Ashwin Krushna Dwadashi, Kaliyug Varsha 5112
By Rajiv Dogra
Let us not get carried away by American sweet talk. Truth demands that we admit India is no more than a blip on the US’s radar. Nor does New Delhi count for more than Islamabad in Washington, DC. Yet, we crave for acceptance by the Americans and a pat on the back by the US Administration. That hardly does justice to our big power ambition
Before US President Barack Obama arrives in India, it is necessary to revisit some the earliest lessons that we may have learnt in our lives.
As children, many of us played cowboys and (Red) Indians. A large number among us preferred to be cowboys. It is a childhood fascination that we have been unable to cast off. Our inability to do so is a great pity, because we would have otherwise remembered that the cowboys have no place in their hearts for (Red) Indians.
In the frame of the India-US relationship this is a contextual example. Try as we might to wish otherwise, the history of the last 60 years is ample demonstration of the unfortunate reality that India can never hope to be the twinkle in American eyes.
Sure, the US admires us sometimes for our intellectual prowess, for the software wizardry of our youth and for our current economic achievements. There have undoubtedly been moments when some US Presidents like John F Kennedy, Mr Bill Clinton and Mr George W Bush made the extra effort to reach out to India. But they were transient blips on a radar coloured largely in the Pakistani hue.
As in the past, now too, Pakistan continues to overwhelm America’s security vision. In the present circumstance particularly, dominated as it is by the US desperation to get out of Afghanistan, the Obama Administration can only be expected to give at best a withering attention to India and its expectations. That measured shower of goodness would last till the visit is over, and to the extent it helps win large orders for the American defence industry and the civilian part of its nuclear industry.
His principal focus in the coming months is going to be his next term. For a man as ambitious as Mr Obama a single term presidency is akin to being a political footnote in history. And the one sure way he can make a rightful claim to re-election is if he can bring the boys back home with some dignity. To do that, he will be critically dependent on Pakistan. And Pakistan is conscious of its hold, that’s why it brazenly torched 80 trucks transporting Nato fuel supplies recently. This was not a mindless act by the Pakistani Army, but a calculated move to demonstrate to the US that the Army is the ultimate arbiter in Pakistan, even for Nato, and even for what happens eventually in Afghanistan.
Therein lies the rub; Pakistan is fully aware that Mr Obama cannot afford to mess with it because he is in a tight time trap. By mid-July 2011, the stakes would just be too high for him to afford a misstep in his re-election campaign. And that is the paradox; the uglier it gets in Afghanistan the longer he will have to stay there reducing in direct proportion his chances for re-election. It is precisely for this reason that Pakistan has him and the US by its ‘Shah-Rag’. It is just the way they call Kashmir a ‘Shah-Rag’ of its survival; because in the ultimate analysis it is the collective lust for Jammu & Kashmir that is holding Pakistan together as a nation.
This strange coincidence of two ‘Shah-Rags’ has brought into motion a curious diplomatic power play in the region. It started as the disastrous Sharm-el Sheikh agreement. A humiliating Foreign Ministers’ level meeting followed in Islamabad. Despite these setbacks, our anxiety to please others on Kashmir has not abated. Our willingness to accommodate, even to bend over, keeps us going down the slope one way or the other, in one form or the other.
There is for instance the recent hastily put together, and adversely commented upon, interlocutors team on Kashmir. One of its members declared immediately that talking to the separatists was her top priority — the logical question to such an ill-advised declaration is what about the rest of the population in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh?
But the larger point really is why must we be seen to be doing things at someone’s prodding? Why must moves of national importance be made prior to someone’s arrival?
Mature nations, especially those desirous of sitting at the Global High Table on equal terms with other Big Powers, do not act under others’ prodding. It is not just the independence of action that is important; but the perception as well that yes we are acting independently, and in our own best interests as judged by us. In the end we will do well to remember that the game between the cowboys and (Red) Indians was always gory and mostly one-sided; resulting ultimately in the dispossession of all the lands that once belonged to the (Red) Indians.
We Indians too risk being pushed around by an ambitious Mr Obama.
Mr Obama came into office with lofty expectations. People felt a new messiah had arrived; an answer not just to America’s woes, but as someone who could surely provide the healing magic to all the global problems. Mr Obama revelled in the glory; he encouraged it with catchy, albeit borrowed slogans like, ‘Yes, we can’. Throughout this wondrous period he did not discourage comparisons with the truly great Presidents of US like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt. It was as if nothing but the best could keep him company on the high pedestal that he had assigned himself.
In the beginning he seemed a truly class act; a voluble President who began to lead America in a great conversation on its future. But the direction he was nudging his nation towards, was radically new, his theories untested and his schemes kept sprouting doubtful warts.
As people are discovering now, Mr Obama is the most Left-leaning President in the history of the US. He seems determined to transform his country to his ideological agenda.
Outside the US, in the wider world, he has huge ambitions of advancing his ‘smart power’ agenda. In pushing his proposals, Mr Obama and his advisers take a distinctly elitist approach; it is from their ivory tower that they decide on the direction that America and the rest of the world must take.
Mr Obama has completed nearly two years in his job; it is enough time for people to form a definitive opinion about a leader. His elitist presidency is out of touch with its own people. The self-proclaimed transformational President is making America poorer, weaker, more indebted and significantly less free. And people’s verdict is far from favourable.
At home he is likely to lead his party into defeat in the mid-term elections, his approval ratings have already sunk from an all time high for a new President to a low 40s. Far from being one of the all time greats, the President he is often compared to now is Mr Jimmy Carter; only a better educated version of him.
Later history’s verdict on Mr Obama may well be that here was a soufflé that was unable to rise.
It is not just the domestic failures that plague his path; the world opinion is turning critical too. His desire to cut his losses and quit Afghanistan is being seen as a sign of weakness. People are also beginning to wonder if the biggest borrower of the world can remain its greatest power. The fact is that America today is not a pretty sight on the world stage.
Such a President is unlikely to deal us an even hand. Still we must spread the red mat of welcome for him, as we have done traditionally for our guests. But in doing so is it necessary for us to genuflect? After all those who stoop to please are pushovers; to be used and discarded at whim.
But even as we bow habitually, it will be good to recall that earliest lesson of our lives; because like the cowboy, Mr Obama has no place in his heart for us Indians.
Source: Pioneer
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