Obama, India: Nightmare
During the 1970s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan served as U.S. ambassador to India. When Indira Gandhi imposed martial law, Moynihan called Washington to offer congratulations to his colleagues as the U.S. had just become the world's most populous democracy.
Democracy has returned to India, a country with more than 1.1 billion citizens. Although India suffers from sectarian strife and confronts challenges relating to poverty and other social ills, it remains one of the freest nations in an often unruly neighborhood. More than one Muslim has lamented that his co-religionists enjoy more freedom in India, where Hindus form the majority, than in Pakistan, which considers itself an Islamic state. India boasts robust elections and has a thriving, diverse press.
Once associated with extreme deprivation, India has made great economic progress since its embrace of market reforms. Maldistribution remains a vexing problem. India and Pakistan have a tense relationship. The two countries dispute the romantic region of Kashmir. Last year terrorists based in Pakistan attacked the Taj Hotel and other sites in Mumbai, including, significantly, a Jewish community center. India does not inhabit a placid corner.
Relations between the U.S. and India have not always been smooth, either. Jawaharlal Nehru -- one of India's founding fathers -- seemed to relish irking the U.S. simply for the heck of it. Nehru probably was the right leader for India at the time, nevertheless. During the Nixon administration, the U.S. tilted toward Pakistan. Recent years have seen improved ties between Washington and New Delhi. The U.S. and India share credit for the welcome change. The U.S. needs India as a strong ally in the war against the jihadists.
Since Jan. 20, 2009, ties between the two countries have come under strain. President Barack Obama's aloof attitude to the subcontinent has not gone unnoticed. India has taken perceived slights seriously. The Pioneer, an English newspaper in Delhi, describes the Obama administration as a "nightmare presidency" and rates Obama as "the most hostile American president for India since Richard Nixon." The bill of particulars includes India's apparent exclusion from the American security apparatus as well as protectionist rhetoric that stirs up resentment against India. Despite policies such as trade restrictions on tires, the Obama administration appears more intent on cultivating favor with China than with India. Freedom House rates India "free" and China "not free" -- which, in a foreign policy reflecting respect for human rights, ought to count for something.
If Obama alienates a potential ally in an area as strategic as South Asia, then his administration truly will resemble a nightmare -- and not only for India.
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Reader Reactions
It’s never a pretty sight when the T/d “weighs in” on a big topic—in this case three paragraphs of typically shallow blathering on U.S.-India relations and a totally unsubstantiated jab at the administration based on a few words pulled from an Indian newspaper. Very compelling. India-U.S. trade has doubled over the last four/five years, FYI, and India has never been part of the U.S. security apparatus….Umm, now that I think about it, I’ll keep my subscription to Foreign Policy.
Last week’s editorial section suggested that we were entertaining a trade war with China and relations were subsequent. This week’s editorial suggests we are only able to host diplomatic relations with one large Asian country at a time and that China is being favored as through “perceived slights” to the subcontinent, trade war aside.
Briefly, the policy discussion after 9/11: The US will necessarily have to engage Pakistan at India’s dismay in order to make our security arrangements viable in the region. Although the US holds annual war games with the Indian military, we cannot provide for any security dynamics that would then inherently upset the internal politics of Pakistan. There is very little room on this point until we find conclusion in the Afghan War, Iranian escalation, and naturally, Pakistan’s own volatility.
To the other side of the continent, in realist terms, the US simply has more vested interests in China. This may be undesirable, and I personally won’t shop at Wal-Mart, but we can’t forgo the reality of these terms in the immediate strategic outlay without accounting for the laundry list of factors influencing that relationship—forcing the point of human rights and democracy (as seen in Iraq) is a noble, yet entirely removed intention if there is no viable way of completing that thought.
Essentially the balance of US power is economically and militarily, and hence diplomatically, restricted in the short term. Drastic approaches over previous years have limited the scope of the current policy discussion. This editorial seems to imply more than what’s present, or less than what’s weighed.
From Liberty Underground:
“As India faces its worst drought in four decades, a dispute over water resources between farmers in the Kala Dera area of western Rajasthan state and a Coca-Cola bottling plant located there has sharpened,“ begins an IPS report from Rome this morning.
Water is starting to edge out oil as a cause for potential wars in the world, as large corporations move into the third world to corner the market on this precious resource. In parts of the third world transnational corporations have bought up local water supplies and made the cost of drinking water too expensive for the poor to buy—water that used to be available at no cost to them.
Indian farmers believe that Coca Cola has lowered the water tables for its plant, leaving 25,000 poor farmers without the means to save their crops in a year of drought. A student-led campaign in the United States, Canada and Britain involving 20 colleges and universities has called for the removal of Coca-Cola products from their campuses for creating water shortages and pollution in the areas where it operates in India.
Obama’s actions should thrill the protectionist right wingers.
It was Bush era outsourcing which moved all the jobs AND ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION to India. The banks, trying to save a buck (but of course failing), sent it all there without your knowledge nor permission. Not just there either; any third world country who could setup an internet connection.
It is not stupidity in the Administration’s abandonement of allies like India—it is by design. We play up to the likes of geopolitical rivals like Russia and China, but throw potential friends like eastern Europe and India under the bus. Both those regions, as pointed out in this article, have relatively stable democracies while Russia and China don’t. One is known by the friends one keeps. What does this say about the state of American ‘democracy’?
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