T N Ninan: Four lost years

As far as Mr Obama's White House is concerned, India could be looking at four lost years

Foreign Policy magazine, in its latest issue, lists five country leaders who might be wishing that George W Bush were still in the White House. It mentions Berlusconi of Italy, Netanyahu of Israel, Chavez of Venezuela (he misses Mr Bush as a target!), and the leaders of Poland and Colombia. I expected to see Manmohan Singh in the list; his absence is almost certainly no indication of the Indian prime minister’s preferences; it more likely signals how India has faded out of the map in Washington.

The spin in recent weeks has been that the Obama administration may have started off on the wrong foot with India (for instance, Hillary Clinton’s initial run through Asia ignored India; and there was Mr Obama’s needless and negative reference to Bangalore), but that Ms Clinton’s address to an Indian forum in the US capital and her forthcoming visit to India would make it clear that the bilateral relationship is important to the American administration. But it is increasingly apparent that this is, well, spin. The truth is now too obvious to be hidden, and Ms Clinton’s comments in a TV interview only underline this.

It is laughable for the US secretary of state to claim that Pakistan is doing all it can to fight terrorism, and that it is going after the culprits of the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. All of India knows that this is rubbish. The additional problem is that this is precisely the kind of certificate that will encourage Pakistan to continue to play with fire. And when a superpower which should (and presumably does) know better issues such a certificate, it has more to do with realpolitik than the facts.

Another signal comes from the comments made by the US ambassador-designate, Timothy Roemer, at his Senate hearing. They are bland and couched in largely meaningless generalities, and should be compared with the kind of comments that his two predecessors Robert Blackwill and David Mulford used to make, for the difference to become obvious.

On three specific issues, there is trouble brewing. The first is trade talks; the second is climate change; and the third is the nuclear issue. India has been put under pressure on the first two, and perhaps as a result the government has made overtures on both—only to find that that it is running up against domestic public opinion. The otherwise hard-to-understand posture adopted with Pakistan at Sharm-el-Sheikh may also be the result of US pressure, though everyone will deny it strenuously.

On the nuclear issue, the US has already got the G-8 to sign off on what it wants to do. Ms Clinton’s comment that the Indo-US nuclear deal stands but that Washington is worried about proliferation does not help matters, because it suggests that India is a proliferator—when the world knows whom that particular cap fits. The message of course is that the US is back to the NPT framework which India thought it had got out of.

Add the talk of a G-2 framework (the US and China), as well as the financial hand-outs and military freebies being given to Pakistan, and it is obvious that India does not fit into Washington’s plan for the region or the world; it is just a country that should be pressured to give in on sundry multilateral issues and to play footsie with a rogue neighbour. Bilateral ties may still grow because of factors that have nothing to do with the US administration (NRIs in the US, trade opportunities, students wanting a good university education, India’s attractions as a market), but as far as Mr Obama’s White House is concerned, we could be looking at four lost years.