By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Isn’t it interesting? While President Obama was in India, the C-word was hardly ever mentioned. C for China. Sometimes important matters are broached by indirection.
American media ridiculed India for the messy run up to the Commonwealth games, which turned out to be just fine. Yet, although the grand finale was everything Bollywood fans could have hoped for and the Indians won scads of glittery medals, the U.S. press neglected to headline either. Such justice would have complicated the Indian image as incompetent foil to China’s much-lauded staging of the Beijing olympics. But! But! But! Wasn’t there something roboticly authoritarian about the Beijing operation?
Like North Korea, that other supreme organizer of colorful mass spectacles, China struts arrogantly on the international stage, and the deal for getting filthy rich in China is: work like a dog and be quiet as a mouse. In myth the dragon jealously guards his horde of gold. The bigger the pile, the fiercer his fiery breath. Under an almost slavish admiration for China’s economic growth spurt, the U.S. is fearful. China is getting too big, too rich, too ambitious, too demanding. (Hubris anyone?)
Unsurprisingly, therefore, as political analysts considered President Obama’s visit to India en route to the G20 meeting in Seoul, they focused on the dramatic increase in Washington’s military cooperation with Delhi in recent years. With China on a South China Sea rock-collecting jag and also constructing a system of deep water ports in Burma/Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, an India-strangling noose widely known as “the ring of pearls,” the U.S. has rekindled its long-lagging enthusiasm for A.S.E.A.N. Obama would like India to become a strong A.S.E.A.N. collaborator, thus creating a ring of resistance to China’s hegemonic aspirations, which also extend to territories along the northern border with India. The dragon has halitosis and a very long, well-armored tail, but the U.S. wants unimpeded access to Asian waters.
India has another jealous and bellicose neighbor, whose reaction to Obama’s visit next door was bound to be mixed at best. Pakistan (long a close ally of China) has already protested Obama’s pledge, during his Lok Sabha remarks in Delhi, to make the case for India as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. No doubt Pakistan is also unhappy about the agreement to sell ten C-17 cargo planes to India (thereby, says the election-bashed Obama administration, creating some 22,000 American jobs), to say nothing of Obama’s praise for the “major development assistance from India has improved the lives of the Afghan people.” Pakistan would prefer to have Obama’s backing in cleansing Afghanistan of the Indian consulates that have sprouted up over the past few years, although non-Talib Afghans welcome a countervailing presence in what Pakistan considers to be its purely private sphere of influence. As regards terrorism, Obama also spoke boldly in ways that couldn’t please Islamabad, asserting that the U.S. will “continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks must be brought to justice.” Finally, far from excoriating India for its stance as a non-signatory to the existing non-proliferation treaty, Obama plans to build on his predecessor’s initiatives in the civilian nuclear arena:
As a result of this visit, we are already beginning to implement our civil nuclear agreement.... We’re expanding our efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. In keeping with its commitment at our Nuclear Security Summit, India will build a new center of excellence for nuclear energy and security to help reach our goal of securing vulnerable nuclear materials in four years.
Personally, I’d like a little more detail re the nuclear business, but even this hint should be enough to set Pakistan’s teeth on edge. Any American cooperation with India is viewed as betrayal in Islamabad.
Whatever the details, it’s not surprising that national security concerns (plus G20-related trade and investment issues) should play a major or even a primary role in discussions between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Also extremely (and perhaps more) interesting is the starring role played by promoting and applying knowledge in their joint vision of the evolving U.S.-Indian relationship. On the applied side there are pledges to institutionalize mutuality in agriculture, medicine, nuclear security, clean energy and ultra high tech applications for economic growth and security.
Also in the works: more educational cooperation, including the Singh-Obama 21st Century Knowledge Initiative and a summit to forge new collaborations in higher education, all this at a time when the Republicans, including the American Enterprise Institute, clamor to eliminate educational and other international exchanges from the American diplomatic quiver. To help balance the budget, the Republicans say. As if exchanges cost more than a drop in the fiscal bucket. As if American higher education and imported Indian brains hadn’t powered much of America’s success in the past few decades. As if, without a strong educational foundation, including knowledge and experience of the world beyond the American heartland, military and economic ambitions can fare well.
This is where the yogi comes in.
Imagine the dragon as Winston Churchill, at the height of British colonial power, puffing on his cigar. Suddenly he had to deal with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi aka the Mahatma, who strolled into a meeting in London, not in bowler and well-blacked lace-up shoes, with umbrella, but dhoti-clad, barefoot, bareheaded and practically naked: the yogi representing the soul and/or people power of India. What a hoot! Churchill despised him. He couldn’t believe that this quirky little guy in a diaper was a brilliant strategist, an impishly clever tactician and a leader who could inspire urban sophisticates as well as villagers among his countrymen.
But Gandhi won. The English colonial period in India was over.