T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: The morning after

LINE & LENGTH

The benefits we know. Time, now, to consider the costs of India's new relationship with the US.

On August 9, 1971, India signed a 20-year Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, etc with the USSR. Most Indians were euphoric because many genuinely believed that a logical consummation had been achieved.

But the USSR was not easy to please. Just four months later Brezhnev forced India to declare a cease-fire in the 1971 war with Pakistan and give up captured territory in West Pakistan.

As the Seventies dragged by, the relationship began to grate. The final straw came with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

India had to bite its tongue and keep quiet. Indira Gandhi could remonstrate only privately with Leonid Brezhnev. She hated it.

Now we have done a similar deal with the US. Many Indians are once again euphoric. Like their fathers in 1971, they genuinely believe that a logical knot has been tied.

But one should pay heed to the lessons of history. It is only a matter of time before little frictions between India and the US start. Indeed, as the vote on Iran and the Muslim reaction here show, they already have.

This prospect can be brushed away saying that it is normal. But surely someone should calculate the costs and benefits.

I cannot believe that there are only benefits and no costs. But this is what we are being told to accept. That's not how these things work.

In 1971, India did not have a choice. Now also it doesn't. This means just one thing: to get what it wants, from here on, it is India that will have to give in to US demands.

That is how these relationships are: one-sided. Our only consolation is that the big powers treat everyone in the same way.

For proof, ask any US ally, from Japan in the East to the UK in the West. They will tell you how the US puts its interests before that of the ally as a matter of right, unmindful of the domestic and the international imperatives that its partners may face.

The UK, as the oldest friend, has the most tales of woe. They are too numerous to recount here.

Or, as Japan will tell you, the US can force "voluntary" restraints on exports if you sell too much to it, even while it is prising open your markets. It can orchestrate "macroeconomic coordination" accords of the Plaza type, which, as Ronald McKinnon has shown, did such awful things to the yen that in the 1990s the Japanese economy stopped growing completely.

Or, as the French and Germans discovered in 2004, it can put the word out that you are a bad boy and watch as orders for your companies dry up. The message: don't argue, fall in line.

Or, as the Latin Americans know so well, it can become a major player in domestic politics. And it can, and sometimes does, replace their governments.

Or, as the West Asians will tell you, it can provide military assistance to your worst enemy, bomb your sympathisers and conquer your friends.

In short, dealing with the US is not going to be easy. Having given us a big bone, it will demand hundreds of small things. These will create an equal number of problems for us. Already the government is faced with two issues that did not exist until July 18 and March 2.

The former is the need to take sides in the US-led attempt to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons. Before the July 18 agreement, the dilemma would not have arisen in the form that it has, namely, stand up and be counted even if that is massively embarrassing. True, it would still not have been in India's interest to have another nuclear weapons state in the region. But India would probably have been able to tackle the issue differently.

The post-March 2 problem is the prospect that the Congress faces""of all the work it has done (and is doing) to win back the Muslim vote coming to nought. It is no use saying that foreign policy should not be viewed through the prism of religion; it already is being viewed that way and the Congress may have to pay a heavy price.

Sonia Gandhi knows that. It will be interesting to see how the Congress compensates for it.

India will also have to re-jig its relationship with the EU. Gone now are the days when it could try and do some""mostly notional""balancing.

And then there is Pakistan. It may become even more troublesome and turn to China even more emphatically, just as it has always done in the past. Will the US control it?

For its part, China will now become, if that were possible, even more difficult to deal with. If it is clever it should realise that the more it encourages Pakistan to hurt India, the deeper India will dive into the US embrace. But it will not.

The defence ministry, too, is worried that India will be asked to source its weapons from the US. For the last 40 years our servicemen, especially in the Air Force and Navy, are accustomed to Russian equipment. The switchover could be costly in many ways.

So we are entering some very interesting times, it would seem.