Geopolitical breakthrough

Bush’s India N-deal is as historic as Nixon’s move on China ties was

INDIAN analysts have credited George W. Bush as the US president who has done the most in improving relations with India. In their view, he as president de-hyphenated US ties with India from Pakistan. If tangible proof of this was not available till recently, it was, overwhelmingly, on Saturday in Vienna.
With the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the worldwide body that regulates the sale of nuclear fuel and technology, unconditionally allowing non-NPT signatory India a one-off waiver for the Indo-US nuclear deal, New Delhi, finally, would not any more be bracketed with Pakistan on the issue of nuclear parity. The irony of the moment is that this comes when the West is wringing its hands over Pakistan’s future and the security of its nuclear weapons.
From the day India conducted the first atomic test in 1974, the country has been treated as nuclear pariah in a no-man’s land – neither a weapon-state nor non-weapon state. Technology denial was the order of the day. ‘Give up your weapons and take the technology for the atomic power programme,’ that was the mantra of the N-apartheid. The waiver allows India to have its cake and eat it too. It gets to keep its weapons and also the best technology to boost its power generation programme. Nothing can be sweeter.
The proof of the pudding lies in the eating. Washington’s heavy hand won the day for India in Vienna and how. New Delhi’s victory followed “intense US pressure at the highest level” – a euphemism for President Bush – which involved overnight phone calls to presidents and prime ministers of holdout countries.
The international community now fully recognises India as a rising power and its position in the geopolitical sphere of the 21st century. It was that what finally clinched the waiver. Otherwise, the chances of global rules being changed for an NPT-holdout country were next to zero. It should also be noted that India’s credentials in the non-proliferation sphere have been spotless, which is something China or Pakistan or even Switzerland, one of the nay-sayers, can claim.
The Bush team was the first to recognise India’s strategic importance. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Condeleezza Rice indicated that a future Bush administration would take a new approach to India.
“India is not a great power yet, but it has the potential to emerge as one,” she wrote in the Foreign Affairs magazine. She was spot on when she said: “India is an element in China’s calculation, and it should be in America’s, too.”
Her visit to India in 2003 saw the beginning of a change in relations. Though it was not fully apparent at that time, she did hint at it with bland expressions, such as “a new relationship” with “great potential”.
Most Indians were sceptical. Uncle Sam was always viewed with suspicion in the sub-continent and not without reason. President Richard M. Nixon’s pro-Pakistan stand during the Bangladesh war was well known. And in the big bad world, the only friend the country had was the erstwhile Soviet Union and its successor, Russia.
Bush kept his word. Now only the US Congress stands between India and the deal. The chances of it sailing through Congress are quite high in view of the strong bipartisan support for India.
Moreover, General Electric, the world’s biggest maker of energy-generation equipment and one of the potential beneficiaries of the deal, has said that it may lose contracts in India to French, Russian and Japanese companies if the US Congress doesn’t ratify the nuclear deal soon after the agreement wins approval from the NSG. Therefore, if the US Congress delays the approval, the gains from the waiver are going to accrue to France’s Areva SA, Russia’s Rosatom Corporation and Japan’s Toshiba Corporation, who will get a head start.
It was Manmohan Singh who opened hermetically closed India to the global economy in the face of the trenchant criticisms from the left, right and the centre. Now he has again shown the way in reshaping India’s geopolitical standing. In his maiden speech to the parliament as finance minister, Singh quoted Victor Hugo: “No power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come.” Maybe it is time the prime minister rephrased the speech: ‘No one can stop a country whose time has come.’
Ironically, President Bush is seen around the world by many people as a leader with a reverse Midas touch – whatever he touched turned into dust. But he struck gold for India, by providing the long-sought geopolitical breakthrough. Since India and the US strongly believe in democracy, the freedom and liberty of man, relations between the two can only get better.
That’s a long way from the day Nixon referred to former prime minister Indira Gandhi in a private conversation as “that bitch” during the Bangladesh war. Bush’s offer of the nuclear deal is as historic an event as Nixon’s decision to open relations with China. History will record that. Future generations of Indians will thank him.

This article was published in Oman Tribune