Sino-US issues may crash India's Washington party

To look back at the just concluded November 24 Indo-US summit, three Ps can best describe the four days of interactions in expensive and highly bureaucratic Washington DC.

These three Ps include oversized platitudes, highly promising attitudes and a new partying style that underlined Obama's way of entertaining guests.

To begin with the platitudes,Obama described Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a "wise man" known for "honesty and integrity" and said "I respect him and I trust him." Obama's body language was highly proper and respectful, topped by his now world-famous grin.

Not just that, he also described India as "indispensable", and a "rising and responsible power" and even called India and US "two nuclear powers."

In addition to their promise to work together in consolidating their strategic partnership, Obama's opening remarks to their post-summit joint press conference appeared promising. He said, "The US welcomes and encourages India's leadership role in helping the rise of a stable, peaceful and prosperous Asia."

To the surprise of many, he even talked of India and US "eliminating terrorist safe heaven and sanctuaries in India's neighborhood," interpreted as a reference to Pakistan.

Obama has been feared inIndia for his focus on arms control and disarmament issues and his Nobel Peace Prize was only expected to reinforce his idealistic visions.

But there was no mention offeared terms like "nuclear proliferation," let alone Kashmir or human rights.

Instead, it was the big-time partying that made the papers. Heralding a revolution of sorts, Obama organized a White House dinner for 320 guests that included Hollywood stars.

This required setting up special tents on the south lawns of the White House.

Great photo-ops! But what does it hold for Indo-US relations?

If anything, this was more to do with US domestic politics than with India. Obama chose to highlight India's democracy and that this was the first state visit that he had hosted.

However, critics slated all these platitudes, promises and partying as extremely future oriented, and worse, patronizing and it leaves little of substance to take away from this apparently widely covered summit.

Singh described the benefits in four Es, namely economy, energy, environment, and empowerment, which he said would be the core of the "next phase" of Indo-US relations.

For the present phase, however, the summit clearly failed to even keep the shine of much glamorized Indo-US nuclear deal.

No arrangements could be worked out on the issues of US fuel reprocessing in India or other technology transfers.

If anything, India's attempts to seek reassurances on China and Pakistan only seemed to push India back into the old "India-Pakistan" bracket which New Delhi has been trying to escape for last two decades.

Can one blame it on Beijing? The joint statement of the preceding week's Sino-US summit on November 16 had mentioned of that the "two sides are ready to strengthen communications, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace, stability and development in that region."

This seemed to have hijacked the agenda of the follow up Indo-US summit.

It reminded critics of the June 27 1998 Sino-US Joint Statement on South Asia where both committed to "promote reconciliation and the peaceful resolution of differences between India and Pakistan."

Beijing's continued enthusiasm for involvement in the issue does seem out of place as neither India nor Pakistan has ever sought any third party involvement in their bilateral disputes.

Starting from their Shimla Agreement of 1972, India and Pakistan have repeatedly affirmed their faith in using bilateral and peaceful means to resolve all their disputes.

While the older joint statement is understandable in the context of nuclear tests in India and Pakistan, India's stature and relations have clearly transformed since then.

At the core of this change, India has successfully shifted the hyphenation from "India-Pakistan" to "India-China" relations. Pakistan has moved from "India-Pakistan" to the "Af-Pak" theatre, which represents very different trajectories.

In the end, while some of these transformed trajectories did get recognition during the Indo-US summit, too much time was taken away by negative assurances and futuristic promises leaving little to consolidate their past gains and present leverages.

Source: Global Times, 29 November 2009

http://opinion.globaltimes.cn/foreign-view/2009-11/488304.html

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).