Balancing the Indo-U.S. engagement

A CHARM OFFENSIVE by the U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, during his brief visit to South Asia at this critical moment seems to have pleased India's leaders as also Pakistan's military-political establishment. This cannot conceal, though, Washington's anxiety about how to engage the two countries without aggravating their suspicions about each other and presumably also about America's long-term agenda behind its ongoing `campaign' against international terrorism in the name of a grand alliance for that purpose. Now, Gen. Powell surely does not appear to have encountered any insurmountable challenges in either Islamabad or New Delhi. Yet, it will be naive to conclude that the Indo-U.S. dialogue as also the Pakistan-America engagement have been put on separate but definitive tracks in the uncharted context of America's new doctrine of friends and foes in a war of sentiments against international terror. It is indeed evident that the exuberant bonhomie of Gen. Powell's latest encounter with his Indian interlocutors, in particular, has had the quality of glossing over the unfulfilled promise on the bilateral front. More significantly, the transparent tendency of the Vajpayee administration to lean unduly on Washington for waging New Delhi's own battles against terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir may have also blurred the distinction between the myths and realities of the presently-evolving Indo-U.S. equation.

In a substantive perspective, therefore, both India and the U.S. can and should attempt to enhance their interactions to a higher plane of well-defined purposes. Inviting the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, for talks in Washington on November 9, the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, has reaffirmed America's interest in building a broad-based partnership with India. Besides the promotion of ``closer cooperation on a range of security and economic issues that advance common objectives'', America's intentions encompass its call to strengthen the emerging anti- terror coalition in the international arena and to foster stability in South Asia. A plain fact is that the U.S. is trying to convince India that its friendship is not being devalued in the context of Washington's compulsions in having befriended Pakistan as an ally in the current fight against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Afghanistan. India and the U.S., for long estranged democracies, began a conscious process of engagement during the final year of the previous Clinton administration. Yet, if the two countries now find it necessary to make a virtual new beginning, the reason can be traced almost entirely to Washington's radically changed perspective of stability in South Asia in the totality of America's own sense of an unforeseen urgency to insulate itself from the politics of terror.

For India, this offers a fresh opportunity to reassert its strategic independence. Not long ago, New Delhi was leaning towards endorsing the Bush administration's plans for a missile defence system. Instead, the Vajpayee administration should now seek to retrieve and salvage India's overall strategic autonomy in foreign policy and be more conscious of the reality that the U.S. itself should not be given room to play zero-sum games in regard to India and Pakistan. Surely, Pakistan's President and Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, will expect the U.S. to reciprocate his current support for its actions in Afghanistan. He makes no secret of his eagerness to see the U.S. become more cognisant of Islamabad's strategic concerns about the Kashmir `cause' despite the recurring terrorist blots on that. Gen. Powell, on his part, gave Pakistan something to smile about by affirming the salience of the Kashmir issue. Not surprisingly, the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, has characterised that as an example of an Indo-U.S. disagreement that need not become disagreeable at the same time. If this is any sign of maturity, New Delhi should sustain it by seeking a more balanced engagement of the U.S. now.

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