By Prof. M.D. Nalapat
Without an alliance with India,in Asia the US is like a giant with only one ?hand?, Japan. The other can only be India and not Australia,although like Ayub Khan in the 1960s,who believed that ?One Pakistani is equal to a thousand Indians?, John Howard acts as though a single Australian were the equal of at least 500 Malaysians or Indonesians, besides Indians. The reality is that Europe,the continent that Howard regards as the navel of the universe, is already in the process of giving way to Asia in geopolitical weight.In other words,to the very same people that Howard so visibly despises and takes extraordinary measures to avoid polluting his country,including forced repatriation and harsh detention of attempting immigrants. Only a Europhile such as Colin Powell can believe that India is so insignificant that the country does not even merit a mention in his autobiography.
The current US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, does not have the same inferiority complex towards Europe that Powell and his friends in the East Coast academic community demonstrate, which is why she has authored the India-US Nuclear Agreement. This recognizes that India has an autonomous nuclear programme and that its size and speed of development make the co-option of New Delhi into the global nuclear order imperative for US security.
Such a process can only be on the basis of equality of India with the other five ?NPT-sanctioned? nuclear powers. The case of Pakistan is different, as that country is not an original but a ?proxy? nuclear power, artificially created by China in order to put a check on India, the same way as Beijing has armed the North Koreans with similar technology to help contain Japan. In the case of Pakistan, what is needed is for the five other original nuclear powers to persuade the People'sRepublic of China to completely halt all nuclear and missile assistance to Islamabad and Pyongyang, in the interests of smooth relations with the US, Japan and India. Until China does so, there is no question of a ?strategic alliance? with India, the only country that is the target of the Pakistan military
Such a development would also be in the interests of Washington, but the reality is that successive administrations have focussed most of their counter-proliferation energies on the one nuclear power that has never transferred sensitive technology across its borders, India. It is this obession with India that has created the ?action vacuum? which allowed both Pakistan and North Korea to emerge as deadly threats to international security. Unfortunately, just as Pakistan'snuclear technology was induced and not natural, so too was this blindness in Washington to the real proliferators. There exists a powerful lobby within that city that works ceaselessly within the policy elite to ensure that US policy invariably evolve in a way that converts India into an enemy and creates a strategic distance between the world'soldest surviving democracy and the most populous. This may be called the ?Pakistan Army Lobby?, in view of its most obvious component,but is in fact an amalgam of the super-powerful Chinese and Saudi lobbies in the US.Both Saudi Arabia and China are patrons of Pakistan, and have often assisted Islamabad in its many moves against New Delhi
There exists a powerful lobby within that city that works ceaselessly within the policy elite to ensure that US policy invariably evolve in a way that converts India into an enemy and creates a strategic distance between the world'soldest surviving democracy and the most populous.
China'sis an interesting case.While that country supplies deadly technology to regimes across the world, including Iran and Saudi Arabia today, its muscular non-proliferation diplomacy has a single target, India. For more than 20 years, Beijing has succeeded in getting the US,EU and Japan to attempt the work of murdering the Indian nuclear and space programme,a task in which it has received the eager cooperation of the Pakistan army, obsessed as that entity is with what it sees as its divine mission, putting India down.In the process,the future of Pakistan is being put at risk,and this despite the reality that most people in Pakistan are fundamentally as moderate as their eastern neighbours.Indeed, the country has produced several independent thinkers such as Hussain Haqqani and Asma Jehangir, but these heroes and heroines of liberty are under the heel of the fanatics in khaki, who have always received the patronage of London and Washington, two capitals that go entirely by what they hear (from the generals) than by what they see (on the ground)
Over the years, the instruments of subversion controlled by the Pakistan army has specifically targetted the aides and advisors of key US representatives and senators, slowly filling them with bile against democratic India that is strong enough to mask the misdeeds of Islamabad. This process has come about not through bribes but by access.The generals realize that most Congressional and senatorial aides have contempt for their masters,and therefore arrange for them to be given the same VVIP treatment in Pakistan as their bosses get everywhere. From the President of Pakistan to the members of the Cabinet, doors get opened to lowly assistants, who are given government limousines and even helicopters to go about their task of saving the world from the catastrophe of a strong India. In this way, these staff members can for a few days experience the illusion of being as important as those they serve. All that is needed to confirm this policy of co-option is to check on the number of lunches and dinners that these assistants and advisors have had with Pakistan-China-Saudi Arabia agents of influence in Washington,New York and Los Angeles before launching yet another anti-India move, and who has paid for the extra facilities they enjoy when on an overseas visit to locations pre-selected for them by such agents US senators and representatives, an incredibly basy group,usually do not have the time to independently look into the pre-digested (mostly anti-Indian) material that they are given,principally on non-proliferation and on Kashmir. As a result,many put on record views on India that are not just offensive but erroneous. An example is the way many equate the VHP and the RSS with the instruments of jihadi terror.How many VHP or RSS activists are suicide bombers? How many have been trained in the use of explosives and AK-47s? What is the number planning the deaths of those opposed to their world-view? None,and yet the chant of RSS and VHP being ?terrorist? organisations grows ever louder,achieving the ISI objective of splitting the anti-jihadi camp.Only a few US notables?including Senator Hillary Clinton?have taken time off to visit India and get to know the facts first-hand.The rest are fodder for the Pakistan Army lobby that so dominates the thinking of those in the US Congress whoes task it should be to ensure that the information given to their bosses is unbiased and in the interests not of Beijing, Riyadh,Islamabad – or indeed New Delhi – but Washington.
