Modi’s costly embrace

In its euphoria, the Indian media highlighted the ‘breakthrough’ solution reached on the thorny issue of India’s nuclear liability law as the greatest outcome of Barack Obama’s visit to New Delhi. This, many papers said, would help operationalise the US-India civilian nuclear cooperation deal six years after it was finalised, and give practical shape to what Narendra Modi terms the “cornerstone” of the India-US “strategic partnership”.
The media got it wrong. There was no ‘breakthrough’. The Obama visit’s true significance lies overwhelmingly in the “Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region” document, and secondarily, in military cooperation agreements.
The ‘Strategic Vision’ agreement accords India prominence in a huge area stretching “from Africa to East Asia”, and involves it in “safeguarding maritime security and … navigation and overflight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea”. It commits India and the US to “promote the shared values that have made our countries great” (read, democracy, which is absent in China). It also chides China for provoking tensions in the South China Sea, by calling on all parties “to avoid the threat or use of force…”
This is the first time that India has agreed to being drawn into a close long-term military relationship in a swathe extending from the Gulf of Aden to the Malacca Straits. The document “welcomes” India’s proposed entry into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, dominated by the US and Japan. India would help counter China’s New Silk Road partnership.
The idea underlying both moves is to recruit India into a partnership with the US to contain China’s military and economic power in what pro-US enthusiasts term the “Indo-Pacific”, as part of the US “pivot” to Asia. When this was first proposed in 2012 in a diluted form, India resisted it under former prime minister Manmohan Singh.
This is not because India then adhered to non-alignment. That was abandoned long ago – soon after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It’s because there was at least a weak consensus among New Delhi’s policymakers that India won’t sign up as a permanent ally of anyone even while maintaining friendly relations with a range of countries.
The consensus eroded, especially with the signing of the US-India defence cooperation agreement and the civilian nuclear deal in 2005. To win that deal, India twice voted – under “coercion”, as a US diplomat publicly said – against Iran’s nuclear programme, undermining its own interest in the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. To please US business lobbies, India has from time to time compromised its own people’s interests – e.g. by loosening price controls on essential medicines before Modi’s US visit last September.
Now, that consensus has been buried. Modi has completed what Singh set out to do, but couldn’t: in his first term, because he was constrained by the Left; and in his second term, because he was seen to be far too weak.
Modi faces no such constraints and is naturally inclined towards the US – in keeping with his long-term affiliation to the RSS-Jana Sangh-BJP, America’s cold-war allies; his strongly pro-business bias; and not least, his intimate links with the non-resident Indian community in the US, of which Gujaratis are the largest (and most conservative) group.
Obama didn’t have to press Modi hard to adopt a stand on countering China. Obama brought a long list of issues to discuss, but the bilateral talks were dominated by China for the first 45 minutes, thanks to Modi. To the Americans’ pleasant surprise, he accepted US language on the China issue without negotiation, something uncharacteristic of Indian leaders.
It’s hard to say if Modi’s China position stems from visceral antipathy (going back to the 1962 war), or resentment against reported Chinese incursion into Ladakh during President Xi Jin-Ping’s visit in September, or more generally, from recent Chinese moves in Sri Lanka, which India considers as its backyard.
Yet the fact is, Modi has strategically embraced the US. This is fraught with three major risks. First, the US isn’t just another country; it’s a superpower that has made the world a more dangerous place. Wherever the US has recently intervened, it has left a mess worse than earlier dictators did, as in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
This has also served to strengthen the perverse and power-crazed politics fuelling the brutal violence of the Muslim Right and jihadi movements like the Taliban and Islamic State, which must be condemned unequivocally.
The US is the principal author of ‘Washington Consensus’ policies which have visited economic devastation the world over, and are undermining the working people’s greatest social gains. Strategically allying with the US means courting opprobrium and hatred, besides accepting an unequal, subordinate relationship. The US doesn’t have equal relations even with its closest allies.
Second, China has reacted negatively to the Obama-Modi bonhomie. It would be counterproductive for India to enter into a hostile relationship with China – when negotiated solutions are eminently viable. If India can have trade and economic cooperation agreements with China that deliver, there is no reason why it can’t have a strategic crisis-resolution understanding.
More than 50 years after the China war – fought primarily because India refused to negotiate its colonially inherited borders – India is close to discussing the very same ‘package deal’ that China proposed long ago.
Third, by antagonising Beijing, India would only facilitate a de-facto understanding between China, Pakistan and Russia: the last two have recently developed significant military relations, and China is already Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend’. This cannot be good for the health of India’s own neighbourhood. Nor can muscle-flexing against regimes in Kathmandu and Colombo which legitimately want improved relations with Beijing.
Obama’s visit produced a plethora of resolutions and deals. The defence framework agreement was renewed for 10 years, and a Defence Technology and Trade Initiative launched to help India build an aircraft carrier and other weapons systems. There was an agreement on energy-related loans, but none on climate issues. Some of these ‘framework’ agreements have to be fleshed out.
The much-touted nuclear liability deal reinterprets Sec 17 of India’s 2010 liability law to indemnify US reactor vendors from the consequences of accidents caused by design defects. The government proposes an insurance pool with public funds so that potential American liability can be redirected back to Indian taxpayers. This is grossly unfair. And yet, it seems unlikely that US nuclear corporations will sell reactors to India.
The US has no attractive reactors to offer: Westinghouse’s AP-1000, and General Electric’s new boiling water reactor are both untested. According to independent estimates, the cost of electricity from them may exceed Rs15 per unit – three times higher than from competing power sources.
So what is the net result of Obama’s visit? Modi hugged Obama and addressed him by his first name (an unreciprocated gesture) as many as 19 times. Modi has certainly gained legitimacy from a country that refused him a visa for more than a decade. At the same time, US strategic interests have been advanced, but India’s sovereignty stands diminished.
Yet, just before he left Delhi, Obama – probably under pressure of human-rights activists – rightly told a student audience that India cannot succeed without religious freedom, plurality and tolerance. That’s the visit’s sole positive outcome.
The writer, a former newspaper editor,is a researcher and rights activistbased in Delhi.
Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in