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June 2, 2002
Will they join hands?
Stephen P. Cohen looks at the prospects of America linking up with India in world affairs
Ironically, India’s nuclear tests shattered US policy, with its single-minded focus on proliferation, and forced a reconsideration of relations with New Delhi. While the Clinton administration was reluctant to formally abandon its nonproliferation goals (a year after the 1998 tests, officials were still calling for the capping, roll-back, and elimination of India’s nuclear capabilities), there was widespread agreement that relations with India had to be more carefully managed and that the treaty-dominated, sanction-enforced strategy had not worked.
On the Indian side, too, there is a new eagerness for a close relationship with the United States. Both countries seem to see eye to eye on one thing: that India might become a more significant power, and that they should explore the limits of cooperation, and conceivably restructure their relationship. While there are also important differences between them on such issues as humanitarian intervention and the shape of a desirable world order, the Talbott-Singh dialogue led to a closer working relationship on international trade, terrorism, health and environmental problems and other subjects.
There also remains the common commitment to democracy, given some substance in Indian-US cooperation on the community of democracies hosted by Poland in June 2000 and co-convened by India, the United States, and several other states. However, India demonstrated its independent streak — and angered officials in the Clinton administration — when it declined to assume the leadership of an informal caucus of democracies, representing some 100 countries in the United Nations.
Indian officials were supportive in the abstract but did not want to be put in a position where they would be required to speak out against undemocratic states with which they have good strategic, economic, or political relations. Like the reversal of policy on the CTBT, where India had been one of the original advocates of a comprehensive test ban, India had pragmatic reasons for going its own way on the democratization initiative.
Still, this baffled American officials who had assumed that India would be a “partner” in the one area (democracy) where the two countries had a long-standing, shared commitment. As was the case of the CTBT, agreement on a lofty principle is not enough for either state when more pressing strategic calculations suggest a different policy.
Containing nuclear differences
The subject of sharpest disagreement between the two states in the past fifteen or twenty years has been India’s nuclear programme. This is likely to become less important in the next few years providing India keeps its nuclear and missile programme within certain limits. Limiting the range of its own nuclear forces and cooperating with the United States in preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons will shape the way in which Washington views India — as a “responsible” nuclear power or as a potential rogue — and will affect the degree to which the United States would engage in strategic cooperation with India and even sell it advanced military equipment or dual-use technology.
Pakistan and Kashmir
Unless India can foster a more normal relationship with Pakistan, its perceptions of Washington’s relationship with Islamabad will colour its own relationship with Washington. If the Americans continue to play a constructive role in ameliorating the India-Pakistan conflict, that is one thing; but if Pakistan should deteriorate, India might escalate its goals dramatically by attempting to dominate Pakistan and asking for American assistance in the process, perhaps by locating Pakistani nuclear weapons or neutralizing a possible Chinese involvement.
The challenge for the United States will be to maintain a close relationship with Pakistan without suggesting a threat to New Delhi while encouraging India to normalize its relations with Islamabad, working albeit slowly, toward a resolution of the Kashmir problem.
In the 1950s and 1960s the United States tried to be a regional peacemaker and offered a range of inducements designed to promote the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir problem, the river waters dispute, and other issues. If it were to return to such a strategy of conflict resolution or peacebuilding, it would have to take a more active role in South Asia, not to promote or oppose India, but to shape the regional environment in such a way that conflict between India and Pakistan could be averted. There have been no American efforts along these lines for many years, although the interventions during the three recent crises demonstrated that a US role of this nature might be accepted by both sides if the conditions were right.
The most obvious model for such a sustained engagement is the Middle East peace process, although it would have to be constructed quite differently in South Asia. For such an effort to succeed, the United States would have to assume a low profile, there might have to be a careful restoration of military sales to one or both sides, and other technical assistance could be offered (such as technologies to verify agreements reached by the two countries).
A new global order?
Americans and Indians have very different conceptions of a just international order. The United States is comfortable with what it regards as a benign hegemony, whereas India has long preferred a world of six or seven major powers, each responsible for peace and stability in its own region, each refraining from meddling in the affairs of other major powers, but working cooperatively in the United Nations Security Council. These differences have led the two states to disagree on three important issues: the limits of humanitarian peacekeeping, the makeup of the UN Security Council, and the emergence of China.
Most Indians have trouble accepting the principle of humanitarian intervention, although they are willing to concede the need for it in many recent conflicts. Such intervention by the United States, especially in Kosovo, left India wondering whether Kashmir too might become the subject of international inquiry and whether the United States might sponsor such a move in South Asia against India’s wishes.
