IPCS Issue Brief 39 October 2006 INDO-US STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP ARE WE THERE YET? Lalit Mansingh Even though they shared common “Americans always do the right values, India and the United States thing,” said Winston Churchill, “after had divergent views on their they have tried everything else”. In the respective roles in the world. The US contest of India, it took the Americans saw itself as the leader of the Free five decades to do the right thing. World, fighting a crusade against the These were the five decades of the evil forces of international Cold War, described by the late communism. India had no such Senator Moynihan, a former American phobia against communism and Ambassador to India, as a “half preferred to remain non-Aligned. An century of misunderstandings, enduring image of the Cold War, in miscues, and mishaps. “Former Indian minds, is that of John Foster External Affairs Minister Jaswant Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Singh called them “the fifty wasted State. Issuing a fatwa against non- years”. Alignment, Dulles pronounced it immoral and declared it incompatible INDIA’S STRATEGIC1 with friendship with the United States. IRRELEVANCE TO THE UNITED STATES Dulles was reflecting what the US Joint Chief of Staff had concluded-that India was strategically irrelevant for Ambassador Mansingh is currently an the United States. Their ally of choice Executive Committee Member, IPCS. He in the region was Pakistan. As Dulles was earlier India’s Foreign Secretary and pursued his ‘Pactomania’ and got Indian Ambassador to the US. Pakistan admitted to CENTO and SEATO, the political distance between This paper was originally delivered as a Delhi and Washington continued to keynote address at the Army War College, grow. Mhow on 25 September 2006. The Indo-US relationship, according to 1 Defining ‘strategic’: The loose and Strobe Talbott was “a victim of indiscriminate usage of this term has made it difficult to define. “Strategy” originated as a incompatible obsessions-India’s with military expression describing the science and Pakistan and America’s with the art of planning victory in a war. Hence Soviet Union.” Both were Guilty of strategic planning was differentiated from being on best terms with “each other’s tactical or day-to-day deployment. Currently, principal enemy”. 2 the term is used in international affairs as a global, long term and comprehensive relationship between two countries. In a slightly narrower sense it also refers to a security relationship, including military 2 Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, cooperation. I have used both concepts in this Democracy and the Bomb (New Delhi: Viking, paper. 2004) p.7 INSTITUTE OF PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDES B-7/3, Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi 91-11-4100 1900 (Tel); 91-11-4165 2560 (Fax) IPCS Issue Brief 39 October 2006 EFFORTS AT IMPROVING of the process by which the US RELATIONS DURING THE COLD approach towards India evolved from WAR estrangement to engagement. Talbott writes that India was cropping up There were nevertheless brief periods frequently in Clinton’s conversations of warmth and understanding, even in the very first year of his presidency attempts at forging strategic ties. At and the Clinton regarded India a least three of these are worth nothing. potentially important power for the In 1962, following the Chinese US. It indeed Clinton felt that way, aggression on India, there was a clear Delhi did not see much evidence of it. convergence of strategic interests India felt the heat of Clinton’s zeal in between India and the US. Setting pursuing nuclear non-proliferation. non-Alignment aside, Pandit Nehru The move to indefinitely extend the sought urgent military support from Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty the United States, including two dozen (NPT) was the last straw for India. In squadrons of B-47 bombers, a dozen Talbott’s words, the NPT represented squadrons of fighter aircraft and air for Indians “the three Ds of US nuclear defence radars. The US responded policies: dominance, discrimination with sympathy, but the military and double standards”. assistance offered was symbolic rather than substantive. The US On the Kashmir issue, Washington administration was divided on India, continued to tilt towards Pakistan with the Pentagon warning against a Clinton’s newly appointed Assistant dilution of its strong ties with Secretary of State for South Asia, Pakistan. India continued to be Robin Raphel, even questioned the strategically irrelevant to the US. legality of Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India. Charges of human There were two other short periods of rights abuses against India were political cooperation-in the mid-80s getting more strident. There was and the early 90s, when Indian and the skepticism in India when Under US set aside their frictions to discuss Secretary of