Author: Tunku Varadarajan
Publication: Forbes.com
Date: February 16, 2009
URL: http://www.forbes.com:80/2009/02/15/obama-india-hillary-opinions-columnists_0216_tunku_varadarajan.html
It's time for the Democrats to cement America's
major new alliance.
My fellow columnist Gordon G. Chang made a
piquant point in this space last week in his preview of Hillary Clinton's
trip to East Asia--her first trip abroad as secretary of state. Chiding her
for what he regarded as a scheduling misjudgment, he wrote that "she
should have reserved time for a stop-over" in India. I agree with him
100%.
Ironically, even as Mrs. Clinton was packing
her valise for Beijing, a senior spokesman for the Congress Party, which heads
the ruling coalition in New Delhi, made an impassioned freelance appeal for
George W. Bush to be awarded the Bharat Ratna ("Jewel of India"),
the country's highest civilian award. The Bharat Ratna is a big, big deal
in India and has been awarded only 41 times since its inception in 1954--and
only twice to non-Indians, one of whom was the sainted Nelson Mandela. The
Congress Party quickly distanced itself from its spokesman's appeal, no doubt
regarding it as a particularly impolitic show of nostalgia for Bush so early
in the Age of Obama.
But the truth is that, for all his unpopularity
in the U.S. (and Europe, and Latin America, and the Middle East, and practically
everywhere else outside Albania and Georgia), Bush is a much-appreciated figure
in India--at least in high policy circles. As many have noted, both in Washington
and New Delhi, the one indisputable foreign policy success of the eight Bush
years was America's invigorating new alliance with India--an alliance that
is based as much in a sense of shared ideology (democracy, pluralism, etc.)
as it is in strategic need (both countries want a reliable counterweight to
China and face a common foe in Islamist terrorism).
I'm not suggesting that Mrs. Clinton has slighted
India; far from it. China is clearly the perfect choice for her traveling
debut, especially in light of Tim Geithner's unhelpful pronouncements--only
days after President Obama's inauguration--that Beijing was manipulating its
currency. If the U.S. is to tackle the global recession in any meaningful
way, it needs China on board more than any other country. Besides, the Obama
administration must reassure Beijing that the U.S., while wary (by inclination)
of China, is not hostile to it.
In any case, my point here is not about the
importance of China, which is self-evident; it is, instead, to alert the Obama
administration to the need to keep the alliance with India from eroding.
There is no doubt that the Indian political
establishment was rooting for McCain in the U.S. elections, believing that
the Republican candidate was a better guarantor of India's interests. Yet
President Obama should resist any reflexive inclination he might have to treat
India as "Bush country." Certainly, Indian popular opinion has been
strongly in his favor, particularly among younger Indians; and the many leftists
who still populate India's political class--dinosaurs who cling to non-alignment
as a creed and who regard the U.S. as "imperialist"--were never
keen on Bush, anyway. They like Obama for giving Bush his comeuppance--and
from allegiance to all those fuzzy third-world notions of non-white solidarity
that most sentient beings have grown weary of.
The Indian establishment's preference for
McCain was understandable, given that many nuclear-nonproliferation hardliners
in the Democratic Party were vehemently against the U.S.-India nuclear deal,
the centerpiece of Bush's new relationship with India. The Republican Party,
by contrast to the Democrats, has outgrown America's historical mistrust of
India, and the Bush years saw the emergence of a quite exhilarating degree
of cooperation between the U.S. and India--so much so that the alliance with
India might be described as a tectonic shift in American foreign relations.
What President Obama must be careful to do
is deal with India on its own terms. He must not return to the old, pre-Bush
binary in which India was twinned always with Pakistan and in which American
diplomacy with India was always calibrated for the effect it might have on
American relations with Pakistan.
India has outgrown Pakistan economically,
militarily, strategically and civilizationally--and the U.S. must treat it,
on a par with Japan and Germany, as an always-consequential state whose interests
can never be disregarded. The Obama administration started off on the wrong
foot with India by giving its special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan--Richard
Holbrooke--the additional task of seeking resolution on Kashmir, an affair
on which India has never encouraged foreign intervention. In the end, hard-nosed
Indian diplomacy led to a dropping of Kashmir from the Holbrooke "portfolio,"
but the Obama administration's intervene-in-Kashmir instinct sowed alarm in
New Delhi.
An elegant and effective way to dispel Indian
apprehensions about an Obama administration would be for President Obama himself
to visit New Delhi very early in his presidency. Does his schedule permit
such a trip some time within the first 100 days? I would urge him to give
it some serious thought. My bet is that such a visit would cement America's
alliance with India for at least the next generation. What could be wrong
with that?
Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at NYU's Stern
Business School and a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is executive
editor for opinions at Forbes. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.com.
=================================
**The exact words of Gordon Chang are worth
reproducing:
QUOTE:
Mrs. Clinton's most important scheduling mistake is not that she's going to
China, however. It is the stopover that is not on the itinerary. If she wanted
to go to Asia early in her tenure--and that is a generally sound strategy--she
should have reserved time for New Delhi.
India shares values with the U.S. as well
as strategic goals. The relationship is promising, and there is much to discuss.
The secretary of state would be surprised how much she could advance relations
with the Indians-and how much progress she could make with the Chinese if
they saw her talking to the nation they fear the most.
UNQUOTE.
(http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/10/hillary-clinton-china-opinions-columnists_0211_gordon_chang.html).
Gordon Chang is the author of "THE COMING
COLLAPSE OF CHINA" (vide
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/0812977564/ref=ed_oe_p).
