A dithering junior?

India has much to gain in a strategic partnership with the US, as long as it is on equal terms

Subramanian Swamy Chennai

India, in its foreign policy, has a long record of being a junior partner of a super power. From 1950 to 1991, for example, behind the posturing of non-alignment, India as a junior partner of the Soviet Union, had voted with the USSR in the UN more often (93 per cent of the voting occasions) than even Czechoslovakia or Hungary.

In 1950, the US had offered India the veto-holding UN Security Council seat of China, because following the communist revolution in that country, the Chiang Kai-shek government had to flee to Formosa Island. But Jawaharlal Nehru declined the offer on the USSR's advice. Instead, India became the sole proposer of the People's Republic of China for that seat for more than two decades. Due to this junior partner mentality, we lost a vital opportunity to become a veto-holding permanent member of the UN Security Council as far ago as in 1950.

Much has changed internationally since then. The USSR disintegrated in 1991 and does not exist anymore. But the Indian foreign ministry's junior partner mindset is still driving the country's foreign policy. Only the senior partner has changed from the USSR to USA.

When the US had proposed in July 2005 the Indo-US nuclear deal in terms that lacked specificity, I had warned against rushing to welcome it. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, however, was euphoric and declared that the deal would solve India's energy problems. He even termed it a 'historic deal' and a forerunner of India's strategic partnership with the US!

Today, almost two years later, Indian nuclear scientists are unanimous that this deal, now visible in details, would ruin India's freedom to pursue nuclear energy, a hard fought freedom attained through weathering past sanctions and contract-breaking by the US.

Interestingly, the US House of Representatives and Senate are now of the view that the nuclear deal makes the US give away “too much for too little from India” — which probably means that they think that India can be made to yield yet more concessions, in the direction of nuclear bondage. Hence, Senator Henry Hyde piloted the bill through the Senate with provisos that no independent government of India can stomach. Indian Parliament would not accept it, but by Nehru's perfidy, our Parliament's endorsement is not a requirement, for what the UPA government sought to do was to lower the temperature and reduce the shock. For this, the adroit Pranab Mukherjee pounced on the fig leaf offered by President George Bush: His 'Presidential Signing Statement' in which he declared the obnoxious portions of the Hyde Act as 'advisory'. That is, not binding on him in implementing the Act.

But who is to decide if the advisory is to be implemented or not? The US president, of course. Today it is Bush, but tomorrow (January 20, 2009 to be precise, when the next president will be sworn in), it may be some hardline India-hater. And then what is the guarantee that the 'advisory' will be taken by the successor US president to mean that the unacceptable provisions are to be rejected? None whatsoever.

That is, the Hyde Act will then become fully applicable. So what stands between a totally unacceptable nuclear deal and a palatable one (according to the UPA government) is the mood and inclination of the president of America. That is the fig leaf afforded by the 'Presidential Signing Statement'.

Many US legislators are questioning the constitutionality of this artifact. They want it scrapped, and this could happen in the future. Then the UPA will be embarrassingly minus a fig leaf. Senator Arlene Specter has introduced a Bill (S-3731 of 2006) seeking the abolition of this 'Statement'. She has the support of the American Bar Association, which has unanimously resolved that the Presidential Signing Statement has been misused in the past, and is unco-nstitutional. So India better not go on a wild goose chase, wallowing in the fig leaf of the 'Statement'.

Now the Manmohan Singh government, thoroughly exposed, is waffling because it can neither displease the US because then a certain 'oil for food' deal's skeleton could tumble out. Nor can the government sign the so-called US-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006 because there would be an unbearable uproar in the country. Is this the way to build a healthy Indo-US relationship?

No healthy bilateral strategic partnership with a foreign country, and that too with a sole superpower, can be sustainable and of mutual gain to us unless it is structured on the cold calculus of costs and benefits to both countries. Euphoria and media hype cannot be a substitute for it.

Principally, there are four dimensions in which Indo-US bilateral relations and its benefit-cost calculus are to be manifested. The first is the nurtured trust between the leaders and peoples of the two countries founded on the mutual understanding of what one nation will do for the other in moments of crisis, and what one nation will not do in other circumstances, no matter the costs.

The second dimension is manifested in complementarities of interests that produce synergies between the national interests of the two relating nations. Common enemies, matching of surpluses with shortages and similarity of problems create such synergies. 

The third is in the resolution of competitive interests by balancing the gains and losses from such interests. Any two large nations have competitive aspirations and needs, and if these cannot be resolved satisfactorily by give and take,  it will weaken the bilateral relations even if it can be cemented in other dimensions.

