Obama's India visit: Lessons for Bangladesh
M. Shahidul Islam
Those who had expected to witness the grand finale of an Indo-US
ganging up against China during President Barack Obama's just
concluded Delhi visit are bound to be frustrated by the visit's
outcome. Not only the incisive US President carried a message of hope
for the region, his balancing act between antagonistic regional powers
was superbly delivered, leaving much for countries like Bangladesh to
learn from.
Kashmir dispute
In a bold and visionary move to diffuse the simmering Indo-Pak
tension that stands at the centre of the increased Chinese strategic
entanglements in South Asia, President Obama confessed that the US
cannot provide a solution to the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir,
but can play 'any role' if the two countries so desire.
Reiterating that the Kashmir row is a 'long-standing dispute
between India and Pakistan', Obama said it was in the interest of both
New Delhi and Islamabad to reduce tensions between them.
In response, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed Obama's
concerns over Kashmir in the most subtle manner. "While India was not
scared of discussing the "K-word (Kashmir)", it could not be expected
to hold talks so long as Pakistan did not move away from
terror-induced coercion to dismantle the terror machine operating from
its soil," Singh maintained.
Pleasing overtures
Despite that, the major highlights of the visit indicated how much
of priority President Obama had attached to forging a lasting tie with
India. In pleasing overtures endorsing the Indian bid for permanent
membership at the UNSC, the US President said, "I can say today, in
years ahead, I look forward to a reformed UN Security Council that
includes India as a permanent member."
The US President also assuaged his hosts by reminding the Pakistani
leadership that, "We will continue to insist with Pakistan's leaders
that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable and
that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice."
Although the US President reassured Delhi that the US will not
'merely cheer India's rise from the sidelines but will stand
shoulder-to-shoulder with it, he also cautioned Delhi about its
deserved role in regional politics. Throwing flaks on what seems to
Washington India's double standard vis a vis Myanmar, the US President
exhorted Delhi to stand up on issues like democracy and human rights
in Myanmar.
Pakistani reactions
Expectedly, Pakistan reacted to the US President's support for
Delhi's bid for Permanent membership at the UNSC with caustic and
rebuttal-like gestures. India's 'expansionist designs' were
contradictory to the charter of the Security Council, declared
Pakistan on November 9, in response to the US stand on India's
Security Council membership bid. Hours later, leaders of the
Pakistani-administered Kashmir joined the chorus to voice similar
anti-Indian opposition.
Meanwhile, a foreign office spokesperson in Islamabad said,
"Pakistan has taken notice of the (US) president's statement because
the stance of Pakistan regarding reforms in UNSC is based on
principles." The official added, "The expansionist designs of India
are contradictory to the charter of Security Council and India's
aggression towards neighbouring countries, and the violation of UN
resolutions on Kashmir are a proof of the apprehensions of Pakistan."
The official cautioned, "The US should focus on the morals instead of
backing power politics in the region."
These hyperbolic diplomatic and geopolitical innuendos helped
little to deflect Obama's eye ball from what he wanted to achieve in
Delhi in the first place. Dogged by severe economic crisis at home,
the US President and his mammoth entourage inked, on the margins of
the president's trip, trade transactions exceeding $14.9 billion in
total, with $9.5 billion in US export content, which would support an
estimated 53,670 US jobs at a time when the US unemployment rate is
almost 10 percent.
Already, the Indo-US economic collaborations have had phenomenal
successes since Delhi decided to support Washington following
terrorist attacks in the USA in 2001, and, by 2008, U.S. exports of
agricultural products to India totalled $489 million. Leading the pack
was tree nuts ($187 million), cotton ($103 million), and pulses ($63
million), while U.S. imports of agricultural products from India
totalled $1.6 billion; India becoming the US's 16th largest supplier
of agricultural products.
Experts believe two-way trade will overshoot the $50 billion mark
by the end of the current fiscal, with investments moving in both
directions. Prior to the visit, India's Ambassador to the US, Meera
Shankar, said Indian Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was growing so
fast in US markets that "Indian companies have created 65,000 jobs in
the USA, both in terms of green field projects and by means of mergers
and acquisitions."
