You scratch my back

Madeleine Albright is being very stern. India cannot behave, she says, as if all the world's efforts at halting nuclear testing do not apply...

Madeleine Albright is being very stern. India cannot behave, she says, as if all the world8217;s efforts at halting nuclear testing do not apply to it. Only, how odd that such scoldings should emanate during President Clinton8217;s visit to China when Beijing it was which nonchalantly tested days before the CTBT would have prohibited further tests. It is in this context that India8217;s protests about America and China8217;s hegemonism in lecturing it about weaponisation have to be seen.

Perhaps Albright can explain why India should take flak from the country which long supplied nuclear technology and missiles to Pakistan and Iran. It does not suffice for her to say that China now is being responsive. That does not wipe out its past culpability, and America8217;s culpability in winking at it.

India is sensitive to international opinion: its moratorium on fresh tests and offer of a no-first-use agreement with Pakistan appear to have escaped America8217;s attention. But New Delhi does not have to take orders from an emergingalliance of those who have done the most to make the world an unsafe place, especially when the policies of one are specifically aimed at undermining its security. China is less sanctimonious: its joint declaration with the US is much more a basking in America8217;s wooing of it than telling India how to mind its security.

The Clinton administration8217;s brazen appeasement of China flies in the face of US public opinion, never mind what feeble noises he may make in Beijing on human rights and religious freedom as a bow in the direction of that opinion. What precisely has he done to put his money where his mouth is? Beijing routinely receives foreign dignitaries in Tiananmen Square to make a point about June 1989. The question is whether an American President had to go along with this, and what message it sends out to China about human rights. It is precisely Clinton8217;s known inability to say no that made China so bold as to needlessly snub him by taking four dissidents captive in the wake of his arrival and denyingvisas to three radio journalists in his entourage.

The regime in Beijing is extremely pragmatic. The slightest firmness from Washington would have brought much greater accommodation but the Clinton administration is singularly risk-averse. Its famed market apart, China has, after all, earned itself the gratitude of the West in desisting so far from devaluing its renminbi.

That might have forced another round of devaluations in East and Southeast Asia, increasing the region8217;s woes and possibly triggering a global crisis. But Clinton is only storing up trouble for the future. China has given no indication that it can prove a sustained and reliable ally to the US: it has merely warmed to the new respect America is showering on it. It would cool off if a conflict of interests threatened, which it must. As long as Washington woos it, China will play along.

But the next round of friction on, say, trade or Taiwan or even devaluation is not that far away. It remains to be seen how much restraint Beijing wouldthen show. How long Clinton himself can withstand domestic pressure remains a question, given his vulnerability on campaign finance and satellite technology sales to China. Meanwhile, South Asia must figure out how to cope with this unstable and unnatural alliance.