Carter, Clinton and Vajpayee

By C. Raja Mohan

AS INDIA prepares to welcome an American President after more than two decades, cynics might well exclaim, plus ca change! Even as they moved a lot, Indo-U.S. relations appear to remain much the same. The nuclear question and relations with Pakistan appear to excite as much heat in Indo-U.S. relations and divide them as badly as in the late 1970s.

A lot of superficial similarities between Mr. Jimmy Carter's visit in January 1978 and Mr. Bill Clinton's in March 2000 can be drawn. But the context and content of Indo-U.S. relations, as well as the discourse on bilateral differences, have radically altered in the last 22 years. No one would understand this better than Mr.Atal Behari Vajpayee, who remains the individual link between the two Presidential visits two decades apart. Mr. Vajpayee was the Foreign Minister during Mr. Carter's visit and is now the Prime minister. On both nuclear weapons and Pakistan, Mr. Vajpayee has changed the parameters of the Indian policy.

The challenge before Mr.Vajpayee is two-fold. One is to ensure that the new line he has adopted on nuclear weapons and Pakistan does not get out of hand and that India does not become a victim of morbid hyper- nationalism. The other is to create a new framework for Indo-U.S. relations, as part of a more positive engagement of the international system, while managing the differences on nuclear weapons and Pakistan with the rest of the world.

Looking back to 1978, Mr. Carter was a great enthusiast about nuclear non-proliferation. He came to India in the wake of India's maiden nuclear test in 1974 and his arguments with the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai, on nuclear issues turned out to be disastrous. Mr. President Carter's remarks to an aide, demanding that the U.S. should write a ``cold, blunt letter'' on nuclear issues was caught by an open microphone and summed up the chill that marked the visit. Since then the substance and style of the Indo-U.S. nuclear argument has changed beyond recognition.

In 1974, India conducted a nuclear test, but called it a ``peaceful nuclear explosion''! While provoking the world with its nuclear test, India would not follow through by becoming a nuclear weapon power.

Mr. Clinton now comes after India has conducted five nuclear tests and declared itself a nuclear weapon power. Having crossed the nuclear Rubicon, India is now prepared to engage the rest of the world on a more pragmatic basis. Mr. Clinton was certainly outraged by India's nuclear tests but he has allowed an extended nuclear dialogue between the two countries that has covered considerable ground over the last 18 months.

Although the two sides are not about to resolve their nuclear differences, the U.S. now appears ready to live with the reality of India's atomic arsenal and New Delhi is more willing than in 1978 to address the global non-proliferation concerns. Equally significant is the character of the conversation. New Delhi and Washington are no longer talking past each other on nuclear issues. They have sought to address each other's concerns.

The other unending squabble between India and the United States has been about Pakistan. Interestingly in 1978, the issue was put on the back-burner. Citing a new commitment to promoting democracy worldwide, Mr. Carter refused to go to Pakistan because of the military coup by Gen.Zia- ul-Haq. But Pakistan would come back with a vengeance. As the Soviet Union rolled in its tanks into Afghanistan at the end of 1979, the U.S. and Pakistan were on their way to resuming their strategic partnership.

Mr. Carter offered to end the nuclear sanctions he imposed on Pakistan in May 1979 and began a process of rebuilding U.S. relationship with Islamabad. In the 1980s, the U.S.-Pakistan joint front against the Soviet Union was firmly established and India became increasingly marginal to American security concerns in the region.

The strategic distance between India and the U.S. grew further under Mr.Carter who unveiled a new strategic relationship with China to tighten the noose around the Soviet Union.

India and the U.S. continue to argue about Pakistan on the eve of Mr. Clinton's visit. The Government of India hopes that Mr. Clinton will not go to Pakistan as a measure of disapproval of the military takeover and the support for international terrorism.Mr. Clinton would prefer to engage Pakistan and prevent it from becoming a failed state with all the attendant political consequences.

While the recent Indo-U.S. wrangle over Mr. Clinton's stop-over in Pakistan had cast a shadow over the prospects of the Presidential visit to the subcontinent, there is no question that the nature of the dispute between India and the U.S. over Pakistan has fundamentally changed. The end of the Cold War has indeed considerably reduced the value of Pakistan as a strategic partner to the U.S. While the U.S. is not willing to abandon Islamabad, as New Delhi wants it to, it is increasingly ready to shed the notion that with India and Pakistan must always be treated as ``Siamese twins''.

Mr. Clinton's self-perception of a peace-maker, his oft- expressed interest in promoting a resolution of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, and the tit-for-tat nuclear and missile tests in the subcontinent over the last two years have tended to pull back the U.S. into the old mode of seeing India and Pakistan as part of a single problem. But Mr. Clinton's visit has the potential to liberate the Indo-U.S. relationship from the Pakistan factor. Many factors could contribute to this evolution of Indo-U.S. relations and it must be India's endeavour to build on them. One, India's larger economic and commercial weight will ultimately have a bearing on the way Washington would deal with the subcontinent. The basis for this has already been laid in the 1990s. The previous decade has been the best one for India in terms of economic growth. It has also been the worst for Pakistan. In the commercial and financial world of the U.S., few tend to equate India and Pakistan.

Two, the new American perception of Bangladesh as a successful Islamic democracy with good prospects for development has begun to expand the U.S. diplomatic horizons in the subcontinent beyond Indo-Pakistan relations.

Three, the end of the Cold War has changed the political context of Asia. If India and the U.S. ended on the opposite sides of the Cold War in Asia, they no longer have an adversarial strategic relationship now. They have a common interest in building a stable balance of power in Asia. While the U.S. will continue to engage China as the most important power in Asia, India's own importance in the American calculus about regional balance can only grow over the years.

Four, the common values of democracy and political pluralism that India and the U.S. share are no longer dampened by geopolitical factors as they were during the Cold War.

Five, if India wants to end the international focus on Kashmir it will have to be true to its own democratic values and offer a credible political settlement to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

The long-term outlook certainly favours Indo-U.S. relations. Mr. Clinton's visit could indeed turn out to be the first serious effort at the highest political level to develop a new vision of Indo-U.S. relations. As they try to get there, Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Clinton will have to find ways to manage the short-term and immediate differences over nuclear issues and Pakistan. The decision to go ahead with the Clinton visit despite divergence over non-proliferation and on dealing with Pakistan does indeed reflect a new positive attitude in both the capitals.

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