Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
subcontinent. For most of the past half century, Washington policymakers linked
India and Pakistan as two more or less equals. Now that equation is seldom
made. Compared with the past, there exists today, in both the United States and
India, a far larger number of individuals and interests with a clear-cut stake in a
flourishing bilateral relationship.
Yet, for all the celebratory talk about a new partnership between Washington
and New Delhi, much hard work remains to be done before this relationship
meets the expectations of its most enthusiastic proponents. A note of caution
would appear in order in the face of the uncritical enthusiasm that passes for
strategic analysis in some circles, American and Indian, at the moment. Certainly
we should applaud the healthy new tone to Indo-American relations that recent
years have fostered. But unrestrained giddiness about 'paradigm shifts' or a
strategic rapprochement between India and the United States is premature.
To the contrary, substantive differences over the nature and goals of Indo-
American partnership are likely to complicate future relations between the
world's two largest democracies. A short list of issues where Washington and
New Delhi will find it difficult to collaborate would include Pakistan, China,
Iran, Iraq, the World Trade Organization, and the future of the global
nonproliferation regime. India will continue to prefer a multipolar world order,
whereas the Bush administration, even more than Clinton's, is likely to assert US
dominance and insist on Washington's right to act unilaterally.
Nor is New Delhi going to be satisfied with what it will inevitably interpret as
an American failure to accord India its due. The Bush administration is not likely
to give India the free hand in South Asia it desires, or openly acknowledge
Indian hegemony in the region. It will not grant New Delhi the formal, legal
status of a nuclear weapons state, even if it accepts the
de facto
existence of an
Indian nuclear arsenal.
It will oppose Indian actions, such as missile development and deployment,
that Washington sees as a threat to the stability of the subcontinent, even as it
accepts few limitations on its own right to act as its security needs dictate. It will
not support India's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security
Council, especially if New Delhi demands admittance on the same terms as the
original five members—that is, with a veto. And it will continue to lavish far
more attention and energy on China than on India. This of course will reflect the
troubled nature of the Sino-American relationship. But it will also elbow India
off the personal radar screens of US officials and feed anxieties in New Delhi
that India is being slighted, ignored, or taken for granted.
To raise doubts about the depth of current relations is not to decry the very
real and significant changes in the tenor of the relationship in recent years. Nor is
it to challenge the value attributed to a vigorous Indo-American partnership by
influential people in each of the two countries. It is merely to suggest that for all
the gains that have occurred, US-India ties will require constant attention lest the
