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This is an archive article published on November 10, 2010
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Opinion Learning to say yes

India should be ready to accept Obama’s invitation to rebalance the world.

Raja Mohan

C. Raja Mohan

November 10, 2010 12:12 AM IST First published on: Nov 10, 2010 at 12:12 AM IST

It does not really matter if US President Barack Obama was accurate in saying that India is no longer emerging but has already emerged. Statesmen have the rhetorical licence to emphasise a new trend-line. In any case,no one is quibbling with the fact that India is on its way to becoming one of the five largest economies of the world in the next decade and is bound to have a greater say in world affairs.What is important,however,is Obama’s invitation to rebalance the world. Is India ready? Our commentariat continue to be pessimistic in their thinking about India’s global standing in general and crabby in engaging the United States in particular. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has signalled the opposite. Standing next to the US president at Delhi’s Hyderabad House on Monday,Dr Singh underlined three important changes in India’s worldview. One is that India and the US are now “equal partners”. For generations,Indian diplomacy has been either defensive or defiant in its dealings with the US,the world’s foremost power. Dr Singh is now ready to play on the front foot,with a new self-assurance based on the reality of India’s emerging capabilities. Another is Dr Singh’s recognition of the centrality of US cooperation in consolidating India’s rise. “Our objective is to sustain a growth rate of 9 to 10 per cent per annum in the next three decades. And in that process,the help of the United States is of enormous significance,” he declared.A third emphasis of Dr Singh is about India’s readiness to give and not merely take from others. This is a big departure from the Indian diplomatic tradition that held “giving” a sin. Dr Singh wants India “give and take” as part of a strategic bargaining which aims at beneficial outcomes. Blind defence of entrenched positions,Dr Singh is saying,is no virtue for a rising India.Dr Singh’s assertive pragmatism has nicely blended with the new realism that marks the US world view under Obama,who is the first US president since the Second World War to cope with the possible loss of American primacy.

Throughout his presidential tenure,Obama has repeatedly affirmed that the US can no longer bear the burden of managing the world — whether it is reforming the global financial system or policing the world’s oceans — on its own.

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Obama’s main message is that the US is looking for partners among the rising powers and that a democratic India is the natural choice. Dr Singh,in turn,is saying India is prepared to join the US in rebalancing the world.

For India and the US,the new agenda involves three distinct elements and all three were addressed in the talks between

Dr Singh and Obama and were reflected in the joint statement they issued on Monday.

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The first is about regional security in the Subcontinent. For more than half a century,India and the US balanced against each other in South Asia during bad times and agreed to disagree in good times.

For the first time,Dr Singh and Obama have created the basis for working together in rebalancing the northwestern parts of the Subcontinent that have been destabilised by the growth of violent extremism. The new approach is marked by the decision to work together in Afghanistan and press the state institutions in Pakistan to end their support to terror networks,including the Lashkar-e-Toiba.Pakistan’s army chief,General Ashfaq Kayani,the principal patron of the LeT,is unlikely to tremble at the sight of this declaration. If India and the US,however,step up their cooperation on counter-terrorism,coordinate their policies in Afghanistan and reach out to the democratic forces in Pakistan,they could begin to alter the balance of forces in favour of political moderation and economic modernisation across our western borders.A second area of rebalancing is in the Indian Ocean and the Asia Pacific. Unlike in the past,when India and the US worked at cross purposes in these regions,Dr Singh and Obama have “agreed to deepen existing regular strategic consultations on developments in East Asia,and decided to expand and intensify their strategic consultations to cover regional and global issues of mutual interest,including Central and West Asia”.

The boldest innovation of the two leaders is in breaking the “North-South” paradigm that has defined the contentious political discourse between the two countries on global issues for decades. If the world is turning out to be multipolar,with rising India as one of its poles,the traditional framework of “developing versus developed world” is no longer sustainable.As India and the US seek a reordering of the international system,a different set of factors have injected themselves into the Indo-US conversation — shared political values and the common commitment to a liberal international order. In the past,their common internal democratic orientation could not overcome the global logic of the Cold War. Now they provide a critical bond between Delhi and Washington. Obama’s bold appeal to India,in his address to Parliament on Monday,to reconnect to its inspiring tradition of liberal internationalism — espoused by Rabindranath Tagore,Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru — will be disconcerting to many foreign policy conservatives in Delhi. Dr Singh,however,is suggesting that India is very much ready to transit from its defensive multilateralism of the past to a new responsible internationalism,in the pursuit of its own enlightened self-interests. This means India is ready to work with the US in strengthening international institutions,promoting the rule of law,countering mercantilism in trade,reducing the role of nuclear weapons,protecting the global commons and assisting fledgling democracies into practical policies.Although differences will remain on a range of issues — from global warming to Myanmar — and new ones might emerge,Dr Singh and Obama have launched a consequential international partnership for rebalancing the world in the 21st century.

raja.mohan@expressindia.com