Engaging Mr Clinton
After 23 years, a US president has finally agreed to visit India -- and even he is coming only at the very end of his two terms in office. These two facts can be interpreted in two ways. One is that India doesn't count for much in US calculations; the other is that it is now beginning to count, otherwise why would the American president bother? As for India, it has now finally understood that if you live in the river, you don't quarrel with the alligator. More than anything else, India's US policy is now driven by this realisation. Whether it likes it or not, it has to accommodate US interests. In return, it can hope for some reciprocation. If Indian demands fit in with overall US interests, the US will cooperate. If not, there's nothing that India can do about it.
The US has always had two important foreign policy objectives. One is the prevention of nuclear proliferation so that it remains in control and its own security is not endangered. The other is enhanced market access. Under this overall rubric, there has also been a regional agenda for different regions. During the Cold War this sub-agenda was to ensure a diminution in Soviet influence; now it is to ensure that there are no regional wars. This it is doing by "promoting" democracy on the grounds that democracies are less likely to go to war with each other.
Mr Clinton's visit has to be seen in this overall context and, if one makes a checklist, it turns out that non-proliferation and the prevention of a regional war remain fairly intractable. Mr Clinton had made the indefinite extension of the NPT and the signing of the CTBT the cornerstones of his non-proliferation agenda. India has refused to sign both but has conveyed enough signals to convince the US that it will, in the fullness of time, sign the CTBT.
That leaves just one major worry for the US: the possibility of a regional war in Kashmir. Before India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests, there was no real threat of a nuclear war. But now that their weapons are out in the open, one or the other may be pressured into doing the unthinkable. Kashmir will, therefore, form an important part of the agenda. The US will want to know how India intends to deal with the situation. The chances are that India will bleat on about Pakistan. But this is not enough, since it has only succeeded in convincing the world about Pakistan's role in Kashmir but not, however, about its own role there.
That is why it needs to move forward by presenting a concrete and actionable domestic agenda for the troubled valley. Sadly, such an agenda is not anywhere in sight. Worse, no one is even thinking about one, remaining content instead with the unsustainable status quo. Indeed, from India's point of view, the US should continue to deal with Pakistan -- a Clinton stopover included. Given the way bilateral ties have deteriorated rapidly, some degree of American pressure on Pakistan, applied directly, will encourage that benighted country to exercise some restraint.
Other than that, little should be expected from the visit, as the US secretary of state has said quite bluntly, other than to signal in the broadest possible terms that India and the US are expressing an intent to work closer together