Playing second fiddle

INDIA'S UNCRITICAL ACCLAMATION of the new strategic `vision' of the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, has only underlined the Vajpayee administration's all too eager willingness to jettison the right to strategic autonomy, if not also an independent foreign policy. By acquiescing in the emerging strategic agenda of the sole superpower, New Delhi finds itself embarrassingly alone among all the global powers and emerging players. Not only that. What New Delhi has failed to accomplish is to clarify how it can virtually adopt Mr. Bush's American agenda in regard to nuclear security and missile defences as India's own strategic vision. The agenda has not so far gained a pan-U.S. political consensus, either. Yet, the External Affairs Ministry's unmitigated endorsement of Mr. Bush's latest plans is in sync with the Vajpayee administration's track record of softening on India's strategic independence. A recent pattern of behaviour is illustrative of how New Delhi is beginning to relinquish its sense of autonomy. Witness official India's deafening silence on the basic issues of international morality in respect of the latest U.S.-China row over a spy plane or, indeed, New Delhi's diplomatic passivity about the raging conflict in West Asia involving Israel and the Palestinians.

The rights and wrongs of Mr. Bush's new thinking, spelt out in a policy speech on what is seen as an American national missile defence scheme, constitute a deeply divisive issue within the U.S. and outside it. The centrepiece will consist of a unilateral scale-down of the U.S.' nuclear arsenal and a parallel boost to the development and deployment of a space-age shield against mass-destructive warheads. The only novel aspect of Mr. Bush's ideas, which have been in focus for several months now, is his offer to consult the U.S.' allies and friends, ranging from the U.K. and France in Europe to India and Japan in Asia. The views of China and Russia, too, will be sought, but Washington has bracketed them separately as the other countries concerned with its plans. New Delhi's alacrity in hailing Mr. Bush has much to do with its own spiralling sense of being a valued interlocutor of the new administration in Washington. Discernible for some time, too, are the signs, not always subtle, that the Vajpayee administration will like to cement ties with the U.S. to try and keep both China and Russia guessing about India's own options on the wider international stage. Official India's efforts to convince the U.S. of a need to isolate Pakistan cannot also be missed in this connection. Of course, New Delhi may have intended to send out signals about the freedom of its foreign policy manoeuvres in the present post-Cold War context. However, the objective reality can hardly be concealed: a move towards some form of strategic dependence on the U.S.

The External Affairs Ministry's commendation of the evolving Bush blueprint on a new global strategic architecture is regrettably bereft of any substantive references to India's own historic role in seeking to shape the global disarmament outlook. For obvious reasons, Rajiv Gandhi's efforts at advocating international nuclear disarmament did not advance the cause itself during his time. Yet, the sparks and fumes of the international debate on this issue were in some measure catalysed by India over the past decades. Noteworthy now is New Delhi's acceptance of the ``strategic and technological inevitability'' that the world should give up the theories of mutual assured destruction and embrace the idea of defensive protection from nuclear weapons. This theory, though, is still very much debatable, given that the required knowhow has not yet been proven. So, arguable still is whether Mr. Bush's unilateral pledge of a reduced nuclear arsenal could lead to a ``multilateral compact that results in an elimination of all nuclear weapons globally''.

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Section  : Opinion
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