State, Tom Pickering technology transfer and military offered a strategic dialogue with India, cooperation. The MOU on transfer of which he said, would cover the Technology of 1985and the Kicklighter “whole gamut of relations”. proposals of 1991, which outlined “a common strategic vision”, paved the And then, India’s nuclear tests in May way for the Agreed minute of defence 1998, made such a dialogue irrelevant. cooperation signed during US Defence Washington reacted by slapping Secretary, William Perry’s visit to punitive sanctions and took the lead in India in 1995. The failure of such condemning India from the forums of sporadic attempts to take bilateral the UN Security Council and the G-8. relations to the higher plane suggests that they were still ahead of their time. From India’s nuclear defiance, ironically, emerged the most intense, THE CLINTON YEARS the most serious and the most A BREAKTHROUGH extended set of exchanges between the two counties. I am referring to the Former Deputy Secretary of State, Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott dialogue, Strobe Talbott’s book, “engaging which took place over two years in India”, provides a fascination account fourteen sessions in seven countries. 2 INDO-US STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP: Bush, starting from where Clinton had The dialogue helped to clear much of left, converted the same policy into a the debris of past misunderstandings spectacular success. and made Washington aware of India’s national and global aspirations There are three major reasons that and its rationale for the nuclear tests. explain why Clinton did not In Talbott’s words, “India had put on eventually succeed with India. Firstly, notice that it was now unambiguously, in Clinton economics-driven global unapologetically and irrevocably, a vision, China was a much bigger prize nuclear armed power.”3 It was this to be pursued than India. Clinton even realization which forced the Clinton sought to bring China into the South administration to abandon its declared Asian equation, by suggesting that goal to “Cap, Rollback and Eliminate” China could join the US to enforce India’s nuclear programme. peace in the region. India found this insensitive and deeply offensive. The US offered India a grand bargain Secondly, the insistence on under which it would withdraw its benchmarks made India resentful that nuclear and technology sanctions the US Continued to treat it as a global provided India met four benchmarks: delinquent. The benchmarks were • Sign the CTBT seen as a penalty India had to pay in • Negotiate a Fissile Material Cut-off order to free itself from US sanctions. Treaty (FMCT) India felt no moral or legal obligation • Enforce world class export controls to pay such a price. And finally, what on nuclear and missile and Clinton was offering to India was technology and America’s friendship, not a • Observe a non-threatening defence partnership on equal terms- and that posture. too with a price tag. India was prepared to wait and see what his Although India had no serious successor had to offer. problems with any of these requirements, the dialogue remained On the face of it, there was a seamless stuck on the benchmarks like a broken continuity of US policy towards India record and eventually ended in under George W. Bush in 2001. In fact, deadlock. Talbott conceded with some it appeared to be the only segment of disappointment the Jaswant Singh Clinton’s foreign policy that Bush did managed to achieve his objectives not repudiate and demolish. Beneath whereas his own targets remained the surface however, there was an unfulfilled. important change of approach. FAILURE FOR CLINTON; Firstly, Bush did not perceive India as SUCCESS FOR BUSH a lesser prize than China. Influenced no doubt by the Neo-Cons, Bush and his team considered India a counter- It is important to understand why the weight and not a lightweight, against Clinton Administration’s bold China. departure on India ended in self- confessed failure, and how George W. Secondly, India was no longer regarded to be in the dock and there 3 ibid, p.51. was no penalty to be paid for alleged 3 INSTITUTE OF PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDES B-7/3, Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi 91-11-4100 1900 (Tel); 91-11-4165 2560 (Fax) IPCS Issue Brief 39 October 2006 misdeeds. India was seen as entitled to The 2004 elections in both countries its rightful place in the world order. produced a new government in India Condoleeza Rice proclaimed that the under Dr. Manmohan Singh and a United States would facilitate India’s second term for George W. Bush in the quest for global status. Finally, Bush US. The common message emerging was offering more than a hand of from both capitals after the elections friendship: he was keen to make India was continuity of foreign policy. In a strategic partner of the United States. fact, both countries decided to take This was truly a new beginning.