Fernand Braudel Center,
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Commentary No. 181, Mar. 15, 2006
The United States and India: New Best Friends?
George W. Bush has gone to India and concluded an agreement which many analysts are hailing as historic and a turning-point in the geopolitics of the world-system. On the face of
it, this trip (which some have even compared to Nixon's meeting with Mao in Beijing) does seem to mark a major shift in attitudes by both countries. But perhaps there is less there
than appears to be on the surface.
In the post-1945 world-system, India was in many ways a very disturbing element from the point of view of the United States. It was the original "non-aligned" power in the Cold
War between the United States and the Soviet Union. And the United States did not appreciate the consistent, forthright way the Indians argued their case. The United States
considered India's non-alignment a de facto favoring of the Soviet Union, and after 1948 began to favor Pakistan in order to create difficulties for India.
The Indian National Congress was a national liberation movement, in many ways the model for movements throughout Asia and Africa. The policies of the first Prime Minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, and of his immediate successors, combined non-alignment, active support for anticolonial movements everywhere, and a variant of social-democracy internally.
India also was interested in strengthening its military capacity. Since the United Statees wouldn't help its military ambitions, India bought arms and airplanes from the Soviet Union,
which was a further irritant to the United States.
The Indian National Congress, however, underwent the same kind of disabling disillusionments that similar movements elsewhere suffered in the 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s,
Congress had lost its sheen, and a rightwing, Hindu supremacist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), governed India from 1996 to 2004. Congress, in the post-Cold War era, no
longer proclaimed nonalignment nor anticolonial solidarity nor much that resembled social-democracy.
In the last five years, there have been important changes in both countries. On the one hand, India's economic development has made her a major locus of outsourcing for U.S.
informatics. Indians in the United States who have made considerable money in informatics and other professions have maintained their ties with India, and being a conservative
group politically, have urged upon the Indian government closer ties with the United States.
On the other hand, the United States has become quite isolated politically because of the policies of the Bush regime. India is now one of the very few countries where polls report a
majority having favorable views of the United States. This is not to say that there is no longer a very large group with unfavorable views, but India has been moving in the opposite
direction from the United States's traditional allies like western Europe or South Korea.
All this provides the background for the trip, the culmination of negotiations between India and the United States concerning U.S. assistance to India's nuclear program. India was
one of only three countries that had refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty. The other two were Pakistan and Israel. All three countries have developed nuclear weapons. Up to
now, the official U.S. position had been strong disapproval of India's nuclear program and, when India exploded bombs in 1998, the United States curbed the export of nuclear
technology to India.
The United States has now reversed its position. By this agreement, the United States agreed to sell both nuclear fuel and technology to India, despite the fact that India still will not
sign the non-proliferation treaty. To be sure, the assistance will only be for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and provides for inspections, but only of plants engaged in
developing peaceful uses. And India will decide which plants are for peaceful uses and which for military uses. Bush has hailed the agreement as the beginning of a "strategic
partnership."
What India gets out of this agreement is very obvious. They get needed technical assistance that allows them to speed up their nuclear program. And they get de facto recognition as
being a legitimate nuclear power, more or less in the same category as the five permanent members of the Security Council. To get this, they have given up almost nothing.
What the United States gets out of this agreement is less obvious. It is said that the United States wants to build up India as a counterweight to China's potential military and
political strength in Asia. Perhaps. And the United States gets a friendly nod from a major power, something in very short supply these years.
But the treaty has immediately drawn much fire. Within India, all those who are against the geopolitical tilt towards the United States are unhappy, and this includes coalition
partners of Congress in the legislature. And within the United States it has drawn fire from the whole political spectrum on the grounds that it liquidates de facto the
non-proliferation treaty. Furthermore, of course, it undoes the whole basis of the arguments concerning Iran, since Iran is really asking for the same thing India has gotten. And of
course, Pakistan is very unhappy, since Bush made it clear right away that the United States was not thinking of a similar arrangement with Pakistan.
The real question is what will be the result of all of this. Critics in the U.S. Congress are already poised to impose conditions for approval of the treaty. And it is quite likely that, if
they prevail (which is probable), India will reject the conditions. If that happens, the warmer feelings of the Indian government for the United States will likely vanish, but at the
same time the relations between the United States and Pakistan, already strained, will have deteriorated further.
India will emerge ahead in any case. Russia has already offered to sell nuclear fuel to India, something that the United States has in the past sought to prevent. But the United States
no longer has any good argument. Furthermore, its weak case against Iran is now considerably undermined. And the North Korean government is no doubt chortling.
The bottom line of the historic breakthrough -- many pluses for India, and an additional setback for U.S. diplomacy. Far from a strategic partnership, the treaty distributes further
grains abrading the U.S. geopolitical position.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
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These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of
the long term.]
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