Indo-US Relations

Of course he care's

Whether is suits him or not , India is an important player internationally. It can both oppose or support American Influence and interests.

The problem is what he plans to do with India. His intentions or outlook are not very clear.
We have yet to understand what his outlook for the shape and direction of future Indo-US ties should be like.

You know , it not that i don't trust India news. they have their highs and lows.

But since we are asking a question about foreign outlook on India .

Shouldn't we try to limit ourselves to American news sources

Obama’s India Problem
Posted on Monday, April 12, 2010
by Evan A. Feigenbaum
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner this week completed a trip to India, a country taking its place at the top table of the global economy for the first time through its membership in the Group of 20 and the Financial Stability Board. Geithner isn’t the first Treasury secretary to pursue broadened coordination with India. But his trip, in the wake of a global financial crisis from which India has emerged stronger and earlier than most other major economies, assumed a special significance. Geithner and Indian officials launched an expanded “Economic and Financial Partnership,” aimed at enhancing coordination of macroeconomic policies and increasing financing for infrastructure investment in India.
But Geithner’s passage to India–heavy on imagery and symbolism–took place on the heels of a more immediately substantive development: On March 29, the United States and India took a decisive step forward in implementing their historic civil nuclear initiative, completed in 2008. After months of negotiation, they agreed on procedures for India to reprocess U.S.-origin spent nuclear fuel under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
This kind of attention to India is important, not least because skeptics in both countries have argued that the U.S.-India relationship is drifting. Count me among the skeptics.
A Rift Over AfPak Policy
Disagreements loom, particularly on the Obama administration’s Afghanistan-Pakistan policy. Indeed, it would be difficult to overstate just how skeptical many in India’s strategic elite are of the administration’s approach. In New Delhi, Pakistan’s role as a central go-between in efforts to promote reconciliation with elements of the Taliban is widely seen as a fool’s errand. Many believe the administration’s effort will fail. And they believe–deeply–that India will be left holding the bag once U.S. forces begin to withdraw in 2011.
As I argue in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, there are other potentially divisive strategic issues, too: policies toward China, the Obama administration’s arms control objectives, climate change priorities, and U.S. restrictions on high-technology cooperation.
The administration is unlikely to overcome this Indian skepticism anytime soon, at least on its approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has committed and recommitted to its “AfPak” strategy. Thus achievements like the reprocessing agreement will be critical if the administration seeks to buttress other parts of the U.S.-India relationship.
More than a decade of rapid economic growth has given India the capacity to act on issues of primary strategic and economic concern to the United States, including nonproliferation, climate change, and efforts to return the international economy to a path of sustained and balanced growth. The United States has developed a growing stake in a confident and reforming India–one that contributes to global growth, promotes market-based economic policies, helps maintain the global commons, and works to assure a mutually favorable balance of power in Asia.
Trade and Investment Roadblocks
Yet in both Washington and New Delhi, much has stalled out. In the United States, plans for a Bilateral Investment Treaty have slowed because the question of whether and how to do such treaties remains trapped in an interminable policy review. Meanwhile, India has completed free trade agreements with South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and is on track to complete one with Japan.
Likewise with the liberalization of controls on high-tech exports to India. It, too, is stalled in a wider policy reassessment. And this is an important issue because, while most technology flows freely, even corporate India, not just the Indian government, complains that some of the remaining U.S. controls–especially in the nuclear and space sectors–combine with cumbersome licensing requirements to stifle trade and treat India like a pariah.
In India, meanwhile, another crucial component of the civil nuclear deal–a nuclear liability bill–has become mired in political controversy amid charges that its sole purpose is to satisfy U.S. companies. The bill is important to General Electric and Westinghouse. But it is also necessary if India is to accede to the global nuclear liability regime, including an international “insurance pool” for compensation in case of a nuclear accident, as India has long planned. Agreements on defense logistics and communications have been under discussion for years. Yet they, too, appear to be going nowhere in India, largely because of domestic politics.
With President Obama heading to New Delhi later this year, the administration needs to get more assertive, and soon. It cannot alter the political constraints in India. But at minimum, it can start smashing through the annoying bureaucratic logjams that have hamstrung cooperation from the U.S. end. And it could pursue some innovative avenues to broaden U.S.-India cooperation.

Obama’s Challenge in Three Parts
One way to think about Obama’s challenge is to divide potential achievements into three baskets: “low-hanging” fruit, more challenging initiatives, and long-term aspirations.
The reprocessing agreement is an example of low-hanging fruit–agreements that have been under discussion for years, or are in active negotiation. Other examples include the two defense agreements, an accord on commercial space launches, and especially the liberalization of U.S. export controls. None of these will be easy to complete, but the administration’s first challenge is to get at least some of them finished for Obama’s trip.
Then there are the more challenging areas. These initiatives could take years to complete, so if the administration doesn’t get started now, it may have little to show for its India policy three years hence. One example is the Bilateral Investment Treaty. Others include cooperation on cybersecurity, maritime security, and enhanced coordination in East Asia, the Persian Gulf, or Africa, where the U.S. and India have common interests but lack complementary policies.
Finally, there are the aspirational elements of a more global partnership. It is worth comparing the joint statements Obama adopted last year with China’s president Hu Jintao and India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh. The U.S.-China statement reached much higher and further in defining the global and regional dimensions of bilateral cooperation.
The administration needs to ramp up its relationship with India now. After all, even if Obama does everything right–and many Indians believe he has gone badly wrong in Afghanistan and with Pakistan–there will still be constraints on the U.S.-India relationship. India has moved beyond nonalignment, to be sure, but it has yet to coalesce around a new foreign policy vision. And although New Delhi may ultimately settle on a strategy that is conducive to a more open and global partnership with the United States, that is not assured.
The United States and India can do much better.

US, India military brass discuss China's rising power

NEW DELHI: Wary as they both are of China’s long-term intentions, India and US came together on Monday to discuss Beijing’s galloping modernisation of its 2.25-million strong armed forces and its strategic moves in the Asia-Pacific region.

The ‘Red Dragon’, with its spreading wings, was a prominent presence in the room during the talks visiting US chief of naval operations chief Admiral Gary Roughead held with the top Indian military brass, including Navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma and Army chief General V K Singh, on Monday.

Both sides, among other things, shared their assessments of China’s transborder military capabilities and its increasing presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). China, of course, has also forged extensive maritime links with IOR countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. Sources said China’s ambitious aircraft carrier building programme was of particular interest since this is one arena in which it actually lags behind even India.

At present, while China may have as many as 62 submarines, with 10 of them being nuclear-powered and three armed with long-range ballistic missiles, and 75 major warships, it does not have an aircraft carrier.

Biden's move may ruffle Indian feathers

Narayan Lakshman and Siddharth Varadarajan

India left out of lunch for NAM member states

Biden speaks on importance of NPT at gathering

Washington DC: In a move that is likely to ruffle some official feathers of the Indian delegation to the ongoing Nuclear Security Summit here, U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden on Monday hosted a lunch for leaders and officials of 11 nations that “included heads of government and other representatives from nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America that are members of the Non-Aligned Movement”, according to a White House statement.

As one of the founding members of NAM the exclusion of India from lunch was a subject of discussion at a press briefing on Monday. To a question on what the Ministry of External Affairs made of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not being invited to Mr. Biden's home, MEA spokesman Vishnu Prakash said he had no information about the lunch.

Mr. Biden underscored the importance of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in his remarks to the gathering. He said: “The goals of the non-aligned movement and my country on the important issues of nuclear security, non-proliferation, as well as other issues have never been closer than they are today, in our view.”

While the White House said that the official purpose of the lunch was to “exchange views on nuclear security and proliferation issues and the urgency of addressing global risks of nuclear terrorism”, it also emphasised that the main theme of the event was non-proliferation, rather than non-alignment.

In a statement, the White House said the focus of the discussion was the “shoring up international non-proliferation rules … centred in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”.

If indeed the lunch was prompted by American efforts to engage NAM members of the NPT in the run-up to this summer's review conference of treaty adherents, then the absence of India — a non-signatory — is hardly surprising.

Delegates invited to the lunch were from Algeria, Chile, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

On the occasion Mr. Biden said the U.S.' recently completed nuclear posture review and the START treaty signed with Russia last week made it clear that the U.S. was committed to reducing the number of nuclear weapons in their arsenal.

Mr. Biden, underscored the dangers posed by “extremist groups and non-state actors … seeking to gain access to nuclear materials to make a nuclear bomb”.

What I Cautioned About Obama Before He Became President

By B. Raman

There has been a gradual disenchantment with President Barack Obama in India ever since he became the President in January 2009. Despite all the visuals of Obama in the company of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his statements and remarks relating to India made by him or on his behalf by his officials during Dr.Manmohan Singh’s much-hyped State visit to Washington DC in November last year and during his current visit for the Nuclear Security Summit, Obama’s actions in matters of interest and concern to India have been either unhelpful or detrimental to India. His positive vibrations for Pakistan have come out clearly on many occasions----the latest being after his one-to-meeting with Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani of Pakistan in the margins of the Nuclear Security Summit. Whatever little I have studied of Obama since he first indicated his Presidential aspirations has strengthened my misgivings about him and created a suspicion in my mind that as a political leader he is as insincere as Richard Nixon though not as crude because he successfully hides his insincerity and as na�ve as Jimmy Carter. I am giving below extracts from my articles on Obama written before he became the President for whatever they are worth.

Having an Obama In Its Future--- Good Or Bad For Us (India)? (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/pap...paper2905.html) Written on October 30, 2008)

By B. Raman

The world has seen made-in-the-Internet scholars, made-in-the-Internet stock-brokers, made-in-the-Internet lovers and even made-in-the-Internet terrorists.

If Senator Barack Obama is elected the President of the United States on November 4, the US and the rest of the world will be seeing for the first time a made-in-the-Internet President.

The way his advisers and entourage have effectively used the Internet to make him known to the people, to collect funds for him and to project him as a right-thinking person, who will take the US into a brave new world, will form the theme of many likely best-sellers if he wins the elections, as he seems destined to do.

Large sections of the American people are in a state of guilt----- over having suppressed the Blacks for so many years, over having supported President Bush and his Neo Conservatives in their Iraq adventure under the pretext of removing non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and over so many other perceived wrongs of the Bush Administration.

What better way of ridding themselves of their gnawing sense of guilt than to vote for a candidate, who is an Afro-American and who promises to rid the US of the legacies of the Bush administration. Just by casting their vote for him on November 4, they would in one stroke be able to get rid of all their guilt feelings and start a new life as Americans. So they think. As they stand before the voting machine, it will be their hour of the confessional ---- that they were wrong in having supported Bush.

His advisers and entourage have skillfully exploited the widely prevalent mood of guilt in the US to project him as a transformational figure (to quote Colin Powell) the like of which comes but rarely. Vote for Obama and vote for all that that is good and great in the US.

