Author: M.V. Kamnath
Publication: Organiser
Date: September 3, 2000
Starting September 6,
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will undertake a 11-day visit to the
United States. He is scheduled to spend a week in New York to attend
a special United Nations session and no doubt he will address it, in all
probability in Hindi, as he once did, when he attended a U.N. General
Assembly session as India's Foreign Minister. That would elicit no
comments. He is scheduled to meet President Clinton in Washington
on September 15 and a day later he is expected to address a joint session
of the Congress. It will be remembered that Shri P.V. Narasimha
Rao similarly addressed a Congressional joint session when he was Prime
Minister. That address turned out to be a huge joke.
Very few Congressmen
and Senators were present and the seats had to be filled by Congressional
staff members, much to the embarrassment of the Administration. One
can only hope that this time around Congressmen and Senators would be more
respectful. In the last one decade the United States and India have
more or less made up and it would be a poor show if once again empty Congressional
seats are filled up with dutiful clerks. It is no secret that Shri
Vajpayee is visiting Washington as a courtesy call and as a reciprocal
measure, considering that President Clinton had graced Delhi with his presence
earlier in the year.
It could be that as a
result of his visit, the United States may lift such sanctions as are presently
in force; what remains in the field of guesswork is the price that India
may be asked to pay for that concession, such as it is. That price
surely was discussed when Shri Brijesh Mishra held talks in Washington
with US officials, including Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Thomas
Pickering, and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, when he visited
the US capital earlier in July. US businessmen-and their counterparts
in India-are agreed that lifting of sanctions will make the investment
and business climate more friendly and boost trade between the two countries
in a host of areas.
But it is one thing for
businessmen to dream of billions, but it is quite another for the US Administration
to bend to accommodate them. What, meanwhile, has to be clearly understood
is that the Clinton Adminsitration is on its last legs. Clinton is
running a lame duck adminsitration. The policy for the next five
years-the new US President, whoever he is, will take over after the elections
are over and the results announced in early 2001-will be made by the new
administration which, on current showing, will be Republican. The
Republican Party has chosen George Bush as its presidential candidate while
the Democratic candidate is the current US Vice President Al Gore.
In polls Bush leads Gore 51 per cent to 34 per cent and a widely-held belief
is that Bush will win in the presidential elections handsomely.
That is why it is important
for Vajpayee to keep in touch with the likely policy makers in the Republican
Party. The Republicans have seldom been friendly towards India.
According to published reports, the Republican Party's manifesto seeks
to return to parity between India and Pakistan which India despises.
True, the manifesto is in marked departure from the party's stand in 1996,
when India was hardly noticed. But the document adopted at the party
covention concedes that "the US should engage India, respecting its great
multi-cultural achievements and encouraging Indian choices for a more open
world".
The manifesto noted that
India was on the way to being recognised as "one of the greatest democracies"
soon, but it also said in the same breath that "mindful of its long-standing
relationship with Pakistan, the US will place a priority on the secure,
stable development of this volatile region where adversaries now face each
other with nuclear arsenals". It is a warning to India not to take
Republican friendship for granted. Pakistan in the past had its supporters
from among the Republican Party. And George Bush is no Bill Clinton.
He will need to be woo-ed again. It is well to remember that his
father, George Bush Senior, who also was a President not too long ago,
was the one who devastated Iraq in the Gulf War. The Bushes, on past
record, can be merciless.
Brijesh Mishra reportedly
met two Bush aides on foreign policy, Condoleeza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz,
of whom one is expected to be the future National Security Adviser.
That does not mean anything, but at least it can be said that India has
not lost an opportunity to make its views known quite early in the game
to Bush's advisers. India should expect a tough bargainer in Bush.
According to the Republican Manifesto, "if the time ever comes to use military
force, George W. Bush will do so to win-because for him victory is
not a dirty word". No doubt that the young man takes after his father
who did not think victory was a dirty word either when he sent out bombers
to destroy Iraq's defences. Thousands of Iraqi children may die for
lack of medical aid but the sanctions against Iraq continued-and no doubt
will continue as long as Iraq's dictator is around.
The only hope for India
is that even a Republican President friendly towards Pakistan cannot ignore
reality. But that may yet turn out to be a forlorn hope. And
it is said that Pakistan's Ambassador to Washington, Maleeha Lodhi, has
already begun kow-towing to the Republican overlords, as in the days of
Richard Nixon who was an inveterate India-hater. George Bush Jr has,
at least as of the moment, no particular reason to hate India, but one
never knows. Unlike Nixon, Bush comes from an aristocratic background.
His grandfather, a patrician Connecticut banker and Senator was part of
the old Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment. People still talk about
the gentleman, Prescott Bush, with something akin to awe. Presumably,
then, Bush does not suffer from any emotional hang-ups where India is concerned.
It may not be necessary
for Vajpayee on his present visit to the United States to try to build
bridges to the Republican presidential hopeful. In elections one
never can tell. For all one knows the Democratic candidate Al Gore
may yet spring a surprise and it won't do India any good to seem so early
in the game, to tilt towards the Republicans. In the ultimate analysis
it is the Indian Prime Minsiter's business to safeguard India's interests
as best as he can and no doubt he will play it by the ear. The point
to note is that India should not take it for granted that whoever is the
next occupant of the presidential chair in Washington will be automatically
friendly towards India. That would be living in cuckoo-land.
But since the privilege of addressing a joint session of the Congress has
been given to him, India's Prime Minsiter must present his country's case,
especially vis-a-vis CTBT and Pakistan, fully, unambiguously and straight-forwardly.
Such an approach has its own merits.