Despite American denials, Indians think the United States would support the principle of “self-determination” within sovereign states and press for a plebiscite in Kashmir. For the West, humanitarian intervention is a charitable, discretionary activity; for India, it represents a direct threat to its control over Kashmir. The Kosovo and earlier Desert Storm operations led New Delhi to question the motives behind American behaviour since it was no longer necessary to balance Soviet power.
Indians concluded that the major second-tier states (such as India, Iraq, and others) could become the object of American aggression, whether under the pretext of economic need or humanitarianism. Given the overpowering military superiority of the United States and the demonstrable inability of Soviet era equipment to deter or defend against an American force, Indian strategists had to treat the United States as a potential enemy. With the new difficulties in Kashmir, there was widespread concern that the United States might seize upon that conflict and focus its diplomatic — and perhaps its military — resources on the dispute.
The two states also disagree strongly on whether the Security Council should be expanded and a permanent seat be given to India. Symbolically, such a move would amount to the full recognition of India as a great power, something that the Indian elite still craves. Indians also attach great practical and political value to a Security Council seat, especially since the veto power it would confer on India could quash any unwelcome Kashmir policy. The very early UN resolutions on Kashmir still stand, though India has argued for many years that these have been overtaken by events and by the Simla Agreement. With the distancing that has occurred between Russia and India, such a veto is more important than ever.
From the American perspective, the Indian demand for a council seat is problematic, and many Americans are wary of admitting India into this particular club. There is no history of US-Indian strategic collaboration, and some Americans would regard a UN seat as a “reward” for India’s nuclear program and fear that this would further accelerate the trend toward nuclear weapons, even among allies such as Japan, which also seeks a council seat. Furthermore, if India were made a member of the council, would it become less sensitive to American interests? Many Americans find New Delhi’s diplomacy to be like that of France: contrary, oppositional, and sometimes destructive. But France is embedded in a European and NATO framework. Would a veto-wielding India be a threat to UN and American policies’ especially in the area of peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention?
American and Indian intentions aside, India’s quest for a Security Council seat is not likely to be acceptable to other members of the council. Russia, for example, has adopted the same “wait-and-see” attitude as the United States; the two European seatholders would be opposed, especially if it weakened their position on the Council; and China, while publicly noncommittal, would certainly find reasons to oppose an Indian seat.
For India, however, the effort to obtain a seat has a strong positive payoff at home and among nonresident Indians abroad, but unless India can propose an arrangement for the reorganization of the council that did not lessen the influence of present members and that allowed for several new members-probably an impossible combination-India’s efforts are likely to go unrewarded.
India and the United States are each groping for a strategy to cope with the emergence of China as a major world power. In the early 1960s the United States viewed India as a major free, democratic Asian power that could balance a threatening, expansionist China. Initially, India was reluctant to assume this role, and Nehru sought an accommodation with Beijing. After 1962 there was a de facto US-India alliance directed against China, but that faded as the United States drifted away from India and engaged China in a strategic relationship aimed at the former Soviet Union.
Now the wheel has turned once more, and both the United States and India find themselves again regarding China with a mixture of concern and uncertainty, and China could again draw the two together. The United States is especially concerned about China’s threatening posture toward Taiwan, India about China’s support for Pakistan. Can these two threads be tied together? Probably not, if Chinese diplomacy does not press too hard on either front and force a response.
However, it does seem that both sides are seeking strategic “reinsurance” through a good working relationship that could allow for much closer ties if necessary.
Learning to engage
One of the few substantive agreements to come out of the Clinton trip to India was a commitment by both sides to explore the content of this relationship more systematically and regularly. From the perspective of both states, this was probably the wisest decision, rather than trying to reach some major agreement in areas of significant dispute. The “vision” document pledged regular summit meetings, ministerial-level meetings, and working groups in a variety of subjects.
For this reason, the subsequent visit of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in October 2000 was welcomed both in India and in the United States. No new agreements were reached, but the two countries consulted further on a number of issues, and plans went forward for additional meetings. For example, shortly afterward a joint official working group on antiterrorism met in New Delhi to explore steps that both states might take to ensure smoother cooperation in any joint international operations.
If the measures set forth in the document are implemented, there will still be no guarantee that the two states would engage in close cooperation or form anything resembling an alliance. But they will have a more “normal” relationship, with certain disparities between them either better understood, or not as painful as they were in the past.
Excerpted with permission from
India: emerging power
By Stephen P. Cohen
The Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20036 Website: www.brookings.edu
ISBN 0-8457-0006-7
377pp. £19.95
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