A Chanakya in a Nehru jacket

John Kerry assumed charge as the US secretary of state, succeeding two outstanding women in office for eight years. Humbled, he said, he had “big heels to fill”. A new incumbent means a change of style and emphasis despite the President being the same.

Answering questions, Mr Kerry softened the approach to China by, as some said, a re-balancing of the earlier rebalancing, i.e. President Barack Obama’s Asian Pivot. That neither the Indian nor the Pakistani foreign minister was on Mr Kerry’s first to-call list only indicates new US priorities.
He spoke with the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well as the foreign ministers of Japan, Korea and Turkey. West Asian peace, the East China Sea and Syria loom as crises points.
India-US relations have blossomed over two decades, with a noticeable impetus after the 9/11 attack. Condoleezza Rice, in her memoir No Higher Honour, recalls that a newly elected President Bush “sought a broad, deep relationship with India, which he saw as a natural fit for US strategic interests”. The nuclear deal, she adds, was the “centrepiece of our effort to build a fundamentally different relationship”. Having demitted office, President Bush, in Delhi for a lecture, called it “Your passport to the world.” The deal began the dismantling of a complex web of technology restraint regimes built after India’s 1974 nuclear test. India was now free to access dual-use, cutting-edge technologies denied earlier.
After initial fear that President Obama may ideologically approach the nuclear issue and re-calibrate the approach to the AfPak region, his administration resumed where his predecessor had left India-US relations. In fact, during his 2010 Delhi visit, he took the next crucial step by announcing support to India’s demand for permanent membership of the UN Security Council. In 2011, the killing of Osama bin Laden and 27 Pakistani soldiers in a fire-fight across the Durand Line and the unwillingness of the US to reveal their endgame to Pakistan were all reassuring signals to India. It appeared that Pakistani duplicity in posing as a victim of terror while perpetrating terror itself had been realised by the US. However, in 2012, the US was distracted by the presidential election, the eurozone crisis etc. Obama’s second term begins with new uncertainties for India-US relations.
The big spoiler can be the endgame in Afghanistan. British Prime Minster David Cameron playing host to the Presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan cannot be without US knowledge and approval. The endgame is making all neighbours of Afghanistan nervous. Indian options have been slowly degraded by the US, either by sequestering India-Iran relations or excluding India from serious security cooperation with Afghanistan. India and the US need to frankly discuss the fears and options that either may have. The foreign-minister-level strategic dialogue, set up in 2010, needs early convening.
Regarding other political issues, the US would consider India’s role during its two years on the UN Security Council as obstructive. The US concern is over the Israel-Palestinian issue, Syria and Iran. Does this nation of a billion, and a huge Muslim population, have any meaningful advice to tender? Shivshankar Menon, the national security adviser at the Munich Security Conference on February 1-3, adopted semantic solidarity with China, which consistently undercuts Indian interests in South Asia, over Western definition of the two nations as emerging or re-emerging. As he spoke, China was assuming control of Pakistan’s Gwadar port. The NSA seems to advocate equidistance from both the US and China, to perhaps avoid being drawn into their rivalry. He, like another Menon a half century ago, may be misreading Chinese aggressiveness fed by mounting nationalism, military build-up and an external environment not conducive to their export-driven economy. While it is unnecessary to bait China, appeasing it through gentle humouring was illogical. India deficiencies in comprehensive national power, a sum of economic and defence capabilities, cannot be met without US help. India-US relations need consolidation by constant focus on core convergences and trade-offs. Take three issues: outsourcing friction will diminish as labour arbitrage diminishes, sending jobs back to the US; nuclear liability rules need tweaking; and defence sales need to skirt the three agreements hurdle, i.e. End Use, Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) etc. The politicians have cleared the path, but can the bureaucracies and vested interests be managed?
Of course, China and India have converging views on the World Bank/IMF reform, climate change or the G8 expansion to G20. However, to extrapolate and consider China as a benevolent power is self-deception. In her book’s epilogue Ms Rice asks, “Is America out of steam, confidence, and optimism?” Post 9/11, she answers, US interests and values are “linked”. President Obama endorsed that in his first term. Will he stray from it in his second? As US pivots away from India’s west to the Indo-Pacific region, China is beginning to fill the vacuum, unmindful of the nature of the governments or their radical dogmas. India cannot remain passive and has choices to make which will determine its place in the world over this century.
India erred in the last century, persisting with non-aligned and socialistic posturing long after China pragmatically exchanged its ideological chains for reform under Deng Xiaoping from 1980s, when the Chinese economy was less than double India’s. It would again wrongly assume today that the arc of history bends towards China, Brazil and Russia as its core values of religious tolerance, social freedoms and elective governance tilt it towards the US and its allies. If Deng Xiaoping clothed pragmatism as socialism with Chinese characteristics, why cannot India have capitalism with Gandhian traits or, in foreign policy, Chanakya in a Nehru jacket?

The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry