India-US ties will remain exceptional, thanks to Obama visit

The Obama visit to New Delhi is taking India-US ties to a transformative inflection point. Issues that had been bottled up for the past five years because of the pusillanimity of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government have been resolved, or are on their way to resolution. More importantly, India has answered the question that the US has been asking us for all these years: You say you have a strategic partnership with us, but just what does that imply? Far from convergence, we seem to have diverse views on global issues like Iran, Ukraine, and Afghanistan-Pakistan.

Friendship

The answer has come through two key documents — the "US-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific" and the Indian Ocean Region" which spells out India decision to stand four-square with Japan, Australia and the US in their face off with China, and the “India-US Delhi Declaration of Friendship,” which sums up the Joint Statement’s points on promoting ties between the two countries.

Looked at from any angle, the relations shaping up between the US and India are exceptional, and do not follow the norm of the close relations that the US has with its allies like Japan, Germany, UK, Australia and others. The bilateral documents signed during the Obama visit recognise that the two will continue to pursue their respective national interests, but it also commits them to work out convergences wherever they can, and provides the instruments to effect this, such as the strategic and commercial dialogue, strategic joint ventures, counterterrorism cooperation, hotlines and regular summits between the PM and the US President and hotlines between their respective national security advisers.

Inevitably, there are voices, worrying that India will lose its strategic autonomy. Many of these voices are really ghosts of the past. They fly against the facts of history. If India hewed its own path in the 1950s when it was far poorer and weaker, it is highly unlikely that it will become an "American satellite" in the 2000s, when it is a nuclear weapons state and the world’s third largest economy in purchasing power parity terms.

There is also the structural issue. Countries that are large tend to have complex sets of interests and have rarely participated in military alliance systems. Neither Brazil nor Indonesia or India did so through the Cold War and neither do they look likely to do so in the future.

Exceptionalism

The main reason as to why the relationship will be special is that both the United States and India have a strong sense of exceptionalism. Historically, the US, separated from the old world by two oceans, has always had this sense of “manifest destiny” and of its special role in world history. India, as much a civilisation as a country, gave every person a vote, even before the US did, insisted that democracy and poverty are not incompatible, and stayed out of the power blocs through the Cold War.

There is, of course, a substantive issue here. All the principal United States military-to-military ties involving arms or technology transfer, are with its formal military allies of the NATO, or Japan, South Korea and Australia. These ties are governed by history and treaty. In these relationships, the US is a net security provider.

But this is not the kind of relationship that India has sought with the US, except for a brief and embarrassing period in 1962. The much stronger, nuclear armed and confident India of today is certainly not open looking for this kind of a relationship with the US. The world of today is too integrated to permit the luxury of opposing military alliances. What India and the US are working towards is “strategic coordination” which would enable the two along with a clutch of like-minded countries to promote a world order which is based on playing by the rules whether it is in safeguarding maritime security, ensuring the freedom of navigation and overflight, or the peaceful settlement of disputes, or in upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Future

Whatever be the calculation of what the Americans will gain, we need to look hard at the advantage to ourselves. The US is the world’s greatest power and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The US government may not have investible funds, but its policies and attitude can shape the investment environment as Russia is realising to its cost. In terms of security, too, the US friendship is useful, especially since our own military is hopelessly outdated and in dire need of reform and restructuring.

The US is not unaware of this and is quite ready to pitch in because it believes that a strong India does not threaten its interests and that the convergences between India and the US are fundamental. An example, perhaps, could be given of Iran. For the past decade India and the US have often been on opposite sides on dealing with Tehran. However, the Obama administration has changed tack and is reaching out to Iran on the basis that India agrees with — that Iran should uphold its commitment to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty not to make nuclear weapons. Likewise despite past differences, there are convergences in the handling of Afghanistan and dealing with Pakistan.

At the bottom of it all, our approach must be based on hardheaded calculation and realism. India needs to raise its “comprehensive national power” and strengthen its strategic autonomy. To this end, we should take advantage of the American need of a substantial linchpin for their Asian pivot to retain its own global primacy.