The liberals---- in the civil society, in the media, among the opinion-makers--- have made Obama seem a cult figure. For them, it will be blasphemous to ask questions about his past, to find out who he really is.

Had a white been the Democratic candidate like Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, they would not have had the least qualms in researching into his past and in dissecting every inch of him.

How can one do it for a transformational, cult figure? Cult figures have to be accepted as such without questions. How can one do that for a Black, who is on the threshold of history by being the first Black to become the President of the US? To question his past and his credentials would be racist. So the American voters have been told.

Can anyone in the US or in the rest of the world assert that he knows Obama well ---- his past and his present and what he will be in future? Future is the child of the past.

Obama is a mix of two vintages. The old pre-2006 vintage and the new post-2006 one. All his admirers know Obama of the new vintage. How many know Obama of the old vintage?

Very few. There is no desire to find out either.

Obama of the new vintage has nothing but the highest words of praise for India and Indians. He wants to continue with Bush’s policy of promoting a strategic relationship with India.

What about Obama of the old vintage? Cautious and reserved in exuding any warmth for India and the Indians lest his Pakistani friends and constituents misunderstand.

It is said that as a student he had more Pakistani friends than Indians. He felt more comfortable in the company of the Pakistanis than Indians. It was his choice and nobody could grudge it.

It was at the invitation of one of his Pakistani friends that he visited Islamabad, Karachi and Hyderabad (Sind) in the 1980s. Nobody can hold that against him.

As an Indian, one will be but human if one felt troubled that he did not disclose this till he became the Presidential candidate. He disclosed this----as if in passing--- when it was alleged that he did not understand the Islamic world and its divisions. He mentioned his visit to Pakistan to show that he knew about the divisions in Islam, about the Shia-Sunni differences.

Why did he keep mum on his visit to Pakistan till this question was raised? Has he disclosed all the details regarding his Pakistan visit? Was it as innocuous as made out by him----to respond to the invitation of a Pakistani friend or was there something more to it?

One would have expected the US journalists to have gone into this, to have quizzed him on it. But, they didn’t.

As I read about Obama’s visit to Pakistan in the 1980s, I could not help thinking of dozens of things. Of the Afghan jihad against communism. Of the fascination of many Afro-Americans for the jihad. Of the visits of a stream of Afro-Americans to Pakistan to feel the greatness of the jihad. Of their fascination for Abdullah Azzam, who came to Pakistan in the 1980s and started teaching in the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Of the frequent visits of Cat Stevens, the pop singer, to Pakistan and of his fascination for Islam and the on-going jihad. Of his conversion to Islam.

One might think that I am morbid in entertaining such thoughts and questions in my mind. But morbidity is understandable when one has a feeling that one has not been told the whole story, but only a part of it.

It is the right of the Americans to decide who should be their President. It is my right to worry about the implications of their decision for the rest of the world, including India.

Obama: Dangers of Indo-Pak Re-Hyphenation (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/pap...paper2916.html) From my article of November 5,2008)

His (Obama’s) pronouncements on India and Pakistan, which were music to the ears of people in India in the initial months of the campaign, became jarring during the closing days of the campaign. In the initial months of his campaign, he praised India and supported the initiatives taken by the Bush administration in relation to India. He was very critical of Pakistan’s inadequate co-operation with the US in the war against Al Qaeda. He also criticized the Bush Administration for giving to Pakistan weapons, which it could use only against India and not against Al Qaeda, under the pretext of strengthening its counter-terrorism capability. He hardly spoke of Indo-Pakistan issues.

But as the campaign reached its culmination, he started speaking of the Kashmir issue in a language, which reminded one of the language of the past from the officials of the Clinton Administration. Obama’s entourage and Gen. David H.Petraeus, former Commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, who took over as the Commander of the US Central Command on October 31 and is presently on a visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan, have one thing in common---- they listen a lot to the assessments and recommendations of Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani analyst, who has written extensively on the Taliban and the war against terrorism. In fact, Petraeus has reportedly nominated Ahmed Rashid and Shuja Nawaz, the author of the recently published book on the Pakistan Army called “Crossed Swords”, as members of a brains trust to advise him on a new strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Ahmed Rashid has been arguing for some months now that the Pakistan Army cannot be expected to co-operate wholeheartedly with the US Armed Forces in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban unless there is a forward movement in settling the Kashmir issue and India is pressured to cut down its presence in Afghanistan. There were not many takers for his arguments in the Bush Administration. But they have already started influencing the thinking of many who are close to Obama.

Will he exercise pressure on India on the Kashmir issue and its role in Afghanistan after he takes over or will he let his pre-election remarks remain without follow up action? This is a question which should worry Indian policy-makers.

Obama’s policy towards China is also likely to be different from that of the Bush Administration. He will continue to strengthen the US’ strategic relations with India, the foundations for which were laid by Bush and Rice, but the sensitivities of China and Pakistan could once again become inhibiting factors in determining the pace and extent of the relationship. He is unlikely to subscribe to the wisdom of building up India as a counter to China. That was the unstated wisdom behind the policies of the Bush Administration towards India.

Obama was supportive of the Indo-US Civilian nuclear co-operation Agreement. Many of the non-governmental experts, who were critical of the agreement, have a greater audience for their views in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. They would try to see that the Hyde Act is observed in letter and spirit in the implementation of the agreement. If their views prevail, one could see a slow-down in Indo-US co-operation in nuclear matters.

Under Bush, Indo-US relations developed like never before because he was a great admirer of India and was convinced of the need to encourage the emergence of India as a major Asian power on par with China. Obama has so far not given any indication of a similar admiration and conviction.

