T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: The sun never sets on US forces

LINE & LENGTH

India should say: you back off on nuclear matters, we will let you make money here.

At least 48 per cent of the Americans, the ones who voted for John Kerry one might reasonably infer, don't want to think of America as an Imperial power. But that still leaves 52 per cent who perhaps don't mind. So we have a fait accompli of sorts.

Actually, it has been a fait accompli of sorts for almost 190 years. America has always been an Imperial power, except that no one described it as such because, first, the Europeans were already everywhere that mattered and meant America had to be content with the Americas; and secondly, it made a very good job of disguising its imperialism.

American history is not taught in India but it should be. It is appallingly silly not to. It makes very compelling reading, aside from making you wonder why it is only poor King Leopold of Belgium who is reviled for being so mean to the Congonese.

But times change. The Europeans had to shut shop after the Second World War and there was nothing much left in the Americas for America to subjugate. So it looked outwards and for a while after 1945, it did its imperial thing by stealth and wealth""the CIA being the chosen instrument in places as diverse Iran and Chile.

Now that it no longer needs to be furtive America, to use its own colour phrase, it is letting everything hang out. That is probably the best thing about George Bush. He might not be very clever but he is not a hypocrite.

It is interesting to see that now even thoughtful Americans""and there are more of them then we, with our colonial British prejudices, allow""no longer care about anti-Americanism. They accept it as part of the new White Man's Burden.

This, too, is an important attitudinal change. It is the internalising, as it were, of America's imperial responsibilities. And these are several, carried out by a clever combination of the oldest policy in the world""carrot and stick.

America, in case you did not know, now has troops stationed in at least 104 countries, which is about half the world. The sun therefore never sets on US forces.

But I would wager that by the end of George W Bush's second term, US forces will comprise more non-Americans than Americans. As these things go, that too is par for the course.

It is easier to deal with simple men like George W Bush and their governments. It is, if you will, the difference between dealing with Disraeli and Gladstone.

With Disraeli everyone knew where he stood exactly. What Benny fancied, Benny took; by hook or by crook. But Gladstone, who was a major player at the Berlin Conference in 1884 that divided up Africa among the European powers, was the forerunner of today's NGO attitudes. He had little idea about himself and about what he wanted. He usually messed up.

Before the US election, Indians spent a long time discussing whether Bush would be better for India or Kerry. Eventually most Indians concluded that Bush would do quite nicely. The reasons were the usual boring ones about nuclear issues, terrorism, BPO, etc.

The truth could be, and probably is, simpler. Kerry struck me to be somewhat like Gladstone""torn between the normative and the real. It is just as well that he lost.

The point, eventually, as the editorial in this newspaper pointed out yesterday, is not George W Bush or even the Republican Party. The point is what America is finally acknowledging openly about what it has become.

Very simply, America has become less hypocritical, which makes things much easier for everyone else. This, by the way, is what most Muslims say about the Congress and the BJP. It is easier to respond to the latter than to the former. Indians should probably take a similar view of America.

In any event, they should stop wringing their hands about America and start wondering about their own response to it. Not at the government level alone but at the individual level as well. This business of cursing America because of its hamburgers and then running off to it at the first opportunity makes no sense.

Another point seems worth mentioning. Until a few years ago, many thoughtful Americans visiting India would want to know about anti-Americanism here. I would ask them to read the classic essay on the subject by Ainslee T Embree written sometime in the 1960s.

It would appear that the disjunction""between what Indians think about America and how they keep scurrying off to it""exists because at least as far as the policy towards the US is concerned, government policy doesn't reflect popular sentiment.

There is, of course, a long and tedious history as to why Indian governments hiss and spit at the US. But one thing stands out quite undeniably: although the perceptions of successive Indian governments to America were and are influenced by America's coddling of Pakistan, and although the average Indian intensely dislikes Pakistan, he doesn't transfer this dislike to America. Only a few intellectuals and the ministry of external affairs do that. Does that tell us something? Perhaps it does.

For the last two decades, American policy towards India (as distinct from the hyphenated India-Pakistan, which falls in a different category altogether) has been driven by two issues: market access and nuclear proliferation. I would imagine that while American policy towards the former becomes more aggressive, on the latter it will soften considerably. This is because India is now an open nuclear power and the only thing left for the US to do is to make sure that unlike, Pakistan, India doesn't help others to build nuclear weapons.

The deal India therefore has to make is simple. America backs off on nuclear matters and India sees what it can do about allowing American companies to make money here. Pakistan remains America's aging mistress, we stop complaining and let America decide how Pakistan will modify its policy towards Kashmir.

Cynical? Yes, truly so. But totally in the national interest. More importantly, it will appeal to the simple-thinking, high-living lot that rules America and indeed much of the rest of the world. It is an opportunity worth exploiting.

Kissinger called it linkage thinking; only the US could practise it. Perhaps India should, too. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.