Geopolitical chess: The president's historic visit to S. Asia
UNITED NATIONS — President George W. Bush’s historic visit to Afghanistan, India, Pakistan is the latest move in what has become a fascinating geopolitical chess game by the powers to court influence, curry commerce and checkmate rivals in strategic South Asia. The stakes are high and the lure of security and economic benefits even higher. The USA, People’s China, France, and Russia are all playing this great game.
The Kabul stopover underscored a successful mission as well as a show of solidarity with President Hamid Karzai who hailed Bush as a “liberator of the Afghan people.”
President Bush’s long awaited passage to India presented the opportunity for Washington to reinforce a budding commercial and strategic relationship with New Delhi. Bush wasted no time in addressing key challenges; solving the political/ethnic divide in Kashmir, the opening of markets to wider trade, and the sale of civilian nuclear power technology to India to fuel its rapidly expanding energy needs.
On the eve of the Bush visit, French President Jacques Chirac made an unexpected whirlwind trip to New Delhi to pitch the French nuclear industry and its technological high end advantages.
The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has welcomed the nuclear agreement between the U.S. and India which will boost non-proliferation efforts.
The fact that an American President was in India, was itself quite extraordinary. During the Cold War, India’s foreign policy was defined by non-alignment and often, putting it bluntly, a concert of shared political interests with the former Soviet Union. Ties with Washington were correct but often tense and sometimes frosty. Today with different players on the international stage, India’s democratic government has cautiously opened its once protected markets to foreign investment, wider global trade, and trimmed its cherished mantra of non-alignment towards closer relations with Washington.
London’s Financial Times stressed, “It is India, a county whose metropolitan elites are overwhelmingly pro-American that offers Mr. Bush the best chance of a significant foreign policy success.”
The newsweekly India Today commented “Bush's visit will be far more consequential for India than that of any previous U.S. president. There has been no greater friend of India in the history of the White House.” They added, “Placing conventional wisdom on its head, he made India the centerpiece of his "Transformational Diplomacy". India is seen by him not only as a potential global power, but a principal strategic partner of the U.S.”
But beyond the lure of the markets and the chimera of a more formal strategic relationship, the U.S. and democratic India have a shared values and interests—stopping spread of Islamic fundamentalism and opening each others markets for the impressive talents of the Indian entrepreneurial classes.
Nonetheless Washington’s new enchantment with India’s booming economy has its limits. U.S. investment in India in 2004 was $300 million, in Mainland China it was $4 billion. Equally U.S. exports to India in 2005 reached in impressive $ 8 billion but during the same period exports to the PRC stood at $42 billion.
Pakistan presents a more complex relationship especially in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks on America and the deeply rooted Islamic radicalism which sadly permeates Pakistan. Though George W. Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have a close personal relationship through which to pursue the war on terrorism, let’s not forget that the secular Musharraf is surrounded by a choppy sea of fundamentalism and covert Taliban and Al Qaida sympathizers.
Moreover Pakistan’s President just returned from a five day state visit to the People’s Republic of China where he was feted by the Beijing leadership. While close political ties between Pakistan and the PRC have long defined the regional political landscape, the ongoing military, technology and nuclear links between Beijing and Islamabad warrant serious concern.
Concerning the military standoff between India and Pakistan over divided Kashmir, the source of three past wars, now has a nuclear trigger as both New Delhi and Islamabad have atomic weapons. Diplomats know that Russia has long reserved a special veto to protect India in the UN Security Council against any substantive moves to change Kashmir’s status quo; People’s China has apparently offered its political platinum plan to Pakistan to guard its interests in Kashmir.
South Asia has gained the focus of the powers in this dynamic geopolitical chess game.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com. |