Barring John F.Kennedy, other Democratic Presidents were not very positive towards India. They always thought of India tactically and not strategically. Many major initiatives towards India came from Republican Presidents, who held office after Richard Nixon, whose dislike of India---- and particularly Indira Gandhi--- was well-known. There was a new page in Indo-US relations under Bush. This was facilitated by the decline in the influence of some Washington-based think tanks and their academics on policy-making. With the return of a Democrat to the White House, these old academic warriors are already coming out of their eight-year-long hibernation and will try to influence the new President in his thinking and policies. Their views are no different from those of the like of Ahmed Rashid.

We should not hesitate to make it clear to the new administration that while we are as keen as before to strengthen our strategic relations with the US, this cannot be at the expense of our vital national interests in matters like Kashmir and Afghanistan.

From My Article of November 7, 2008 http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/pap...paper2917.html

In the history of Indo-American relations since India became independent in 1947, there have been more instances of meddling by Democrats than by Republicans. Democrats seem to think that they understand sub-continental affairs better than anybody in the US and find it difficult to resist the urge to meddle. That is why Indian security agencies feel uncomfortable when the White House has a Democrat as incumbent. They say that if one draws a graph of terrorism in J&K, one would find that it tends to go up when a Democrat is the President.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: [email protected])

Uncertainty in India-US ties

G Parthasarathy

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner thrilled corporate audiences in Mumbai by showering praise on the performance of India’s economy and referring to the growing interest of corporate America in the ‘prospects’ for cooperation and investment in India. Earlier, in his State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama had proclaimed: “These nations (India and Germany) are not playing for second place. They are placing more emphasis on Math and Science. They are rebuilding their infrastructure.” In the same speech, however, he reiterated his aversion to outsourcing to India, stating: “It is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas.” Though the Indian corporate sector has not been overly concerned about Mr Obama’s pronouncements, there are, naturally, queries regarding his mindset about India when he proclaims: “Say no to Bangalore, say yes to Buffalo.”

Mr Geithner’s visit came just after the revelation that Mr Obama had issued a presidential directive stating: “India must make resolving its tensions with Pakistan a priority for progress to be made on US goals in the region.” It has also been reported that the Obama wish-list includes a number of ‘dos and don’ts’ for India. We are told that because the Obama Administration requires Pakistan’s help for securing a speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan and getting a deal with the Taliban that India has been forbidden from any effort to train the Afghan National Army. This is because Pakistani Army chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, himself wants to train the Afghans who, in turn, have little trust and even less affection for the Pakistani Army or the ISI. India, it is asserted by the worthies in Pentagon, should be ‘more transparent’ and ‘cooperative’ about its activities along its border with Pakistan. We are also required to reduce the number of troops in Jammu & Kashmir to enable Pakistan to deploy more forces along its western border.

New Delhi is dealing with an American Administration which just does not know how to respond to a Pakistani Army that trains, arms and provides safe havens to the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and hosts the Mullah Omar-led ‘Quetta Shura’, which moves around freely all across Pakistan. Rather than dealing with this issue by putting the squeeze on Pakistan and compelling it to end support for those killing American forces in Afghanistan, the whiz kids in Pentagon have decided that the easier way out would be to compel New Delhi, seen to be receptive to American ‘persuasion’, to fall in line with everything Gen Kayani demands from India, even as he continues assisting the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba against India. Kayani-appeasement appears to be the policy being advocated by American Generals James Jones, David Petraeus, Stanley McChrystal, Karl Eikenberry and Admiral Mike Mullen. And Mr Obama appears ready to abide by the advice of his military brass.

Addressing his troops at the Bagram airbase near Kabul on March 30, Mr Obama proclaimed: “We are going to disrupt, dismantle, defeat and destroy Al Qaeda and its extremist allies and deny Al Qaeda safe haven. We are going to reverse the Taliban’s momentum. We are going to strengthen the capacity of the Afghan security forces and the Government.” Strangely, President Obama’s words about wanting to strengthen the Afghan Government came almost immediately after his National Security Adviser, Gen James Jones, had reportedly bad-mouthed Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Government for their alleged inefficiency, corruption, nepotism and incompetence. Karzai-bashing appears to have become a favourite sport of American officials ranging from Gen Jones to Special Representative Richard Holbrooke, who show little regard for the fact that the Afghan President is a proud Durrani Pashtun and has more legitimacy than many others the Americans have supported. Turning on those who have cooperated with the Americans while appeasing those who plot the killing of American soldiers seems to have become a favourite pastime for what appears to be a confused and divided American Administration.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reportedly received soothing assurances on American policies when he met President Obama on April 11. New Delhi should realise that in its dealings with China and in the AfPak region, the Obama Administration appears quite prepared to disregard Indian sensitivities and interests when it finds Beijing and Islamabad useful in furthering its global interests, or facilitating its exit strategy from Afghanistan. Mr Geithner flattered Indian egos in Mumbai. But his real business was to secure Chinese approval to revalue the yuan on his trip to China immediately after his visit to India. This was reminiscent of Henry Kissinger stopping by in Delhi in 1971 en route to Beijing via Pakistan. It should be evident that the White House will play down Pakistani support for terrorism and continue the supply of military hardware including F-16 fighters, missiles and frigates while marginalising India on emerging developments in Afghanistan. India is now, quite appropriately, widening its diplomatic options through active participation in fora like the IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) and BRIC (Brazil, India, Russia and China). We should seek full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and work more closely with Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on emerging developments in Afghanistan.

