‘Headless chickens’ and the China threat
By M K Bhadrakumar
It is not very often that a top diplomat publicly ridicules parliamentarians or media persons in his country as “headless chickens”, but that is what India’s ambassador in the United States, Ronen Sen, has done.
In a combative tone, the 64-year-old diplomat was punching hard at the critics back home of the India-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, commonly known as the “nuclear deal”.
The “deal” has set Indians against Indians. Sen’s outburst brings
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to mind a statement by Robin Raphel, a US assistant secretary of state in the mid-1990s – somewhat before India and the US discovered they were “natural allies” – that all it takes is an hour for Washington to raise a political storm in Delhi.
The heart of the matter is that the political debate in India has lost transparency. No one in the Indian establishment is able to explain cogently what this nuclear agreement is all about. The Americans are consistent in placing proposed nuclear cooperation within a broader framework of “strategic partnership” with India. This is taking shape in the nature of close military ties not only bilaterally but also in the direction of India’s induction into the United States’ security tie-ups with its principal Asian allies – Japan and Australia.
Shifting Indian stances
But the Indian establishment fights shy of identifying with the US projection of the developing strategic alliance with India, even though it has no quarrel with it. The Indian side maintained two years ago when it all began that the nuclear deal was a major initiative for India’s energy security. But it soon transpired that even if India goes in dramatically for nuclear power plants in the next 15-year period, that can only meet something like 5% or 6% of the country’s anticipated energy needs.
So the argument shifted to underscoring that the deal was all about getting a now-friendly United States to lift its 1974 ban on the flow of high technology to India, which was imposed by Washington when India first blasted a nuclear weapon in 1974. But then critics pointed out that the agreement retained the US ban on “dual-use” technology. So the argument ran into a cul-de-sac. But not for long. It ducked, and slithered on to new turf – that the deal is plain, simple realpolitik.
That is to say, realpolitik demands that India should exploit the window of opportunity arising out of the United States’ need to “contain” China’s phenomenal rise in the 21st century. The argument goes that Washington is viewing India as a “balancer” in the international system. Some Indian strategic analysts are convinced that George W Bush, who is the “friendliest” US president that India has ever dealt with, and India must make the most out of it.
To quote Sen, “We [Indians] will not, and there has not been and I don’t think in the near future we will see such a friend and supporter as this president. Absolutely. There is none.” It is seldom that diplomats speak with such passion and intensity about friendships.
But to be with Bush, or not to be – that’s not quite the question, either. The main issue now is China and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan. China is appearing at the epicenter of the Indian rationale for the nuclear agreement. “To stop negotiations [over the deal] … will only help China,” said one Indian expert who visualized the leaders in Beijing “gloating over” the predicament that faces the Indian government in its inability to command majority support for the deal in Parliament, mainly because of opposition from the left-wing parties.
Another Indian expert added, “The main beneficiaries of the deal getting delayed, from a strategic point of view, are China and Pakistan – in that order. So whose interests are we protecting? If the deal is delayed or scuttled, it would allow the Chinese to acquire unipolarity in Asia. Countries like Russia, France and even Japan would like India on board because its presence would provide a sense of equipoise to the equation in the Asian strategic grid.”
Yet another Indian thinker concluded, “The choice presented to India is stark and simple. Either India integrates itself with the global powers or it isolates itself to be dominated by China and perpetually countervailed by Pakistan.”
The Indians have tied themselves in knots. There seems to be embarrassed silence in Washington. The theorist who saw all international politics as a chessboard, former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezenski, would feel confused at hearing the Indian experts waxing on his pet subject. The “balancer” par excellence in modern diplomacy, Henry Kissinger, must be having a wry smile. Bush’s close friend, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, would turn red in his ears.
Clearly, it is impossible for Washington to see eye to eye with the Indian doctrine that the international system arrays the “world powers” against China. Paulson wishes to see China as one of the most important “stakeholders” in the international system. Paulson sees a China that is estimated to hold more than US$900 billion in a mix of US bonds. And when China sold a net $5.8 billion of Treasury bonds in April, he took careful note.
Paulson is a China expert from his days as head of Goldman Sachs. Bush’s choice of him as treasury secretary was itself a measure of the crucial importance that Washington attaches to calming the waters of the United States’ relations with a rising China. The hard fact is that the US Treasury has no currencies to redeem its debt. Washington knows it has no hegemony over China’s policies.
