considerably enhances India's utility. Our proximity to the volatile West Asia and our internal security challenges would not have missed the attention of US policy makers. America also realizes the challenges posed by our economic growth concerns. We need to engage with America knowing fully well all these and even worse. Therein lies the success of our foreign policy. We need to be forewarned to be forearmed.
The assumption that if we become close to Israel or US, we could alienate countries like Iran or China, is flawed and without basis. The onus would be on us to engage in bridge diplomacy with these countries, so as to assuage and reassure them with all the available levers of our diplomacy. However immoral as it may appear, we will need to learn to straddle different boats at the same time, play same games with different rules with different partners, all the while carefully balancing all of them. International relations is not a morality play. It is about hard-nosed bargaining and defending 'amoral' national interests. The foreign policy establishments of most countries, including China and Iran, are aware of the need to comprosmise for accommodating the concerns and interests of their partners.
We will need to exercise our ever growing prowess in economic diplomacy to engage Iran and cushion the Indo-Iranian relationship from the Indo-US engagement process. India will have to accomodate some of Iran's geo-political concerns and play it up, so as to nullify any negative effect of the progress on Indo-US front. Minuses in the relationship will have to be counteracted with pluses. After all the Chinese have played the double game in its relationship with countries like Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Cuba, very effectively. While they have engaged these countries in a relationship, they have also aggressively reached out Israel and the US and even voted against the interests of these countries in the United Nations Security Council. We need to be keep in mind that, despite any brinkmanship arising from a closer Indo-US relationship, Iran realises its interest in engaging with India. A mature and seasoned practioner of engagement diplomacy like the US would easily understand our interests with China or Iran, and not let the progress on thoses relationships affect Indo-US ties. Stronger the engagement dialogue, the more shocks will the realtionship be able to withstand, without rocking the boat.
Siddharth Varadarajan himself appropriately describes the characteristics of the US strategic diplomacy thus,
When it comes to nurturing an ally, however, the U.S. has the stamina of a long-distance runner. It took 16 years after General Kicklighter’s visit to India for the USS Nimitz to drop anchor in Indian waters. The U.S. knows th at the more engagement it thrusts upon India, the harder it becomes for India to refuse incremental demands. In military terms, it has two goals. First, to make sure the Indian armed forces never become an obstacle to American hegemonic interests either by themselves or by bandwagoning with other Asian powers. And second, to outsource low-end tasks of hegemony, such as patrolling, humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, and stabilisation.
The foreign policy of any country is an exercise in managing a series of often mutually conflicting but interlocking relationships. But it is also increasingly acknowledged that the outcome of these interlocking relationships is not a zero-sum game. The strength of any relationship between two countries is increasingly being judged by the depth and intensity of engagement, rather than any shared historical or ideological concerns. Any engagment process has a life and logic of its own, and therefore has the inherent strength to withstand shocks. We need to base a relationship with another country using multiple levers of diplomacy, rather than base it on a single strand. We also need to underpin it with shared interests, rather than ideological or historical concerns.
The United States would obviously have an agenda, with clear terms of engagement with India. This agenda would be driven not by concerns of friendship and bonhomie with India, but by hard nosed calculations of national interest. That is the way it should be, and we can be rest assured that is the way it is with any engagement agenda put forward by the US. It is not friendship for friendship sake, but friendship for promotion of our national interest. We need to first accept that there is nothing wrong with this approach, and then formulate our responses keeping in mind the same principle that guides American (or Chinese or Iranian) diplomacy - national interest.
India needs to boldly chart out our foreign policy with the firm belief that we now pack enough economic and geo-political punch to be not cowed down or brow beaten by any country. Our foreign policy should be dictated by the firm assumption that India's strategic importance for any country is a fait accompli. There is also nothing wrong with compromises provided it promotes our national interests. If there arises a conflict between our long term national interest and our long held ideological beliefs, then the former should prevail. Always!
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