Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, July 19, 2005

U.S.-India summit has high stakes

NEW DELHI, India -- It is well known that President Bush would rather retire early than host dinners for visiting dignitaries. Tonight, he will make an exception when he officiates at a banquet for India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The gesture indicates the high priority Washington is giving New Delhi, said a senior American official who briefed reporters in the Indian capital on the visit. Some foreign policy analysts, such as Inder Malhotra, go so far as to compare the two-day Bush-Singh meeting this week to President Richard Nixon's 1972 breakthrough summit with China, the other Asian giant.

Underlying the growing proximity between the world's two largest democracies are changing geo-political realities. It is no coincidence that in the week before Singh's U.S. visit two events took place at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading Washington based think tank.

One was a discussion on "Rising Frictions in Sino-U.S. Relations." The second was the release of a report entitled "India As a New Global Power," written by Ashley Tellis, an Indian-born defense and nuclear weapons expert affiliated with the endowment. With the United States increasingly concerned that China might someday turn its rising economic and military power against U.S. interests, cozying up to India is seen as a potential counterbalance in Asia.

"[Singh's visit] has the potential to transform Indo-U.S. relations from one of mere formalities to one of an enduring partnership," said India's Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on the eve of Singh's departure.

After India gained independence from the British in 1947 and throughout the Cold War, Indo-U.S. relations veered from chilly to hostile. India leaned toward the Soviet Union, and the United States provided political, economic and military support to India's arch-rival, Pakistan.

Relations plunged to an all-time low in 1971 when Nixon sided with Pakistan in the war that created Bangladesh from what had been East Pakistan, at one point sending an aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal to discourage Indian involvement.

After the Cold War, the relationship grew more cordial -- until India exploded a nuclear weapon and declared itself a nuclear power in 1998, following soon after by Pakistan. Worried that this would spur the spread of nuclear weapons, the Clinton administration put off efforts to improve relations and imposed economic sanctions instead.

Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee launched new initiatives to improve relations, to which the Bush administration responded, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. India had suffered radical Islamist terrorist attacks for years and had every reason to help the United States on this front, especially in pressuring the Pakistan military to cut off support for extremist groups.

With China's economic and political power growing exponentially and with U.S.-India economic ties burgeoning, as well, the stage was set for a complete reordering of the U.S. India relationship, which is what Bush and Singh hope to accomplish this week.

In his report for the Carnegie Endowment, Tellis argued for upgrading the U.S. relationship with India and quoted an internal CIA assessment that characterized India as a critical "swing state" that in the future could be a major asset or hindrance for the United States. India, he emphasized, soon will be one of the world's five largest economies and could serve as a potential hedge against an expansionist China.

If the Indians are pleased at this turn of events, they do not always show it. There are still many obstacles in the way of a smooth, uncluttered relationship from their point of view.

The biggest one is continued U.S. support for Pakistan, a critical U.S. ally in the war against terrorism. Indian officials understand the relationship but still bristle at the $3 billion in aid the Bush administration is providing to Pakistan (over four years) and its recent decision to sell advanced F-16 fighters to a country with a questionable track record both in fighting terrorism and in protecting its nuclear weapons technology.

Nevertheless, public expectations in India run high that the Bush-Singh summit will help cement a stronger Indian role in world affairs and otherwise help the country advance.

For Singh, the stakes are high. Prior to his departure, the leftist parties who form an important part of his coalition government criticized him for selling out to what they see as a increasingly imperialist America. If he doesn't come back with anything concrete, such as significant U.S. support in developing India's nuclear power industry, Singh will suffer considerable political embarrassment at the expense of U.S.-India relations.

"So much hype has been built into this visit. If Americans don't convert intent into policy there will be a sense of deja vu and the momentum of a meaningful association between the two countries will flag," said Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank.

Also high on India's wish list is American support for its bid to join the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The Bush administration has expressed encouragement but not support.

The United States is considered likely to extend more cooperation on nuclear power. Before Sept. 11, talk of nuclear cooperation was taboo as the United States continued to hope that it might get India and Pakistan to give up their nuclear weapons programs. Sanctions against any transfer of nuclear technology were rigidly imposed.

But more recently, Bush and his secretary of state, Condeleezza Rice, have spoken in favor of an energy dialogue that includes civilian nuclear cooperation. This week, "all the elements of an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation are on the table," said the U.S. official who briefed reporters in New Delhi.

One possibility, said Chellaney, would be for the United States to supply nuclear fuel for the Tarapur power station located in the western state of Maharashtra that was built with U.S. assistance in the 1960s. But supplying the fuel would require Bush to waive U.S. anti-proliferation laws. A more acceptable alternative could be for the United States to lift its objections to the sale of fuel to India by other member countries of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

A slew of less contentious items remain on the India-U.S. agenda, including efforts to reduce tensions between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir, a substantial increase in bilateral trade, closer cooperation in research on agriculture and HIV/AIDS and the launching of Indo-U.S. CEO forums. (Ten leading Indian CEOs are accompanying Singh.) The two countries are even joining hands to help save the Royal Bengal tiger, and the announcement of a Bush return visit to India also is expected.

Over the past two months, high-ranking officials from both countries have been shuttling between New Delhi and Washington to work out in advance a mutually acceptable conclusion to this week's summit. But even if the results fall short of expectations, even critics agree that history is likely to see the first Bush-Singh summit as a defining moment in U.S.-India relations.

(Mannika Chopra is a New Delhi-based columnist for the Calcutta Telegraph and a former Heinz Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh. She can be reached at mannikachopra@yahoo.co.in)