HENRY KISSINGER
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INDIA AND AMERICA:
PROSPECTS FOR A
PARTNERSHIP
By Henry A. Kissinger
President George W.
Bush's visit to India
has brought the
relations between the
United States and India
to an unprecedented
level of cooperation and
interdependence. The
domestic debate about
the results, including
the issue of nuclear
cooperation, should be
conducted in the context
of the seminal
contribution this
partnership can make to
international peace and
prosperity.
It is strange that this
relationship should have
taken so long to
develop. Both countries
are democracies. English
is India's working
language, and the
educated classes speak
it with rhetorical
flourish. The Indian
bureaucracy is well
trained and competent,
albeit slow-moving.
Yet until very recent
years, relations between
the two great
democracies have been
wary. It is important to
understand the reasons
if the new relationship
is to realize the
opportunity before it.
India straddled the Cold
War crises in the name
of a nonalignment that
proclaimed the moral
equivalence of the two
sides; on most concrete
issues it either tilted
toward the Soviet side
or remained aloof.
America's attitude
toward India was
similarly beset by
ambivalence: between
respect for the moral
quality of Indian
leaders and irritation
with Indian day-to-day
tactics. The democratic
institutions that the
two countries shared did
not determine political
choices.
If the emerging
partnership is to
flourish, each side
needs to understand what
has brought them
together beyond their
domestic institutions.
Such an analysis should
not be seen as part of
the contemporary
controversy about the
feasibility of spreading
democracy. It is an
appraisal of a specific
emerging partnership to
enable us to develop its
congruencies, deepen
common objectives, and
define its limits.
Americans think of their
country as "the shining
city on the hill"; its
political institutions
are perceived to be both
unique and relevant to
the rest of the world as
guarantees of universal
peace. Crusades on
behalf of democracy have
been implicit in
American political
thinking and explicit in
American policy
periodically since
Woodrow Wilson - and
especially pronounced in
the George W. Bush
administration.
That is not the way
Indians view their
international role.
Hindu society does
indeed also consider
itself unique but, in a
manner, dramatically at
variance from America's.
Democracy is not
conceived as an
expression of Indian
culture but as a
practical adaptation,
the most effective means
to reconcile the
polyglot components of
the state emerging from
the colonial past.
The defining aspect of
Indian culture has been
the awesome feat of
maintaining Indian
identity through
centuries of foreign
rule without, until very
recently, the benefit of
a unified, specifically
Indian, state. China
gradually imposed its
culture on its
conquerors until they
became indistinguishable
from the Han people.
India, which, in its
present dimensions, was
never a single state
until the post-colonial
period, retained its
identity not by
co-opting foreigners but
by segregating them and
finding room for their
variety. Huns, Mongols,
Greeks, Persians,
Afghans, Portuguese and,
in the end, Britons,
conquered Indian
territories, established
empires, and then
vanished, leaving behind
multitudes clinging to
the impermeable Hindu
culture. The Hindu
religion accepts no
converts; one is born
into it or forever
denied its stringencies
and its comforts.
India, striving neither
to spread its culture
nor its institutions, is
thus not a comfortable
partner for global
ideological missions.
What it analyzes with
great precision is its
national security
requirements. And these
owe more to traditional
notions of equilibrium
and national interest -
partly a legacy of
British rule - than to
contemporary ideological
debates.
India seeks a margin of
security within which
its culture can thrive
and its polyglot
nationalities work
together for practical
goals. This has produced
various levels of Indian
involvement in
international affairs.
- With respect to its
immediate neighbors and
smaller states like
Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal,
Sri Lanka, and even
Bangladesh, Indian
policy has been
comparable to America's
application of the
Monroe Doctrine in the
Western Hemisphere - an
attempt to maintain
Indian hegemony, if
necessary, by the use of
force. American policy
has rarely been engaged
in these efforts -
except over Bangladesh
30 years ago, due to a
particular constellation
of Cold War elements.
- In the north, India
faces the Chinese giant
across the intractable
barrier of the Himalayas
and the Tibetan massif.
Here India has pursued
the traditional remedy
of a great power
confronted by a
comparable rival - a
security belt against
military pressure. The
border clash in 1962 was
about the so-called
MacMahon line, a buffer
zone created by Britain
between China (or Tibet)
and the historic
demarcation line.
Neither China nor India
has so far engaged in a
diplomatic or security
contest over
pre-eminence in the
heartland of Asia. For
the foreseeable future,
both countries, while
protecting their
interests, have too much
to lose from a general
confrontation.
Too often America's
India policy is
justified - occasionally
with a wink - as way to
contain China. But the
reality has been that so
far both India and
America have found it in
their interest to
maintain a constructive
relationship with China.
To be sure, America's
global strategy benefits
from Indian
participation in
building a new world
order. But India will
not serve as America's
foil with China and will
resent any attempts to
use it in that role.
- In the region between
Calcutta and Singapore,
India seeks a role
commensurate with its
economic, political and
strategic significance,
its magnitude influenced
to a certain extent by
proximity to India's
frontier (thus a greater
concern over Myanmar and
Bangladesh than, say,
Vietnam or Malaysia).
