State visits are often like grand weddings. They generate much excitement and place huge and complex demands on all participants. But as Kabir once said, after the departure of the bride and bridegroom the ‘Baraat’ becomes lifeless. In fact every one gets back to the realities of the daily humdrum. While the Obama visit was undoubtedly important and he said many useful things, translating words into action is far more difficult.
Indians know the realities of South Asian geopolitics even if we sometime forget the constraints that geography puts on us. Simply restating that ‘safe havens for terrorist organisations are unacceptable’ would not get us anywhere. For that to work both India and the US have to severely restrict the political space that the sponsors enjoy. The US is deeply involved in Afghanistan for the long haul and despite best efforts it is not easy for it extricate itself in a hurry. Obama thus has to keep many unsavoury people happy.
Now that the G-20 has become a more active and influential grouping in the much-globalised world, one wonders if membership of the UN Security Council with, but most probably, without a veto would add any real clout to a new member. As we have seen in the past, powerful countries will not wait for the nod from UNSC to take action if that is the only way they can secure their interests.
Although both Iran and Burma were mentioned, every one again knows the limits to which any country can be coerced into accepting global norms. Even after the international investigation found North Korea’s involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, no action has been taken against the alleged culprit simply because it has the backing of a powerful neighbour. That the country concerned is also a permanent member is incidental.
The recent Sino-Japanese spat over the Senkaku islands also demonstrated the limits of Japanese and indeed American power. Now that China has clearly included the ‘Spratlys Islands’ as its ‘core interests’ it is likely that the smaller neighbours will have to sooner or later fall in line.
Outsourcing was mentioned to please his domestic audience. Surely, Obama knows full well that when a country decides to outsource its less glamorous and low-tech manufacturing to other countries such as the four Asian Tigers and later the People’s Republic of China (PRC) its economy becomes dependent on imports of cheap goods with job losses. In a similar way outsourcing services too becomes tempting because of the lower costs. This is elementary even if experts use a lot of complex jargon to say the same thing. So long as India provides efficient and reliable services at low cost, the developed world will need it. India too needs the US for its hi-tech support. This, however, need not be restricted to only the defence sector. There are many other areas such as agriculture, renewable energy, clean coal, new fuels, education, space and a whole host of doable collaboration projects that would be easier to implement. Problems with LSA and CISMOA and nuclear liability bills can then be resolved more amicably. Some analysts have questioned the need for these agreements as they see no situation in which Indian armed forces would fight alongside their American counterparts and for disaster relief operations one does not need much ‘interoperability’. The US perhaps wants to obliquely tell India that it would in the not too distant future shoulder some very major responsibilities and for that a quasi-alliance type of relationship would be necessary. How India reacts to this would be interesting.
Strengthening people to people contact by sending ever more students to the US and in turn getting Americans to work in India would be one of the priority areas and that would also make joint ventures easier. It would also be interesting to watch how India and the US handle the tricky questions of up to 50 per cent offsets in the huge defence deals that are said to be in the pipeline. Would India dilute its 26 per cent cap in defence industry? Would the US defence majors invest in India with less than 50 per cent control? These are all moot points and would take time to resolve but that should not put brakes on essential and urgent indigenisation of our defence industry.
In the hullabaloo of the visit the Naxal and Bodo killings have received little attention but internal security and prevention of terrorist infiltration are bread & butter activities to which the decision makers must now return because when all is said and done India has to fight these battles on her own.