Seventy percent of the goods on Wal-Mart’s shelves are made in China. The manufacturing centers in China are subsidizing American consumers. Roughly half of the United States’ imports from China are “offshored” production by US companies. The US dependence on China for advanced-technology products is steadily increasing. Neither the US nor China can exit from their mutual interlocked relationship, except on extremely painful terms.
China opposes the deal
Beijing refuses to criticize India for entering the nuclear deal with the US, but Chinese statements have taken note that Delhi is
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driven by an all-consuming desire to become a “great power”, and that the deal is, by Indian reckoning, its key to unlocking the door leading to the big league in world politics. If China has doubts about the efficacy of India’s imminent passage to greatness, it hasn’t said so.
Indian strategic thinkers have alleged that China will help India’s arch-enemy Pakistan to have a nuclear deal. But on Monday a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman flatly dismissed the Indian allegation. “There is no such deal in the making,” he told an Indian correspondent in Beijing.
On the other hand, Chinese commentators have trained their guns on Washington’s “double standards” and on the “damage” that the accord with a power that has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will have on the global non-proliferation system. China has pointed out that the nuclear deal may affect the strategic balance in the South Asian region. China has expressed grave reservations about US efforts to draw “India in as a tool for its global strategic pattern”.
But China draws comfort by saying, “India’s DNA doesn’t allow itself to become an ally subordinate to the US, like Japan or Britain.” All in all, there is reason to believe China is unhappy with the nuclear deal between India and the US. But China sidesteps any direct criticism of India. In fact, senior US officials say that in all likelihood China may not oppose the deal when it comes up at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, where it has to be approved.
So where is the problem? Soon after nuclear tests in 1999, the government in Delhi attempted to rationalize them in terms of the “atmosphere of distress” prevailing in India’s relations with China. But there were no takers of the Indian thesis. So, once the dust settled, Delhi swiftly backtracked, and the process of dialogue with China resumed.
India’s China problem
The “problem” today is not entirely dissimilar. It is to be partly explained in terms of a political campaign to malign and isolate the Indian left wing’s opposition to the deal by portraying these parties as lacking in patriotism and as serving China’s geopolitical interests. Thus even Hindu fundamentalist spokesmen who distrust the nuclear deal changed tack once the deal began to be projected as a way to block China’s ascendancy in Asia.
Underlying all this is the main challenge for India. India is yet to figure out how to come to terms with China’s rise. There was a phase until recently when the Indian strategic community fancied that India’s growth rate would incrementally give China a run for its money. The realization that China has by far outstripped India has been slow in coming. But it is now sinking in.
As a former Indian diplomat, Rajiv Sikri, put it recently against the broad context of Sino-Indian relations, “The latent mistrust of China, which was well entrenched among the security agencies but of late was missing in the public perceptions and within the strategic community, has now resurfaced at a popular level.”
The US has no doubt found it expedient quietly to encourage such a trend in Indian public opinion. An odd statement here or there over the specter of China doesn’t really upset Paulson’s agenda. But it keeps the Indian strategic community on edge.
A sizable chunk of the Indian strategic community sincerely believes that the US desires to see India develop as a counterweight to China’s rise in Asia. Some among them believe that India may have already begun to act as a “balancer” in international politics. But Sikri, who headed the Indian Foreign Ministry until recently, thinks that at the official level, India’s overall relationship with China hasn’t yet been “thought through”.
At any rate, the China bogey has come in very handy in Delhi for invoking Indians’ intense sense of patriotism, and for garnering it in defense of the nuclear deal. Patriotism, in fact, has become the last refuge for those defending the nuclear deal with the US. The fact is that it is very difficult to attribute a raison d’etre for the nuclear deal except in terms of what in actuality it is, namely the alignment of Indian foreign policy with US geostrategy in Asia.
The Indian trait of self-righteousness that Raphel referred to is in full cry. Sen’s undiplomatic outburst reflected that. He asked, “So nothing happens by accident. It’s not just symbolic. It’s much, much more. But will we be able to get benefits out of all that without this [nuclear agreement]?”
He went on to answer: “All of this is inter-linked. We cannot insulate this. People don’t seem to realize that.”
The result is, like headless chickens, ageless Indian politicians are “running around”. Not a seemly sight for a great power in the making.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001
