From the Indian perspective, the best one can say for Chuck Hagel, a former US senator who after a bruising Senate battle has just been confirmed as his country’s defence secretary, is that his comments on India’s role in Afghanistan are laughably inaccurate and uninformed. They are also singularly unfortunate as they have the potential to hurt India-US ties.
In a 2011 speech at a university, Mr Hagel had accused this country of using Afghanistan as “a second front” against Pakistan, and saying that India had “financed problems for Pakistan on that (Afghan) side of the border”. While he was not senator at the time, these observations point to the mental and political software he brings to his office, not to say his innocence of vital regional matters in South Asia that are adversely impacted by Pakistan’s hardly hidden support to extremism that translates into terrorism.
Seen in the backdrop of the appointment of Senator John Kerry — whose traditionally benevolent outlook toward the Pakistan military is touching — as the new US secretary of state, Mr Hagel’s observations will unquestionably lead to doubts as regards the orientation of the second Obama administration towards India unless matters are officially clarified.
So far, New Delhi’s response to revelations of Mr Hagel’s speech at the university in Oklahoma is to offer no response. The mission in Washington has put out some namby-pamby stuff about India’s constructive role in the re-building of Afghanistan alongside America. This will hardly do.