Bush's journey to India
Washington and New Delhi see benefits in a new relationship
For that reason, the deal is controversial. Nonproliferation specialists warn that carving out an exception for India to the rules of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty--which India never signed--could encourage other countries with aspirations for the Bomb while doing little to restrain India's nuclear arsenal. The Bush administration counters publicly that the deal will strengthen the overall cause of nonproliferation by placing first-ever safeguards on India. But it is also engaged in some realpolitik. "India is special because of its size, because of its potential," explains a senior administration official. The president concluded, says the official, that "we'd be better off creating a special niche for India."
The administration is not alone in its zeal for India. The advocates for closer ties begin with powerful U.S. business interests. India's nuclear market, if opened to the world, could be worth upwards of $100 billion. And Washington has freed contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing to pitch sales of F-16 and F-18 fighter planes. American corporate giants have made India, with its low-cost English-speaking workforce, a top destination for IT and business-processing operations. The Indian-American community, nearly 2 million strong and increasingly active politically, is also lobbying for closer ties.
Hastening India's rise draws support across a wide ideological spectrum. Foreign-policy realists in the United States want to harness India's clout on counterterrorism, weapons proliferation, and revision of global rules on trade and investment. Backers of Bush's spread-democracy theme see India's multiethnic democracy as a powerful model for other countries. Likewise, India's fight against terrorism by Islamist militants--an outgrowth of the ongoing conflict over Kashmir--makes it a country confronting the same threat as the United States. Some neoconservatives bluntly view India as a counterweight to communist China. After the December 2004 Asian tsunami struck, the U.S. Navy joined with those of India, Japan, and Australia to rush humanitarian relief to the devastated areas. That effort may have been a harbinger of power politics: the region's militarily capable democracies banding together--sans China. The administration, sensitive to not offending China, plays down such considerations. Yet a former senior official recalls Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as focused on India's strategic value: "They look at India as a counterbalance to China, which they see as the Soviet Union of the 21st century."
That view, if it ever emerges as official policy, will encounter heavy resistance in India. Here, autonomy and independence are enshrined as core values of the state. So it was not surprising that a firestorm erupted a month ago when U.S. Ambassador David Mulford predicted--in stating the political reality--that the U.S. Congress might kill any nuclear deal if India did not join in censuring Iran for its suspected drive for nuclear weapons. Indian officials bristled at the link, and leftist lawmakers demanded that Mulford be recalled. He was not, and, as it turned out, India did vote with the United States at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But the flap serves as a reminder that India's hard-won independence still colors its view of other powers, including the United States. "Anybody who thinks you can turn India into a client state hasn't spent a lot of time here," allows a senior U.S. official. The Indians couldn't agree more.
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