Unfortunately,India'sleadership has itself created a vulnerability, by allowing the US to take for granted New Delhi'stotal compliance with all the external requirements of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty. The anti-India groups know that howsoever hard they kick India, the Manmohan Singh government will not hit back. They know that in 1995, the present PM was one of those who forcefully argued against an Indian nuclear test,on the specious ground that ?India'seconomy would collapse as a result of the ensuing sanctions?. Such voices were heard loudly in 1998 as well – this writer was almost the only commentator (in the front page of the ?Times of India?) to correctly predict that the sanctions would only be a fleabite. The sister publication of that newspaper, the ?Economic Times? was hysterical on its front page, forecasting a Chernobyl-style ?meltdown? of the economy after Pokhran II
Rice, does not have the same inferiority complex towards Europe that Powell and his friends in the East Coast academic community demonstrate, which is why she has authored the India-US Nuclear Agreement.This recognizes that India has an autonomous nuclear programme and that its size and speed of development make the co-option of New Delhi into the global nuclear order imperative for US security.
The Pakistan Army'sinstruments of subversion know that a certain senior civil servant close to both Sonia Gandhi as well as Kashmiri separatists is goading the PM into withdrawing from Siachen,as a first step towards gifting the Kashmir Valley to Pakistan.This is to be followed by an implementation of the ?Kathwari Plan?,named after the man who reacted to the death of his jihadi son by holding a feast celebrating his ?martyrdom?,and who has worked to vivisect India as ceaselessly as G S Aulakh has in the past
Manmohan Singh is an honourable man.But he did not show enough courage to reject the ?Buta Report?, that was itself based on the fax of a draft sent from an influential address in New Delhi.The Prime Minister did not have the courage to act on information that it was certain of his own partypersons and allies who were busily offering inducements in Patna, not Nitish Kumar.But if the PM wishes to be true to his oath of office, he needs to show those in Washington who perform to the Pakistan Army lobby'stune that India has teeth,and is willing to use them if the country is sought to be humiliated.Thirty-one years of servile compliance with the external conditions of the NPT have brought India nothing but international contempt and the most rigorous of sanctions,even while Beijing and its two proxies have functioned unhindered. The PM – correctly – is an admirer of one of the greatest minds in history,Deng Xiaoping.He needs to adopt a strategy of boldness, of refusing to obey the wishes of those who insult and humiliate the nation,the diktat of those who seek to push India away from the nuclear High Table by making New Delhi cut away its nuclear ?thumb? in the manner of Ekalavya
Prime Minister,if you value the honour of India,launch nuclear cooperation with both Vietnam and Mongolia,two countries that are sincere friends of India. Sell the technology of nuclear power reactors and short-range missiles to countries that are anti-jihadi .Combine with cash-rich Venezuela in developing fast-breeder technology that can provide energy for India'spoor.Show those in the US Congress that continue to bait India that you have the courage needed to protect the national interest, whether in Siachen or in the case of nuclear technology. We, the daughters and sons of the Mathrubhumi, will stand with you.
Leave a Comment