A voyage and the elusive vision - II

By P. S. Suryanarayana

IMAGE POLITICS is not the real answer to the difficulty that Official India encounters in acquiring a strategic vision and a roving focus to keep pace with the U.S.-led campaign against global terrorism. Yet, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, should have served India's cause better by raising its public profile during his 10-day foreign tour that concluded by November 14. It is not that Pakistan may have eclipsed India. It is more a question of how India can influence the major powers.

Some of the gains that India has made are easy to identify. A top American official tends to regard New Delhi as ``a natural ally'' while the United States President, Mr. George W. Bush, praises India's ``fantastic ability to grow'' in the context of its ``greatest export'' being nothing less than its ``brainpower''. The Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, is determined to act in concert with India to combat international terror, including the rising menace of the esoteric nuclear terrorism. The British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, is cognisant of India's prime relevance to the global community's anti-terror agenda.

More significantly, the U.S. has now expressed a firm desire to begin a ``new strategic framework dialogue'' with India in the context of America's missile defence plans. Nuclear energy and the civil space sector have also been identified for the U.S.- India linkages of the future. The potentially beneficial bilateralism of this order is not to be made light of, given the often-skewed U.S.-India contacts of the past. Prior to Mr. Vajpayee's latest talks in Washington, the U.S. had substantively acknowledged India's credentials as an emerging global power that could be expected to act responsibly with regard to the nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Interestingly, the latest U.S.-India accord speaks of an expansion of cooperation in regard to New Delhi's ``export controls'' in this sensitive sphere. This need not be considered, however, as a dissonant note. There is nothing in the formulation to indicate a definitive American vote of no- confidence in India's behaviour which is generally regarded to be quite impeccable. The political sweep of the latest U.S.-India statement raises the possibility of mutually beneficial interactions on transfer of America's dual-use technology in civil-military spheres as well. In all, an impressive story of bilateral diplomacy.

India seems to have found no fault lines at all in its relationship with Russia as exemplified by their latest joint statement on strategic issues and the Moscow Declaration on international terrorism. The buzz word is to fight globalised terror with particular reference to its emerging nuclear dimension. A robust emphasis of this kind on a direct confrontation with the terrorists at large makes for some contrast with the U.S.-India accent on a more subtle form of waging this battle through a joint initiative against cyber terrorism.

An equally salient commonality concerning the Indo-Russian ties and the U.S.-India equation pertains to the new promise of cooperation in the nuclear energy sector. A signature tune is that of the Indo-Russian accord on the Koodankulam project. In a sense, Russia's willingness to help India set up an updated nuclear energy plant at Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu can be seen as a friendly gesture that goes beyond the cold logic of strategic considerations. Being addressed without real costs to India is its traditional opposition to the idea of allowing all its nuclear power plants and projects to be brought under the ``fullscope safeguards'' of the International Atomic Energy Agency. To this extent, India may find that its moral credentials as a power possessing nuclear weapons may also be suitably advanced with Russia's indirect assistance. With the U.S., too, agreeing to collaborate with New Delhi in the nuclear energy sector, the chances are that the Indo-Russian model as regards the Koodankulam project will come under U.S. scrutiny.

The vibrance of bilateralism marked the meeting between Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Tony Blair in London on November 12. But the ongoing international campaign against terror, with particular reference to Afghanistan as the fissionable nucleus of terror, also figured. Moreover, Britain is known to have had a historical association with the genesis of the Kashmir dispute. So, Mr. Blair has made clear that Pakistan's tactical collaboration with the West in the current anti-terror movement will not produce any British tilt, one way or the other, in regard to the Kashmir question. In any case, the British leg of Mr. Vajpayee's tour was by and large overshadowed by his diplomatic endeavours in Washington and Moscow.

Mr. Vajpayee was specifically invited by the leaders of these three countries in the context of the snowballing terrorism issue and for the additional reason of a rotating bilateral summitry in the case of Russia. Yet, India has hardly gained any realistic support for its demand that it should have a definitive say over the future of Afghanistan as a terror-free zone. Even Russia has not openly backed India's claims to join the U.N.-sponsored `six- plus-two mechanism' as regards Afghanistan. The `mechanism' consists of all the geographical neighbours of Afghanistan, inclusive of Pakistan and China, besides the U.S. and Russia in their capacities as the former interventionists in the Afghan affairs. The U.S., too, has not conceded India's legitimate claims for a say over Afghanistan which lies in New Delhi's geopolitical neighbourhood.

With the Taliban-Osama axis coming under a possibly decisive siege by the U.S. and its military ally (Britain) at this moment, India's handicap can hardly be exaggerated. This, more than the transparent manner in which Pakistan overshadowed India in the international media arena during Mr. Vajpayee's presence in New York for two days from November 10, should be of greater concern to New Delhi at this time. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Vajpayee attacked Pakistan in a familiar but veiled manner. Pakistan's President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, utilised his subsequent turn at the podium to portray Kashmir as a ``root'' cause of terrorism and offered to formalise with India a nuclear test ban treaty. The pundits on the Indian side have of course lost no time to point out the futility of such bilateral gambits in a globalised world.

Gen. Musharraf has, on the other hand, succeeded in riding the crest of a media wave in the proximity of Mr. Vajpayee in New York. Political punditry has it, of course, that Gen. Musharraf's gain may prove to be illusory. It is said that the incremental decimation of the Taliban as at this moment might only complicate his own calculus of having a Pakistan-friendly regime in Afghanistan in the anticipated context of the Taliban's final fall. But the bottomline, which Official India can hardly ignore, is that Gen. Musharraf has been working hard to convince the international community that Pakistan must be an intrinsic part of a solution to the terrorism issue without being seen as a painful component of the problem itself.

On a different plane, Mr. Bush is beginning to apply a doctrinaire approach in regard to international terror, somewhat in the manner of George Kennan who enunciated the old thesis about the containment of communism. India, therefore, has little option but to trim its sails to the winds from the U.S.that might caress instead of toppling those who, in New Delhi's perspective, are no genuine heroes of the anti-terror movement. This does not mean that Official India cannot bat on a sticky wicket. What India surely needs is a strategic vision that should focus not only on the ideal of a terror-free world but also on the more important aspects of realpolitik in the campaign against terror. Proverbially, New Delhi must learn to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. While India deserves a place in the inner circles of the larger anti-terror coalition, the American idea of job- specific sub-alliances or sliding/floating squads must suit New Delhi.

(Concluded)

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