US, India: Friends together, foes in world community?

The first unofficial US-India Strategic Dialogue organised by The Brookings Institution and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce in Washington, DC threw up some interesting facets on bilateral ties, finds out Aziz Haniffa. The last in a five-part series.

Edward Luce, Washington bureau chief, Financial Times, who was earlier the newspaper's correspondent in New Delhi, believes that while there is euphoria about United States-India bilateral relations, there is veritable paranoia on the multilateral front.

"If you look at India-US 2.0 over the last decade," said Luce, who was a panelist at the Brookings-FICCI sponsored unofficial US-India strategic dialogue, "it's really a tale of two relationships: First the bilateral and then, second, India and the US in multilateral fora; and they're completely different relationships."

On the bilateral side, he said, "The speed with which US-India relations went from 0 to 60 miles an hour is remarkable. I don't think anybody would have predicted that you'd have this flourishing level of bilateral relations that Barack Obama's administration has inherited."

Luce said that besides the nuclear deal which a decade ago would have seemed sheer fantasy, at the official US-India Strategic Dialogue, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had also noted that the US "now conducts more bilateral military exercises with India than with any other country. That's a fairly remarkable development."

Acknowledging that "across the board, the level of cooperation has been extraordinary," Luce reiterated that "at the same time, over the same period, the same two countries' engagement with each other in the multilateral organizations has been as difficult and as fissile as it ever was. Look at India's role, or America's view of what India's role was in essentially bringing the (World Trade Organization's) Doha Round to a halt—to a fairly long halt. Or indeed… the tensions and suspicions between India and the US over the United Nations climate change talks, with India, with some grounds, seeing America's double standards as being part of the problem. Or, indeed, India's continued use, perhaps with less frequency, of third-world-ist rhetoric at the UN on some issues."

Thus, he argued, "There's this extraordinary contrast between these two tracks, in terms of India-US relations," which had seemingly exacerbated with the advent of President Obama.

Luce said, "This will be familiar to most of you, but it bears repeating, that Indians have a deep distrust and dislike of Wilsonianism, of liberal internationalism — from Democratic administrations — that usually takes place through multilateral organizations. Behind the liberal, moralist, internationalist stance of Democratic administrations — in Indian eyes — you get a wolf in sheep's clothing about the potential for do-gooding intervention in places like Kosovo and Kashmir."

He added: "It's fairly plan that had Barack Obama been in power between 2001 and 2008, of indeed, had President (Al) Gore been in power — or, for that matter, President Wilson — there would have been no civil nuclear agreement."

He predicted that "under the Obama administration — and in spite of the fact that it would be inconceivable to imagine him as President pushing a civil nuclear deal of this nature through — India will gradually come to be seen in the same way, in a slightly more modest form, that the Bush administration saw India, which is as an undeclared first line of strategic hedging against the peaceful rise of China going wrong; which everybody hopes doesn't happen, but as a hedge against that scenario."

Ajay Shankar, a distinguished fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi, who was also on the same panel, expressed much more optimism about the outlook of US-India strategic ties one year on. He said he derived sustenance from the language that had emerged from the communiqués of both Washington and New Delhi following the official US-India Strategic Dialogue. He said he found them to be "accurate and honest and realistic — a defining partnership for this century, matter more to each other and more to the world as never before, the rise of India being in the interest of the US, the US being central to India's achievement of its development goals and aspirations, and giving its people a good life. And I see the coming year as delivering on these promises and commitments."

Shankar also said that Obama's India visit in November would also help fulfill "many of the expectations of the strategic partnership."

Taking exception to the contention of Luce and other panelists who spoke of discordance on the multilateral front, Shankar said, "India and the US have really worked very closely with the G-20 process over the last one year, and we see that continuing as a very strong and close partnership."