Lately, Indian investment in the USA became the second largest,
with its share increasing from 5.7 percent in 2009 to 6.5 percent in
2010. Informational Technology, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing
sectors accounted for about 60 percent of the deals taking place in
2008-2009. Cumulatively, over the last decade, investment capital flow
from India to the USA grew at an annualized rate of 53 percent,
reaching an estimated $4.4 billion in 2009.
Other collaborations
According to a White House source, Prime Minister Singh and
President Obama agreed to take mutual steps to implement a four-part
export control reform program that will encompass US support for
India's membership in the multilateral export control regimes, remove
India's defence and space-related entities from the US "Entity List,"
activate export licensing policy realignment and boost export control
cooperation.
Other collaborative arrangements include, according to US
officials: (1) development, testing, and replication of transformative
technologies to extend food security in India as part of an "Evergreen
Revolution", (2) Counterterrorism Cooperation, (3) Civil Space
Cooperation, (4) Clean Energy and Climate Change, (5) Civil space
collaboration; including space exploration, earth observation, and
scientific education, (6) Cyber security and defence cooperation, etc.
Strategic tangles
If there is anything controversial, it was the signing of a
memorandum of understanding, according to Indian officials, or an
outright pact, according to Pakistani officials, to establish with the
US help what will be known as the India's Global Centre for Nuclear
Energy Partnership. This is the move that had made Islamabad too
upset, perhaps Beijing too, according to diplomatic sources.
Pakistan is upset because not only the US President expressed his
unwillingness to get involved in the long-standing dispute over Jammu
and Kashmir, the intimate US-India civil nuclear partnership—and the
symbolism of Obama starting his visit at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai which
is the site of the 2008 terror attack that has been blamed on
Pakistani militants—seemed too partisan for a US President who should
have treated both India and Pakistan as allies of similar import.
Many Pakistani analysts believe, despite the US having announced
recently a $2 billion aid package for the Pakistani army and the
signing off a staggering $7.5 billion civilian aid deal in 2009,
Washington's partnership with Islamabad remains highly questionable.
Pakistan also failed to decode what Mr. Singh and Mr. Obama meant by
agreeing to expand cooperation on strategic issues facing the US and
India and 'broadening strategic collaborations in all fronts.'
That may be the reason why Islamabad's security and intelligence
hubs are abuzz with rumours that the signing on November 9 of a 'pact'
to establish a Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership in the
northern Indian state of Haryana, too close to Pakistan, is designed
as an eves dropping outpost against Pakistan. Though little is known
about the pact as yet, one source said the deal was inked by India's
Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, Srikumar Banerjee, and
U.S. Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer.
China factor
The most fascinating aspect of the US President's India visit was
the conspicuous absence in the speeches and the joint communiqué of
both the leaders of any derogatory reference to China, the perceptual
nemesis they both wish to circumscribe and check mate jointly in a
broader Great Game that has been in the making for years now.
This is perhaps due to the acute awareness of the ground realities
by both the leaders. Prime Minister Singh is too mature to get
provoked against Beijing while President Obama's grasp of global
affairs is of higher merit.
Despite phenomenal improvement in US-India relations, US-China
relations have more depths; the US posting a trade figure of almost
$50 billion with China in 2009 while China fetching $298 billion from
its trade with the USA. The US has also invested more than $60 billion
in about 55,000 projects in China, mostly in outsourcing ventures,
while the corresponding figures in India are as yet negligible.
China's financial stake in the USA is another major factor. The
only economy with substantial liquid cash in hand at this precarious
economic time, Beijing's financial stake in the USA, as of early 2010,
was over $2 trillion, or the equivalent of nearly 15 percent of U.S.
public debt. Beijing's central stature lies in the fact that, the more
the trade surplus it accumulates from increased exports, the more it
invests abroad; China's currency rules not allowing foreign reserves
to be used domestically.
That allows the USA, India, as well as Bangladesh and other
economies to expect more Chinese investment, the current Chinese
reserve of nearly $3.5 trillion. If President Obama and Prime Minister
Singh understand that reality, so shall our leaders.
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