Together at last

Jul 19th 2005
From The Economist print edition

America adds substance to its professions of friendship for India

FOR months, American officials have been insisting, as one put it, that “there is no higher priority” for George Bush’s second term in office than “expanding and broadening our relationship with India”. If that could be achieved by pomp and ceremony, the visit this week to Washington, DC, of Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, would have done the trick. He was showered with honours, including a 19-gun salute and the chance to make a speech to Congress. The president even stayed up late to entertain him to a White House banquet, only the fifth he has thrown in more than four years.

America’s professions of friendship have of late started to ring rather hollow. It has remained committed to its strong alliance with India’s nuclear-powered neighbour and rival, Pakistan. It has refused to endorse India’s chief foreign-policy goal, a permanent seat on an expanded United Nations Security Council. It opposes India’s cherished project to pipe gas from Iran across Pakistan. And it has withheld co-operation in military and nuclear technology because India tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and has never signed up to the international non-proliferation regime.

Of these four areas of contention, Mr Singh’s visit marked a breakthrough only on the last. But this one matters so much that it has transformed the relationship. America has agreed to help India acquire “the same benefits and advantages” as other states with nuclear weapons. India is to be granted “full civil nuclear energy co-operation”—such as fuel supplies and the transfer of technology.

This is hugely important for India. One of the biggest constraints on the continuing success of its fast-growing economy is an electricity shortage. Nuclear energy, which at present accounts for only about 3% of total generation, is, in many eyes, an attractive alternative to coal and expensive imported oil and gas.

The American move is also a great symbolic victory. For decades India has faced sanctions because of its nuclear-weapons programme. Now, America is, in effect, offering to help it to become a respectable bomb-wielding citizen. In return, to the consternation of critics at home, India has promised to adopt the same responsibilities as other nuclear powers, including separating its civilian nuclear facilities from military ones, opening the former to international inspection and maintaining its moratorium on nuclear testing.

For more upbeat Indian analysts, the nuclear deal is proof that the country has achieved “dehyphenation”—a decoupling of its relations with America from the sometimes vicious America-India-Pakistan triangle. America has close relations with Pakistan, which swiftly followed India into the nuclear club in 1998, but Pakistan does not enjoy any of the new privileges the Americans are bestowing on India. Nor, these days, does America press India to make concessions over Kashmir, the core of its dispute with Pakistan.

The change in America’s attitude reflects both India’s emergence as an economic force to be reckoned with, and the rise of neighbouring China. India’s economy is only about 40% the size of China’s, but its fast growth and young population mean that its global role is increasing, not least because of its thriving information-technology and outsourcing industries. Just as the boss of any big American firm needs to tell his shareholders a China story, so he now needs an Indian strategy too. One of the outcomes of Mr Singh’s visit was the launch of a new forum of Indian and American chief executives.

American and Indian officials stress that the two countries’ relationship is independent of their respective relations with China. Yet America’s stated ambition to help India become a great power in the 21st century cannot be detached from apprehensions about China’s looming might. Although India is enjoying something of a second honeymoon with China, its own long-standing suspicions, which date to the war of 1962, have not entirely faded.

Despite the instinctive anti-Americanism of many Indian intellectuals, both India and America recognise that, as democracies, they should have common interests. These were obscured by the legacy of the cold war, during which a “non-aligned” India tilted towards the Soviet Union, and the United States played the “China card”. The much-needed rapprochement with India was pursued by President Bill Clinton, but further delayed by India’s bomb tests in 1998, and then by the attacks on America on September 11th 2001, which gave Pakistan new importance in the war against terror.

That importance persists, but officials say that Mr Bush is personally committed to better relations with India. Revelations of the Pakistani connections of three of the suicide-bombers who attacked London this month were a reminder that Pakistan is also part of the terrorism problem. India, on the other hand, as Mr Bush pointed out when he introduced Mr Singh to his wife in Moscow in May, has more Muslims than any country other than Indonesia—but no known al-Qaeda recruits.

Pakistan will at least be pleased that America’s new love affair with India does not extend to open support of its Security Council bid. Mr Bush went no further than to agree that international institutions should “fully reflect changes” that have taken place since the UN was set up in 1945. India agrees with that—though many Indians suspect that the only change America really wants to preserve is its own emergence as the unchallenged superpower.

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