India’s bilateral relationship with the US will remain its most important bilateral relationship for the foreseeable future. The potential for cooperation in areas ranging from agriculture and education to space and high technology transfer is immense. Moreover, the corporate sectors in the two countries have set the stage for rapidly expanding trade, business and investment cooperation. But in a climate of strategic uncertainty resulting from the strange handling of foreign and security policies by the Obama Administration, it would only be appropriate for our political parties and Parliamentarians to carefully examine the provisions of the proposed Nuclear Liability Bill. This Bill should be passed only after wide-ranging consultations and studies about practices across the world, even if such examination takes a year to complete. Similarly, while there are suggestions that defence supplies from the US should get preferential treatment, we need to look at the possibility of increasingly linking defence purchases to the consideration that suppliers show for our security concerns. Moreover, close consultations with Russia, China and countries like Brazil and Turkey are needed while formulating our response to American concerns on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The flying Sikh and the peacenik

By M K Bhadrakumar

Senior Indian officials in their private briefing insist there was "almost a Zen-like spiritual quality" to the meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United States President Barack Obama in Washington last Sunday. However, the question being posed by the Indian strategic community is still: "Does Obama care about India?"

At the bottom of such poignantly contrasting characterizations of statecraft lie two factors. First, the residual feudal mindset of the Indian invariably attributes what are in reality flaws in policies to personal vagaries in the thinking of the leader. It's not so simple. Statecraft is a complex crucible where the witches brew is a broth of many strange ingredients that might or might not include "a pilot's thumb, Wreck'd as homeward he did come", as the first witch in William Shakespeare's Macbeth claimed.

Second, generally speaking, India faces an existential dilemma insofar as it is never quite willing to admit it is solely responsible for giving its own life meaning and living that life passionately and sincerely. It fails to account for its "leap of faith", a phrase commonly attributed to the 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard - believing in or accepting something intangible or unprovable without empirical evidence.

Sunday's meeting between the "flying Sikh and the peacenik" - to borrow the words of an Indian editor - was keenly awaited. There is a lot of angst in Delhi about the orientations of the Obama administration's South Asia policies. Somehow the fizz has gone out of the US-India relationship. This was most conspicuous from the fact that the two sides almost underplayed the Manmohan-Obama meet. The usual hype was lacking in the White House press statement.

According to the Indian strategic community in Delhi, the fault lies entirely at the doorstep of the Oval Office. Simply put, Obama is a different man from George W Bush, who was by implication a passionate lover of India through a longstanding family relationship with the country.

Is Obama the real problem in US-India relationship today? Is it that he does not really care for India? An answer can be faithfully derived only if a close look is at taken the three main "fault lines" in current US-India ties: Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Asia-Pacific.

The Indian strategic thinkers take umbrage that the Obama administration is determined to end the fighting in Afghanistan and as a means of securing that objective, seeks the Taliban's reintegration and reconciliation. They feel badly let down. They want the fighting to go on and on till the Taliban are bled white and vanquished from the face of the earth.

They are unwilling to concede that the Taliban could be essentially a homegrown Afghan movement that outsiders have cynically manipulated over years. Thus, they feel "deeply disturbed" about what is unfolding and feel cheated that the Obama administration "shunned advance consultations on Afghanistan with its Indian partners".

The fact of the matter, however, is that those Indians are almost completely alone in the region in clinging on to their one-dimensional view of the Taliban as a 100% Pakistani clone. Almost all major regional powers of consequence to the Afghan situation - Iran, China, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Central Asian states - agree on the limited point that there is need of an inclusive pan-Afghan solution to the present problem if the peace dividends are to be enduring.

In Delhi, arguably, the Indian establishment also has grudgingly come to be aware that the "reintegration" of the Taliban is something that mainstream Afghan opinion itself desires and the international community seeks and India, therefore, doesn't have the locus standii to be unilaterally prescriptive.

But the so-called Indian hawks shall have nothing of such blasphemous thoughts.

There is also some sophistry here. The heartache among the Indian hawks about the reconciliation with the Taliban is actually all about their deeply flawed assessment of the Afghan situation in the past eight years. The sad reality is that the overwhelming bulk of the Indian strategic community has no clue about the fundamental aspects of the Afghan problem and harbors simplistic notions about its long-term ramifications for regional security and stability not only with regard to South Asia but Central Asia as well.

Until very recently, they fancied an Indian military deployment in Afghanistan and an open-ended war in which India and the US as allies work tirelessly toward purging the Hindu Kush of the Taliban movement through the use of force.

A Clausewitzean war
The Indians never really comprehended at anytime during the past eight years or so that this has been a Clausewitzean war that is also linked to the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a world security body, the long-term US military presence in "Inner Asia" and the US's containment strategy toward China's rise and Russia's resurgence. The result has been plain to see. Pakistan was shrewd enough to assess the potentials of the war and to work out its geopolitical positioning, whereas Indians find themselves in near-total isolation.

Besides, Indians overlook that Obama represents the US interests and his mandate is to show "results" in an increasingly hopeless war that is becoming unpopular in the West. The Afghan conflict has become unsustainable politically and financially over the medium term and become a futile war that is locked in stalemate with no real victors.

Also, a gifted politician like Obama has no intention of committing political hara-kiri as the campaign for the presidential election of 2012 draws close. He cannot continue with the war simply for the sake of pleasing the Indians and getting the US-India partnership in the "war on terrorism" to be waged ad infinitum. For argument's sake, it is highly doubtful such misconceptions would have figured even in Bush's grotesque world view.

Obama has an extremely erudite mind and sizes up that despite the shenanigans of the Pakistani military, he needs to forge a working relationship with Islamabad to extract as much cooperation as possible in bringing the fighting in Afghanistan to an end. All indications are that Obama conveniently looks away from raising dust over the Pakistani generals' doublespeak in the fight against terrorism since he is coolly logical about his priorities at this point in time.

He estimates that just as in Delhi, the political elites in Islamabad also have a zest to be co-opted as the US's principal instrument of geo-strategy in South Asia. He will be extremely unwise not to exploit the factors of advantage in the US's favor.

Having said that, Obama isn't overlooking, either, that the Indians almost instinctively sweat under their collar as he forges closer working relationships with the Pakistanis. He has therefore repeatedly made assuaging gestures toward the Indian leadership, stressing that the long-term imperatives of US-India relationship are not to be hyphenated with the emerging US-Pakistan partnership in Central Asia. Alas, he cannot help it if US-Indian cooperation in critical fields such as agriculture or education do not appear sexy enough to the Indian strategic community.

Despite Delhi's claims to be an emerging regional power, the hard reality is that relations with Pakistan remain the core issue in its foreign policy. A senior Indian journalist present at the Indian officials' briefing in Washington on the Manmohan-Obama meet on Sunday pointed out that there were as many as 30 direct or indirect references to Pakistan and, in fact, during the Q&A, 11 out of 13 questions from the media persons related to Pakistan. As he pointed out, "If she [the Indian official] had refused to answer any questions on Pakistan because the subject of her press conference was the highest level Indo-US meeting, there would have been only her opening statement and two questions: one about Obama's forthcoming visit to India and another about the sanctions Obama wants to impose on Iran soon."

Obama can't pressure Pakistan
To be fair to the Indian strategists, a huge and almost unbridgeable hiatus has appeared between the Indian expectations of the US pressuring Pakistan to do away with its terrorist infrastructure and the US's alleged unwillingness to apply such pressure on the Pakistani military. This is most evident in the Obama administration's dogged refusal to give Indian intelligence direct access to interrogate David Coleman Headley, a prime suspect behind the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008, aside from allowing Delhi to extradite him.

The Indians have a point in saying that in a comparable situation over the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the Americans would have bombed India to the Stone Age if Delhi refused to hand over its own Headley. Especially if it insisted on keeping him behind the purdah (veil) somewhere in detention in a south Indian city and argued that it had a "plea bargain" with him.

But then, these are the realities of world politics. The US never ever has hidden its inability to treat other nations as equals or its John Waynesque ways in world politics: that might is right under all circumstances. Neither has it given up its prerogative to pursue its national interests first and foremost even at the cost of other nations sacrificing theirs.

To be sure, if the Indian perceptions of recent years in the promised land of the US-India strategic partnership turned out to be full of weeds and bleached bones, is it Obama who is at fault? The Indians could have easily learnt from the Iranians who live in their close neighborhood or the Iraqis in Mesopotamia who were their ancient partners in the civilized world millennia ago, how ruthlessly self-centered the US could be when the chips are down.
Yet Obama is an exception. He has not hidden his genuine warmth toward India and all the values of humaneness that Indians can legitimately claim as their historical legacy. More than that, as a pragmatist and patriot, he is intensely aware that ignoring or neglecting the relationship with India will deeply injure the US geopolitical interests in the Asian continent.

Equally, he has no reason to slight India, a country that he knows to be genuinely enthusiastic about almost everything American, which is extremely rare nowadays to find on this planet.

All the same, Obama's primary loyalty will still be toward his own American people. He must give overriding priority to safeguarding America's homeland security and the American facilities and lives overseas and as Vladimir Lenin once told Leon Trotsky, if it becomes necessary for securing peace in Afghanistan, he may even have to wear a petticoat.

However, that doesn't confuse Obama's true role as a democrat when his team deals with the tough generals in Rawalpindi.

Finally, what disheartens sections of the Indian strategic community most about Obama is that he is revamping the architecture of the US's Asia-Pacific strategy. They placed a touching faith in the US's grit and capacity to thwart China's rise and in that struggle, they visualized India's role as the great Asian "balancer".

It is Obama's misfortune that he is presiding over the global economic downturn as it exposes the US's inexorable decline as a superpower. At any rate, the Indians were naive to have overlooked that the US and China were locked in a deadly embrace of interdependence that didn't allow them the luxury of going beyond an occasional sparring. The bitter truth is the Indians are unwilling to admit that they misread the tea leaves when Condoleezza Rice led them up the garden path and today they would rather place the blame on Obama.

They are unwilling to ask searching questions about the entire basis of the global vision that the Indian policy makers subscribed to in the recent years, especially since 2005. Is Obama to be held responsible for India's gross neglect of its neighborhood policy, its cavalier demolition of India's traditional ties with Iran, the deliberate atrophying of its profoundly strategic partnership with Russia or India's unpardonable failure to come to terms with China' rise?

Again, the US is justified in securing its hardcore interests by striving to establish a vice-like grip over Indian policies but ultimately it should have been up to the Indian leadership to have created space for the country to maneuver in the highly volatile international system in order to pursue their interests rather than be boxed in.

There is no way Indians can justify their failure to pursue an independent foreign policy. If they find themselves today sitting on the ground and telling "sad stories of the death of kings", is it Obama who is at fault?

The existential angst in the Indian mind is in actuality nothing else than the experience of human freedom and responsibility. India is an emerging power in the world order and it cannot insist on living an inauthentic existence.

