Indian prime minister Mammohan Singh is arriving this morning. No one in India seems to know why. Last winter, there were high hopes that the U.S. would a) support India’s bid for a permanent seat on the expanded UN Security Council, b) lift remaining export controls on dual-use technology and nuclear fuel, and c) withdraw its objections to the proposed Iran/Pakistan gas pipeline slated also to service India.
Singh now knows he will get none of this. So, why is he coming? To please America, mostly. The prime minister is doubtless trying to strengthen India’s trading ties with Europe and America by demonstrating his independence from both the Congress Party’s communist allies and especially those elements within India’s strategic elite still wedded to the principle of non-alignment. This latter group has been growing bolder of late, worrying out loud that Delhi’s growing rapprochement with Washington could jeopardize burgeoning trade with China and old ties to Moscow.
But, that’s the whole point. India, willy-nilly, is America’s counter-balancing force to Beijing on the Asian continent. It is a shaky proposition. India is the fourth largest economy by purchasing power and the second most populous country (after China and closing fast), but it lacks the stability as well as other attributes which its neighbor to the east enjoys. Precisely because it is prone to the twists and turns of policy common to any multi-faction democracy, it could end up retarding, rather than promoting Washington’s strategic goals.
On the other hand, Japan is too small and evokes too many bad feelings among Asians to adequately fill the role. South Korea takes such a jaudiced view of America lately that it might as well be an ally of Kim Il Sung (as indeed it is regarded in some quarters within the pentagon). And, besides, Seoul now looks increasingly to Beijing, rather than to Washington, as a reliable trading partner.
So, India is it. For today at least, Mr Singh will get the Mahmoud Abbas treatment; plenty of flags, speeches and banquets. He will return to India with a plethora of “joint statements” and bogus “treaties” (covering everything from space exploration to the future of the Bengal tiger). The prime minister, too, is slated to experience the apotheosis of the “important but useless” state visit; an address to a joint session of congress.
But, in the end, India will not get much from this extravaganza (a consolation prize; the other candidates vying for a permanent seat on the Security Council have agreed to temporarily withdraw their requests, thus mooting for the time being India’s rejection). Delhi will have to exhibit greater stability and a more pronounced acquiesescence to US designs on the region to get more.
I read that the knives were out for Singh among the Sonia Gandhi crowd…
Read nothing since then. Where we at now with this farce?
For that matter: when will the Naxalites take power?
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