The fourth dimension is in matching of expectations that will exist between the peoples of the two nations. Expectations can mismatch if the leaders of one nation behave like supplicants to the other, or if the leaders of one nation can be blackmailed into compliance by the leadership of the other nation.

Indo-US relations are, in my view, weakest in the first dimension of trust. This is partly due to the way we negotiate or communicate with each other. Americans are direct, contractual, punctual and quite unemotional in making promises in bilateral dealings. We ridicule this directness by calling them 'cowboys'. Indians are indirect, believe in atmospherics and ambience, relaxed about time commitments, and given easily to emotional extremes of euphoria, fault-finding and disappointments. An Indian is more concerned with form than content, and more bothered about ambience than substance. Americans find this sneaky and exasperating.

This contrast in Indian-American attitude was first documented in a 1953-57 survey carried out by MIT professor Harold Isaacs and published in his book Scratches on Our Minds. As far back as 1957, Isaacs predicted that, if asked to choose, an American would be relatively more trusting of the Chinese than the Indian in his dealings.

Because of this mismatch in communication styles, Indians are frequently exasperated by American decisions. Many Indians ask why the US supports a Pakistani dictatorship over Indian democracy, or why the US refuses to declare Pakistan a terrorist State, little understanding the contractual nature of the Americans. We think we deserve American support on 'merit', whereas neither we, nor the world, move on merit alone.

As for complementarities, India and the US are today 'made-for-each-other' partners. The US is a capital-rich, technology-endowed and a high-skilled labour-short country. India is labour surplus in skilled and unskilled workers, capital-starved and technology-deficient with a huge middle-class market with an appetite for western goods. Outsourcing and IT exports have proved this complementarity. Soon, knowledge outsourcing (KPO) will take place on the same basis. It is a perfect match provided Indian laws are streamlined and modernised, especially in taxes, labour-hiring statutes, contract fidelity and financial disclosure rules.

India has much needed complementarities with the US in combating terrorism since the enemies are the same — Al Qaeda and its mutations. India's armed forces need to be equipped in a short period to become the most modern armed force for defending its borders and democracy globally, a matter of common concern with the US.

Western Europe after World War II and China post-1980 became economic and military powers because of their complementarities of interests with the US. The US provided these nations liberal access to its markets, weapons and finance, even if on a commercial basis. India can accelerate its growth rate to 10 per cent and above and sustain it for over a decade if the US partners with India on technology, finance and defence.

We should not become euphoric with every statement of praise by US leaders. Americans have understood this weakness of Indians, and hence use flattering language as a substitute for concrete action. Recall how two years ago India's media was blaring the news that the US, UK etc. were going to make India a UN Security Council member with a veto. Why has it not transpired? Just 'lip-service' made us flip. Today there is a deafening silence.

The reality is that the US is not going to build India into a world-class country, nuclear or any other, to become a possible competitor to it in the future. Nor is the US going to help us become a 'counter-weight' to China as some starry-eyed Indians think. India may be useful to the US as a conduit to Tibet, but to think that the Indian armed forces will be modernised by the US to the level that India can globally challenge China is ridiculous since that would make India a double-edged sword for the US. Hence, to achieve such a level of modernisation India has to do it on its own. This applies to nuclear technology as well.

There is also a lurking fear among strategists in the US as to what will happen to American economic lead in the world if India becomes a front-runner in innovation. Today the US is ahead of all other nations because most epochal innovations of the last 100 years have been home-grown in the US.

India today has a huge and growing 15 to 40-year-old population — our demographic dividend if this population can be educated in world class primary and secondary educational system. This dividend can be encashed in the form of cutting edge technologies and research and development. India then will become a competitor to the US, thereby a threat to its taken for granted global lead in innovations. This places a limit to India's strategic partnership with the US in the long run.

The Indo-US nuclear deal has to be understood in this context -— the US will not help India become a nuclear weapons power. Giving India nuclear energy capacity that is sufficiently safeguarded is another matter.  That is what the Indo-US nuclear deal is all about  —  how to sweet poison us. It is in US interest to do so, but must we meekly swallow it?

To get the best out of the Indo-US relations in the short and medium term, we have to recognise that there is a minimum that we have to deliver that furthers US interests. Quid pro quo is the basis of a healthy relationship. To expect the US to recognise India on 'merits' is therefore foolish.

The question is how to frame a foreign policy that synergises Indo-US partnership in the four dimensions outlined above. India stands to gain by a strategic partnership with the US in the coming decades — if it is not perceived by the Indian people as a junior partnership or bestowing of a client status on us on a par with a Japan, a Brazil or a Germany. Given the natural propensities of our policy-making elite, that is no ordinary task.   

The writer is president of Janata Party and a visiting professor in economics at Harvard University