Bill, the selective bully

Oh, whatever happened to this perfectly wonderful country? It has blasted away its national greatness, sighed Bill Clinton who, on the eve of the 21st century, would like to see a millennial burst of peace shaking the entire world. Shaken by the shockwaves from Pokharan, the peacemaker-in-chief, the self-assigned globo-cop, has decided to redeem the wonder8217; that was India, the wonder that once beguiled Hillary and Chelsea, by imposing economic sanctions. Sanctions worth 140 million, and this is apart from the World Bank loan of 3 billion the US will oppose. More. India, the latest nuclear bogeyman on the international stage, is getting moral punches from elsewhere also. The agony of the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is understandable; but Tokyo8217;s freezing of annual aid of 26 million to India is no way of parading the national legacy of nuclear martyrdom. And look who else are rapping at the knuckles of the nuclear rogue? Countries like Germany, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. It is a display ofvacuous morality wrapped in economic punishment. India doesn8217;t deserve this, this vindictive diplomacy of demonisation. India is not Pyongyang or Baghdad. It is not into the art of nuclear blackmail. It8217;s not steeped in paranoia. It is, as the 8220;disappointed8221; Clinton rightly says, a 8220;vibrant democracy8221;. This vibrancy counterbalances the vibrations from Pokharan.

Bill Clinton, with his eyes set on history and his feet on the shifting sands of diplomatic hypocrisy, is too nervous about his own historical burden to see this Indian dualism of national assertion and democratic awareness. His spontaneous reaction smacks of a failure to isolate India, an India with its own millennial awakening, from the rogues who are really Rogues with a capital R. Predictably enough, the Republican response calls the bluff of the partisan bully. When Speaker Newt Gingrich says 8220;I8217;m curious about this one-sided imbalance, this anti-Indian bias, and this willingness to forgive the Chinese anything8221;, he is only echoing atruism: in Confucian capitalism, even Uncle Sam knows his place. The most-favoured-nation can afford to play out the so-called Chinese exceptionalism, to build oriental gulags, to redefine human rights, to explode any number of nuclear devices. But China matters. The market matters. And the Chinese accent of we-don8217;t-give-a-damn scares even the globo-cop. China aside, the selective application of moral punishment has become a loosely constructed American essay on the new hypocritical world wonder. Interests in Afghanistan decides policy towards Pakistan, which nevertheless continues to test US softness; Islamic fundamentalism doesn8217;t deny Saudi Arabia a privileged place in the American parlour. Oh, there are quite a few bastards over there, but 8212; listen to the voice of America 8212; they are 8220;our own bastards8221;.

This is the moral illusion of the only superpower. This illusion can put India alongside such despicable dictatorships like Iraq and North Korea. How silly. How presumptuous. The white man8217;s burdenis so heavy that his reflexes seem to repudiate reality. In this bad new world, only the wisdom of Washington can ensure the safety of humanity. It is a pretence, a pretence that is today bullying India. All those hosannas about the world8217;s two largest democracies 8212; usually sung in diplomatic rituals in Washington 8212; have given way to a diplomatic version of satanic verses. Pokharan may have risen the level of national adrenaline. It has deafeningly exploded the moral hypocrisy of the globo-cop.