The question is, Is obame suppose to care about India?
He is the leader of USA and would take care of its interest, not ours. It's our fault if we are asking him to care about us.

Although friendly towards India, Obama’s priorities lie elsewhere

It makes me cringe to see televised images of American presidents patronizingly patting visiting dignitaries double their age on the upper arm or back after shaking hands. It’s just as nauseating when Indian officials boast breathlessly that the prime minister was granted a longer audience, with a few extra minutes’ bonus thrown in, and a warmer handshake (also a more resounding pat?) than any other leader in the whole wide world.

There was plenty of occasion for cringing and nausea all through a week that suggested that India might have to reconsider Afghanistan’s relevance to its security and choose the most fruitful theatre of partnership with the United States of America. That was the particular message for us from the biggest diplomatic gathering since the San Francisco conference that gave birth to the United Nations. Barack Obama’s triumph was a foregone conclusion because no president or prime minister could stand up and say he or she opposed stopping terrorists from getting hold of nuclear material for a dirty bomb.

But the razzle-dazzle of invitation-only summitry was necessary for Obama’s real purpose. He sought to isolate Iran and North Korea, deny them a voice and mobilize global support to force them to give up perceived nuclear ambitions. The backing of the three nuclear weapons countries that refuse to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty — India, Pakistan and Israel (though Benjamin Netanyahu sulked off-stage) — mattered in this context. The conference jubilantly pre-empted next month’s NPT meeting under UN auspices where Iran is bound to explode verbal bombs. It also gave Obama an asset that will stand him and his party in good stead in the November congressional elections and in his re-election campaign for 2012.

Obama’s Afghan policy concerns India more. The media gloated, presumably on the basis of confidential briefings, that he “scolded” Yousaf Raza Gilani after listening to Manmohan Singh. But a lingering doubt remains that whether to attain his objectives he did not lead India up the garden path in respect of its expectations of an active civilian role in Afghanistan. That country may already have been franchised to a Pakistan that Hamid Karzai, with a weather-eye always open for how the wind blows, now calls his “conjoined twin”.

If Iran was America’s unwritten priority item on the agenda, Pakistan was India’s. By that token, India must have been Pakistan’s. To that extent the conference was a replay of all those Baghdad Pact and Southeast Asia Treaty Organization meetings where Asian members swore fervent loyalty not because they had the slightest intention of tilting at international communism but because they wanted American arms to further their own regional ambitions. International terrorism has replaced international communism as the unifying bogey.

Echoes of even more dusty history rumbled along the sidelines as India and Pakistan, squabbling claimants to the mantle of the winning side in the Great Game, continued to enact that drama all over again. But the moves this time round were under the watchful eye of the lone superpower whose own interest in Afghanistan will largely determine the interaction between the two subcontinental neighbours. American and Pakistani stakes in Afghanistan are easily explicable; but it is for India to decide whether that distant landlocked country is so crucial to the national interest as to make itself hostage to US-Pakistani diplomacy for it.

It has become a mantra for benign American officials to insist that US subcontinental policy is no longer hyphenated. It may not be in Washington’s thinking but it is never anything else in the minds of those at the receiving end. Continued F-16 sales to Pakistan, the billions of dollars allocated to secure nuclear arms and materials, and the presence of Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates (defence secretary) and the national security adviser, General James Jones (Shiv Shankar Menon’s strategic dialogue partner) at the dinner Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of joint chiefs of staff, hosted for Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, are resented here. Obama’s announcement to West Point cadets that the US would start to evacuate Afghanistan in July 2011 was also seen as a betrayal of the assurance earlier that day that India’s concerns would be borne in mind. There is nothing, but nothing, that the US can do in, with or for Pakistan that will not be judged in terms of the impact on India and faulted. Pakistan is no better but has less cause for complaint.

This is more than the “petty obsession” that vitiates media coverage to which K.P. Nayar drew attention in these columns on Wednesday. Obsession it certainly is and can descend to pettiness such as grumbling about the compliments lavished on Kayani or Obama telling Gilani that he was “very fond of Pakistan, having visited the country during college”. The underlying truth is we have always known that despite public outbursts of anti-Americanism, militaristic Pakistan makes itself useful to the US in ways that pluralistic democratic India can never bring itself to do.

A State department memorandum acknowledged in the Forties that “from the military point of view, the countries of South Asia excepting Pakistan have, under present and prospective conditions, little value” to the US. While India was of “negligible positive strategic importance”, Pakistan occupied “one of the most strategic areas in the world” for securing West Asia’s oil and allowing “ideological and intelligence penetration” of, as well as air operations against, the Soviet Union. Olaf Caroe also stressed these advantages to justify the Baghdad Pact; US diplomats reiterated them at another conference in 1951. The target has changed, not the concept or method.

Meanwhile, Rising India has other claims to attention which the US has acknowledged handsomely. George W. Bush admitted with a pragmatic candour that old-fashioned South Block mandarins apparently find embarrassing that India’s expanding market for every import from pizzas to nuclear reactors is an irresistible attraction. So is India’s strategic potential in the Indian and Pacific oceans where Americans remain wary of China’s ambitions. The India-US reprocessing arrangement, albeit belated, confirms that Obama has not abandoned his predecessor’s friendliness even if his immediate priorities are elsewhere and he has a different vision of the partnership with India.

