Indian-U.S. ties haunted by Soviet ghosts, spooked by China

---

See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

A phalanx of Indian officials is passing through Washington culminating in Indian Prime Ministers Singh’s visit. Back in May at the V-E anniversary ceremony President Bush said this year’s visit would lead to "great, great things”.

That it was said in Moscow is significant for nothing dogs the U.S.-Indian relationship more than the ghosts of New Delhi’s 30-year alliance with the Soviet Union, even including its economic heritage of Communist-style planning, and its continued dependence on billions of dollars in Russian arms. [On the eve of Singh’s arrival released portions of the Nixon Presidential tapes revealed embittered conversations by the President with Kissinger over New Delhi’s successful push to help the breakaway East Pakistan achieve independence as Bangladesh.] Indian nostalgia for the Indian-Soviet alliance was demonstrated again in June when Sonia Gandhi, chairman of the Congress Party — heading Singh’s coalition — received chief of state homage when she visited Moscow.

Hope for the new India-U.S. era is greatly based on the soaring commercial relationship. Bilateral trade has increased from $5.6 billion in 1990 to $18.03 billion in 2003. India’s merchandise exports to USA grow at more than 10 percent annually. Investment remains modest but has taken off [particularly in India’s offshore information technology]; $1.6 billion approved since the introduction of economic reform is twice the preceding 40 years. The $2.3 billion Daebol power project, India’s largest ever foreign investment, brought to a standstill by all too familiar Indian bureaucratic snarl complicated by the Enron collapse, may finally have been resolved. The mushrooming, highly organized 2.5 million U.S. Indian community is playing catalyst.

But India’s Defense Minister Mukherjee took care to reassure Russia its longstanding collaboration held firm — even as he signed a 10-year defense cooperation agreement with Secretary Rumsfeld. Indians say the agreement does not solve the issue of “unreliability”, harking back to American sanctions as a result of Indian nuclear weapons development. Support for India’s seat on the UN Security Council which Clinton gave informally has not been renewed by Bush. More than anything else India wants lifting of restrictions on dual purpose technologies. Yet there has to be Washington caution about a feedback to the Russians, and thence to the Chinese, with India attempting to produce hi tech weaponry domestically. Bush has tried to finesse the greatest problem in India-U.S. relations: America’s relationship with Pakistan. Washington adopted a manta: each country’s bilateral relations are in separate boxes. But 9/11 forced Washington into a new anti-terror alliance with Pakistan, perhaps the most critical Islamic state, lifted the ban on a decades old sale of F16 fighters. Even sugar-coated with a similar offer to India, it proved this “concept” totally unrealistic. Their bilateral relationship remains the central issue of both countries’ foreign policy.

Indians concede Washington’s role in cooling some Indo-Pakistan friction, including all important Kashmir. With its own Moslem minority larger than Pakistan, New Delhi appreciates the importance of America’s effort to bolster Pakistan’s as an ally in the war against terrorism, despite its former sponsorship of the Afghanistan Taliban and its international nuclear weapons bazaar, and the continued terrorism in Kashmir. There is even a reluctant admission President Musharraf’s camouflaged military dictatorship is the best temporary settlement India [and the U.S.] can hope for in a country heavily infiltrated by Islamists. New Delhi’s present “peace” efforts with both Pakistan, and its ally, China, are admission such muddy compromises continue.

The U.S. Air Force has exercised with Indians, American Special Forces have trained in extreme conditions, and during the Afghan War’s first weeks the Indian Navy escorted American warships in the Arabian Sea. There has been some anti-terrorist intelligence-sharing.

But any hope India would share any effort to restrain Chinese aggressive tendencies are unrealistic.

India continues to lose the quiet struggle for tactical supremacy all along their Himalayan frontier where it lost the 1964 war with Beijing. Chinese military expansion in Tibet continues. Indian border defenses are still primitive. Beijing has stepped into Nepal’s crisis with military aid to the King — brought on by an increasingly powerful Maoist insurgency and when his power grab brought a hiatus in Indian [and U.S.] aid to the Himalayan border state. The Chinese are road building in Bhutan India’s relations are at low ebb with Bangladesh with significant Chinese political and commercial inroads. There are continuing armed Naxallite insurgencies in eight Indian states plus ethnic conflicts in the vulnerable northeast.

All would be grist for Beijing subversion — along with a traditionally pro-Beijing Communist government in pivotal West Bengal on which Singh-Gandhi’s’s parliamentary majority depends — if and when the present peace offensive launched by India evaporates as it has in the past.

All of this suggests geopolitical collaboration with India by the U.S. will continue to be less than slogans suggest. India’s energetic efforts in early July to enter the Beijing-sponsored anti-American alliance, SCO, [Security, formerly Shanghai, Cooperation Organization], a group of central Asia states, Moscow, and China opposed to American influence in the region, is just another symptom of conflicts which are likely to endure the present era of hospitality.