India is well aware that
the future of Southeast
Asia will be determined
by economic and
political relationships
in which China, America
and Japan will, together
with India, be the
principal actors. A
developing Association
of Southeast Asian
Nations is or should be
in their common
interest. Attempts at
hegemony are likely to
lead to countervailing
pressures. Here American
and Indian interests are
- or could be made to be
- quite congruent.
- In the region between
Bombay and Yemen, Indian
and American interests
in defeating radical
Islam are nearly
parallel. Until 9/11,
governance in the
Islamic world was
largely in the hands of
autocrats. Indian
leaders used
nonalignment to placate
their Muslim minority by
cooperating with the
autocratic Muslim
states. Gamal Abdel
Nasser, at the height of
his confrontation with
the West, always enjoyed
a close relationship
with Nehru and his
successors.
That condition no longer
prevails. Indian leaders
have seen fundamentalist
Islam supported from
Middle East states that
finance religious
schools reaching into
the subcontinent. They
know that fundamentalist
jihad seeks to
radicalize Muslim
minorities by
undermining secular
societies through
conspicuous acts of
terrorism. Contemporary
Indian leaders have
understood that if this
demonstration of global
restlessness spreads -
even more, if it
succeeds - India will
sooner or later suffer
comparable attacks. In
that sense, even if
India had preferred some
other battlefields, the
outcome of the American
struggle against
terrorism involves
Indian long-term
security fundamentally.
America is fighting some
of India's battles, and
the two countries have
parallel objectives even
where their tactics
differ.
A geopolitical
confluence of interests
has emerged as well.
India was able to adopt
the role of balancer
during the Cold War
because the conflict
between the United
States and the Soviet
Union threatened India
only indirectly. Either
the United States would
deal with the challenge
or it would fail.
India's contribution
would be marginal, and
the attempt to line up
with America would risk
the hostility of the
other nuclear superpower
only a few hundred miles
distant, which might
back Pakistan, then -
and to a considerable
extent still - India's
security obsession.
India also relied on the
Soviet Union for
military supplies.
But in the current
period, Russia is no
longer a superpower nor
an adversary of the
United States. China has
emerged as a major and
growing geopolitical
player with considerable
ties to America -
especially in the
economic field. With the
emergence of a more
assertive Japan as an
ally of the United
States, India's Cold War
attitude of aloofness -
and historical Congress
Party attitudes - toward
the United States ran
the risk of leading to
Indian isolation in the
new configuration of
power and influence in
the world.
Globalization has
reinforced the
incentives for
cooperation. For much of
the 1990s, a combination
of Indian bureaucracy
and protectionism
limited private
investment in India. In
the past decade,
reform-minded
administrators from both
major Indian political
groupings have
increasingly linked
India to the world
economy. Therefore, the
basic dilemma of
globalization will
increasingly have to be
addressed by Indian and
American leaders:
Globalization frequently
imposes unsymmetrical
sacrifices in the sense
that benefits and costs
affect different
elements of society
differently. The losers
in that process will
seek redress through
their political system,
which is national. The
success of globalization
breeds a temptation for
protectionism and the
need to combine
technical achievement
with human concern.
India and America have
an opportunity to
overcome these
temptations by joint
efforts.
While democracy is not
what has brought the two
countries together, it
will surely facilitate
their ability to
elaborate the
relationship. One summit
can only define the
task; its implementation
requires dealing with
the vast agenda outlined
above.
Relations with Pakistan
are a special case. At
independence, British
India was partitioned
between Pakistan and
India. But since
partition could not
separate the Muslim and
Hindu populations
entirely, 150 million
Muslims live in India
today, and the reaction
of India to Pakistan,
and vice versa, will
always differ from that
of other countries. For
Indian nationalists the
Pakistan state appears
not only as carved out
of what they consider
their historic
patrimony; it is also a
standing challenge to
the Indian state by
implying that Muslims
cannot maintain their
identity under Hindu
rule and therefore must
seek a separate
political entity.
Balancing the role of
Pakistan in the war
against terrorism with
the emerging partnership
with India will require
extraordinary
sensitivity and an
ability to keep in mind
that each country's
national obsession is
the other and that they
will interpret American
actions not by America's
pronouncements, but by
their own
preconceptions.
Nuclear cooperation with
India should be
considered in the light
of these principles. In
1998, I opposed the
sanctions against
India's nuclear tests,
suggesting that India
should be treated as a
nuclear country whose
progress in the nuclear
field had become
irreversible. In such a
context, nuclear
cooperation with India
is appropriate. But it
needs to make explicit
an Indian commitment not
to spread nuclear
materials to other
countries, such as the
United States itself has
undertaken. The scope of
the nuclear cooperation
should avoid the
rhetoric and the reality
of a nuclear arms race
in which China could be
tempted to support
nuclear programs in Iran
and Pakistan as a
counterweight. The goal
should be an Asia that
navigates between an
unacceptable hegemony by
any power and an arms
race that replicates in
Asia the tragedies of
Europe, only with
fiercer weapons and even
vaster consequences.
In a period preoccupied
with concerns over
terrorism and the
potential clash of
civilizations, the
emerging cooperation
between the two great
democracies, India and
the United States,
introduces a positive
and hopeful perspective.
© 2006 Tribune Media
Services, Inc.