If official Indian claims are to be believed, the US has so far condoned (or even welcomed) India’s civilian presence, fortified by a $1.3 billion budget, in Afghanistan. Obama probably believes he can persuade Pakistan to share the franchise and cooperate with India. That is where American optimism falls short of Asian reality. When it comes to the crunch, the president will have no option but to back Pakistan and its perhaps by then reconstructed Taliban allies. An India that does not agree to resume the dialogue with Pakistan can have no role in that reconstituted Afghanistan.

The general belief here that Afghanistan enables Pakistan to send jihadis into Jammu and Kashmir and otherwise harass India recalls a conversation with Lee Kuan Yew when he vigorously denied China’s responsibility for hostile Pakistani actions. Pakistanis didn’t need China for that, he argued. Enmity was “inherent in their Muslim fundamentalism”; it was “something visceral in them”. Similarly, Pakistan’s conduct in Jammu and Kashmir was much the same even before US policy allowed it to become entrenched in Afghanistan.

At a recent meeting in London’s Chatham House, a senior British diplomatist wondered why India needed 26 — his figure — consulates in Afghanistan. It was not for me to suggest that whatever the number, their raison d’être probably lies at least partly in the successor State’s historic memory of a time when India controlled the Durand Line and seated and unseated Afghan amirs.The time may have come to forget the past and take a hard look at contemporary geopolitical reality. India might conclude then that it stands to gain more by cutting its losses in Afghanistan and consolidating the economic and strategic relationship with the US.

World has benign view of India's rise: PM Manmohan Singh

ON BOARD AIR INDIA ONE: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said the world takes a "benign view" of India and is not worried about its rise, unlike that of China, and India should take advantage of this.

"The world takes a benign view of India. They want us to succeed," Manmohan Singh told journalists on board his special aircraft while returning from an eight-day visit to the US and Brazil where he interacted with nearly 50 world leaders.

"Unlike China's rise, the rise of India does not cause any apprehensions," Manmohan Singh said when asked whether there was a unique Indian approach compared to the Beijing consensus and the Washington model.

"We should take advantage of it. This benign mood cannot last," the Prime Minister said.

The Prime Minister said this when he was asked to share his overall impression of his meetings in Washington, where he attended the 47-nation Nuclear Security Summit, and in Brazil, where he participated in the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) summit and Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) summits.

Manmohan Singh also held bilateral meetings with nine world leaders on the sidelines of these summits, including the presidents of the US, China, France and Brazil.

Manmohan Singh, however, said that India must first tackle a host of domestic problems like poverty and underdevelopment.

"India's problems are all at home. We should get our act together. We need to work to remove ignorance, poverty and disease," he said.

The Prime Minister's views on India's distinctive approach vis-à-vis China was reminiscent of the lecture he gave at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington during his visit in November last year.

The Prime Minister had said India had chosen the democratic values, "respect for fundamental human rights, the respect for the rule of law, respect for multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious rights."

He had stressed that although China's GDP was higher than that of India's he would still not like to choose the Chinese path.

In a boost to India's global aspirations, the second summit of the BRIC grouping comprising India, Brazil, Russia and China held in Brasilia Thursday backed New Delhi and Brasilia's greater role in the UN.

The world leaders were supportive of India's bigger role in international affairs, official sources said.

Recently, South Africa joined 140 nations in supporting a resolution at the UN for an expansion of the UN Security Council.

During his meeting with Manmohan Singh in Washington early this week, President Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated France's support for India's candidature for the UN Security Council.

Our Sardar understands that once India's rise crosses a certain threshold the daggers that are now hidden in cloak will be out and India will be subject to same demonisation that China suffers today.

Indian and US SF personnel training in Mizoram.

Any misuse of arms supplied to Pak will be probed: US
Share Print E-mail Comment[ - ] Text [ + ]STAFF WRITER 17:55 HRS IST
New Delhi, Apr 19 (PTI) Taking note of India's concerns, the United States today warned Pakistan that any "misuse" of weapons supplied to it will be investigated and the US Congress will take it "seriously".

"We will look into it very seriously," US Ambassador to India Timothy J Roemer told reporters here, asserting that arms supplied to Pakistan should be used only for the purpose mentioned in the agreement between the two countries.

The envoy's comments came just days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his meeting with US President Barack Obama last week, voiced apprehensions about misuse of US military supplies to Pakistan.

Singh's apprehensions had prompted Obama to assure him that India's concerns in this regard would be kept in mind while dealing with the issue.

"...There are allegations of misuse of weapons given to Pakistan for other purposes. We will investigate it, Congress will take the issue seriously," Roemer said.

India's work in Afghanistan critically important: US envoy

US Ambassador Timothy J Roemer on Monday lauded India's reconstruction work in Afghanistan and stressed that there were opportunities for the two countries to work together in stabilising the violence-torn country.
He also underlined that Washington closely consulted New Delhi on regional issues relating to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"India's role in Afghanistan is critically important. US President Barack Obama has appreciated India's contribution to Afghanistan," Roemer told reporters when asked about reports that suggested some sections in the US regarded India's reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan as part of the problem, rather than the solution.
"We will continue to solicit India's views on developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan," the envoy said.
Alluding to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's meetings with Obama in November last year and more recently last week, the envoy stressed that the US held in high esteem the Indian prime minister's "insights" into the region. "We reached out to the Indian government about their perspectives," the envoy said, adding that the US briefed India about the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue held last month.
Manmohan Singh and Obama held intensive discussions on AfPak issues when they met on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington April 11.
Obama assured India that the US was "engaging" Pakistan on the issue of trans-border terrorism and shared New Delhi's concerns over outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiba plotting attacks on India's cities.