Why Bush Loves India

Are you surprised by the rapid rapprochement between India and the United States, so visible during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh8217;s vis...

Are you surprised by the rapid rapprochement between India and the United States, so visible during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh8217;s visit to Washington last month? After all, who isn8217;t? If any one had told you a couple of months ago that the weakest Congress government in India8217;s independent history, which survives on the support of the Left parties so hostile to Indo-US relations, would sign two unprecedented pacts with the United States in a matter of three weeks, you would have asked him to go get his head examined.

But that precisely is what has happened. India signed a 10-year defence pact with the US on June 29 and a nuclear pact on July 18. The former lays out a sweeping agenda for defence cooperation and the latter unveils a road map for the resolution of the nuclear disputes which hobbled relations between India and the US for nearly three decades.

If you are looking for some intelligent answers to why and how Indo-US relations are being transformed so quickly under President George W Bush, here is the tract for you. And there is no better than Ashley Tellis, the India-born American analyst, to tell the story of how more political business has been done between India and the US in the last four-and-a-half years than in the previous five decades.

Tellis is not only the finest among his generation of American strategists, but he was also deeply involved in shaping the Indo-US relations in the first term of Bush Administration.

As special adviser to Ambassador Robert Blackwill in New Delhi during 2001-03, Tellis had a key role in defining a new agenda for Indo-US relations in the early Bush years. Unlike many of his American peers, who saw India and South Asia through the prism of Kashmir and non-proliferation, Tellis came to the region with a sense of geopolitical realism and the conviction that the structural change in international system has opened the doors for the first time in the last six decades for a productive relationship between Delhi and Washington.

While Bush came to power in 2001 with a positive approach to India, the preoccupations in Afghanistan and Iraq prevented a focused approach to transforming the relationship with Delhi. In the second term, he has now moved decisively to recast Indo-US relations. The defence and nuclear accords of the last few weeks are the consequence.

If you are looking for intelligent answers as to why and how Indo-US relations transformed so quickly under Dubya, here is the tract for you. There8217;s no one better to tell the story than Ashley Tellis

Tellis8217;s thesis depends on a simple premise 8212; strengthening a rising India8217;s power capabilities is in America8217;s interests. These include the shaping of a credible balance of power in Asia.

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The Bush Administration has justified its decision to change its long-standing non-proliferation policy 8212; as seen in the nuclear pact 8212; on the basis of Tellis8217;s premise. Tellis8217;s monograph, released on the eve of Prime Minister Singh8217;s visit to Washington, also laid out the framework in which old contentious issues like non-proliferation might be resolved and a new cooperative agenda constructed.

As Singh8217;s visit exceeded all political expectations, Tellis8217;s caution to both the sides remains valid. He reminds the Bush Administration that its innovations towards India have 8216;8216;occurred so far either at an ideational level or in the realm of process8217;8217;.

Concrete American actions to boost Indian power, Tellis argues are needed to remove Indian scepticism as well as change the real content of Indo-US relations.

To New Delhi, Tellis provides the warning that India cannot expect major changes in US policy without giving something in return. This something, Tellis identifies as 8216;8216;strategic coordination8230; meaning implicit rather than overt collaboration8217;8217; with American policies.

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Defining a set of shared interests and finding ways to work together are at the top of the Indo-US agenda for the coming years and decades, and we can bank on Tellis to keep us informed on the unfolding transformation of Indo-US relations, probably the single most important geopolitical realignment since the Sino-US entente of the 1970s.