NEW DELHI, March 7 (UPI) -- The visit of President George W. Bush to India and Pakistan from March 1 to 4 may finally emerge as the first watershed realignment of global power equations of the 21st century. It is a reenactment of an individual from the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, in which Karna was a man of the highest attributes and valor, but was ignored because of his low birth and refusal to bow down to high caste power brokers. Karna, finally, found his place in the sun. Has President Bush finally recognized India's place in the global world order?
The last word has not been said yet, and the fat lady has not begun to sing. This is what a number of people in India's political diaspora, scientific community and officialdom and security establishments feel. There is the U.S. Congress which has yet to ratify the Indo-U.S. Nuclear Agreement arrived at during President Bush's visit. There were many nay-sayers in the U.S. camp till the last moment in the American delegation including, according to recent reports, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stood his ground on India's security interests. President Bush over-rode the U.S. delegation's hard-line position. A cynical joke was going around town in New Delhi's leftist circles -- a banquet of Iraqi blood and Iranian Kofta served with condy rice. Hopefully, this menu will never be served.
The American President's South Asia tour attracted world attention. Apart from the nuclear security issue, there were many other issues of equal or more importance that were transacted, including the economic road map. The nuclear energy deal is a $60 billion market for which U.S. companies like GE and Bechtel would compete. In India, private companies like TATA are ready to jump into the nuclear power industry with U.S. collaboration.
In a world of depleting hydrocarbon resources, the competition for which has pushed Washington into wars, unpopular both at home and abroad, the U.S. appears to be reverting to civilian nuclear power production. The U.S. requires about 26,000 nuclear scientists in the coming years for its power industry and the bulk of them are likely to have been educated in India.
Following the visit, bilateral trade and investment is poised for a new leap. India is gradually opening up restrictive policies for investment and market access. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the retail sector is opening up. So is the agricultural sector. The U.S. Trade Representative, however, must be sensitive about the Indian farm sector where farmers have been committing suicide, poverty caused by droughts, lack of market and loans.
American automakers are well into the booming Indian car market. At the same time, the Indian auto-parts-making industry has carved for itself a small niche in the world market and the U.S. auto industry can hugely benefit from it.
The economic, and trade and investment sectors have endless potential. The booming Indian IT sector needs no elaboration. With the industry returning to a new emphasis in manufacturing, the playground is beginning to expand boundaries. Unfortunately, unlike China, India has never learnt to advertise its potentials. In the 1980s, Chinese president and premier would meet visiting American CEOs with photo opportunities for the media. China gave special incentives including tax holidays to selected foreign investors. Beijing runs a command system, and its so-called boom in foreign investment and foreign market is based on and driven by politics. But China's command system can also bend and break foreign participation at will as some American enterprises have found out including Yahoo!
The Indian system works very differently. Indian laws do not differentiate between foreign and Indian interests. The Dabhol power project fiasco in Mumbai was projected in the United States as a recipe for disaster for investors in India, at least until role of the corruption-ridden mother company ENRON, was uncovered. Interested parties bordering India and their constituencies in America have successfully kept U.S. business interests, and even strategic interest away from India. President George W. Bush visited China three times. His India visit will be only one during his presidential career. According to Indian strategists, however, this one India visit could clear finally the cold war cloud, notwithstanding the Americans cold warriors waging their last war till the last moment of the visit. The future is in the hands of those in the White House, the State Department and Pentagon, the Congress and in the stadium where Washington's beltway gladiators do battle
The words of President Bush, and his body language, in India and Pakistan signaled a shake up in this part of the world. He moved away from some important elements of his Asia Society speech like hyphenating India with Pakistan. Like President Ronald Regan's taking over the initiative from the foreign service interlocutors at Rekjavik meeting with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Bush took the Indian initiative into his own hands, much to the chagrin of the Secretary of State and downwards.
In India, a half-question is: Will the Bush initiative be reversed after he leaves office? After all, Bush may have overruled all opposition in his administration, but the permanent bureaucracy is not finished yet.
Pakistan played all the wrong cards just a day before the arrival of President Bush in Islamabad. Musharraf told the Pakistani Parliament that he had just been to China, its strategic partner, implying he could play China against the United States. His Ministers and coterie were even more strident with the China card and also on the nuclear proliferation issue. Mushaidul Hassan, a former minister for Information, went as far as to say that Dr. A.Q. Khan's nuclear weapons proliferation to Iran and other such states was a closed case, and India had a track record of proliferation. Bush was snubbed when neither President Musharraf nor Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz went to the airport to receive him, in contrast to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh receiving President Bush at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. The Pakistani establishment claimed that protocol had not been broken. Will the Pakistani acolytes in the U.S. policy-making establishment ignore the cursory message giving and China card welcome to their Commander-in-Chief? But strange are the ways of American policy makers who still view India as a cold war adversary.
When Bush read out the riot act to Musharraf, alarm bells rang in the neighborhood. Musharraf was told clearly that he cannot get sops from the USA and play with the al-Qaida/Taliban terrorists and host anti-India terrorist camps. The Bangladesh government, patronizing Islamic terrorists in conjunction with Pakistan's ISI and harboring Indian insurgents with impunity, is perturbed.
For India, the critical issue is China, and how China responds. China's immediate response has been of cautious concern. Beijing has been following the India-U.S. relations in all aspects closely. It has expressed opposition to new generation arms transfers to India, and explicitly warned Delhi against joining with Washington to encircle China militarily and strategically. The totality of the Bush visit to India and Pakistan has been viewed by Beijing as a challenge to a unipolar Asia with China as its only pole.
In this context, the India-U.S. nuclear deal is critical. The heavyweights in the U.S. Congress have not attacked the deal but want to see clearly how it impacts America's security and economics. Taking the latter, economics is clearly win-win. They must also understand that Washington's security concerns are strengthened. India is not a proliferator as some American Indo-phobia commentators would want all to believe. India has for long been a victim of Pakistan sponsored terrorism, something which President Bush urged President Musharraf to reign back. India, actually, has been a much better partner of the war against terrorism, providing American intelligence agencies with crucial inputs. If Washington genuinely desires India as a strategic partner, it cannot defang India's weapons program. India is neither Japan nor Germany. It has a different history and a different track record. It also has a different requirement.
Although the nuclear deal is touted as fixated on nuclear energy, the fact remains it focuses on India's nuclear weapons capability. The U.S. priority, starting from President Bill Clinton in concert with China, was to first cap India's nuclear weapons capability and then roll it back to zero. The current push from the U.S. establishment is to make things so costly for India that its military capacity has to be capped. Separation of India's civilian nuclear program from the military program will cost India at least $40 billion, if the time line 2014 is demanded. The new civilian sector will cost another $60 billion to be established. India just cannot afford it.
The negotiations between India and the IAEA are up in the air at the moment. There can be no inspection of India's fissile material stockpile or a cap on it. Inspection regime with the IAEA must be arrived at with a special protocol as China and other P-5 countries have with the campaign inspection clause. Otherwise, President George W. Bush's legacy tour will be blown apart, and India will be pushed to counter. The world will go back to square one. It is up to President Bush. He has to handcuff America's anti-India non-proliferation lobby.
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(Raman Bhaskar is an Indian analyst of security affairs and government adviser. He writes here in a personal capacity.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
