Just as US support for Indian membership in a reformed UN Security Council commits bilateral ties to a future target, the removal of US sanctions from three of the four organisations associated with India’s nuclear and missile programmes brings the curtain down on the deeply divisive and bitter relationship that has often characterised the two large democracies in the past and opens them to trading in high-technology goods for the first time.
As US President Barack Obama left India for Indonesia this morning, where he spent several years of his childhood, the sense of closure on a number of discordant notes in the India-US relationship that were aggravated by the 1998 nuclear tests, as well as a camaraderie borne out of the understanding that India lived in a tough neighbourhood and had to be supported in its rise as a democratic power, was overwhelming.
Highly placed sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Obama’s position on a seat for India in the UN Security Council was “very unequivocal and an explicit political statement” and that “he had gone further than he had ever gone before”.
In fact, his abandoning of the Democratic party’s reflexive and often mothballed positions on the Kashmir dispute and his acceptance that this is a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan – with the US only playing a role if both parties wanted it to do so – is only the most obvious change in Washington’s attitude towards India.
The joint statement clearly calls upon Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008 to justice.
The strength of the renewing relationship can be also gauged from the sources’ plain refusal to react unhappily to the US President’s plain-speaking in Parliament that a large democracy like India often refused to shed its traditional caution as it dealt with other dictatorships like Myanmar and Iran.
“Frankly, that’s what friends do when they speak to each other, they air their differences and hope that the other side understands them. I don’t think there is any need for us to be so prickly,” the sources said.
As Obama conceded during the joint press conference yesterday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his visit also signals the end of India’s nuclear isolation that goes back to India’s first nuclear test in 1974, after which the Nuclear Suppliers Group was created by the international community to deter other Third World countries from following suit. The US will now assist in admitting India as a member of the NSG.
Not only that, the US will assist India in getting membership of several other nuclear and missile-related organizations such as the Missile Technology Control Regime – the invocation of which in 1993, by then US President Bill Clinton, forced the Russian president at the time (Boris Yeltsin) to cancel all assistance to build the cryogenic space launch vehicles for Isro – the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Group.
Two of the three Indian entities that have now been taken off the US Entities List and removed from the so-called ER-99 category, are Bharat Dynamics Ltd, a missile-making body, and the Defence Research and Development Organisation, which was closely involved in India’s thermo-nuclear tests in 1998.
The afore-named sources said removal of these entities may not lead to the immediate removal of all bottle-necks in the trade of high-technology goods, but it was a “major step forward…The door has been opened, the key has been turned. As the US President said, his country is committed to removing all obstacles in high-tech trade in the future.”
The third entity to be removed is Isro, thereby opening the door to commercial and space ventures with NASA as well as with other space organizations so far afraid to do business with India.
Perhaps some of the strategic gains are a function of Delhi playing its economic card to the strategic hilt, by luring the US to sell both commercial and defence cargo planes – Spice Jet is buying 30 Boeing planes, while the government is buying 10 C-17 Globemasters – as well as other goods that will create as many as 72,000 new jobs back home.
But there is also a visible trust that exists between the older Manmohan Singh and the younger Obama -- as the latter puts a supportive and unselfconscious arm around his shoulders – as well as an understanding of the fractious nature of India’s democracy, which prevents it from copy-catting the sharp, aggressive and self-declared rise of China next door.
In fact, one of the eloquent euphemisms of the joint statement is the decision to work together to create an “open, balanced and inclusive architecture” in the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions…the two leaders agreed to deepen existing regular strategic consultations on developments in East Asia.”
The official sources said China was a subject of discussion between Obama and the PM, and while there was no reference to the US-China joint statement of 2009 when both those countries called for a joint oversight of South Asia, both recognised that China’s rapidly expanding footprint meant that it had to be engaged even more intimately and “brought into the fold.”
But one of the most interesting aspects of the joint statement is a paragraph that compliments India’s unilateral and deep commitment to helping Afghanistan stand on its own feet by engaging in development and economic assistance.
The statement goes on to add that in “addition to their own independent assistance programmes, the two sides resolved to pursue joint development projects with the Afghan government in capacity building, agriculture and women’s empowerment.”
Clearly, this is one part of the joint statement that underwent changes till the last minute, as Indian officials protested partnering with the US in projects in Afghanistan, pointing out that the alliance would be detrimental to Indian experts and bring them much more in the line of fire.
The compromise that now exists is that all assistance will be routed through the Afghan government.
