MANIPAL, India — U.S. diplomats have lorded
it over the world's "Untermenschen," or inferior people, for so long
that the latter have come to regard even the more obvious and offensive forms
of condescension and patronizing behavior as a compliment.
Ever since the United States was informed
on Oct. 21 by India that domestic political difficulties were hampering the
implementation of the George Bush-Manmohan Singh nuclear deal, a battalion of
U.S. officials and wannabe officials have been lecturing India almost daily on
what they consider to be the core attributes of a "responsible" and
"mature" power -- which is to fulfill the wishes of the United States
in every detail. Any deviation from this would be evidence of an inability to
be ranked worthy of the support of the "Big Boys" -- presumably
Blairite Britain, Sarkozhian France and Merkellian Germany, who amble behind
the United States on key issues.
After being informed a week ago that the
next steps in finalizing the nuclear deal were negotiating a safeguards
agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers
Group on transfer of civilian technology, France was the first of the Big Boys
to kick in, warning that any agreement with it was conditional on the
Bush-Singh agreement being signed first.
Next followed Germany, repeating its
insistence that India sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile
Materials Cutoff Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons power before Berlin would
agree to join the bandwagon. Unusually -- and wisely -- Britain has kept
silent, unlike the United States, which has been issuing a stream of
statements, warning that placing the deal in cold storage would severely impact
relations with Washington.
Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, a prominent wannabe European in the Bush team, once again reiterated the mantra that "responsibility" was identical to following the U.S. lead on major issues, such as policy toward Myanmar, Iran and the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks. Condoleezza Rice repeated that, along with others in the administration.
Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, a prominent wannabe European in the Bush team, once again reiterated the mantra that "responsibility" was identical to following the U.S. lead on major issues, such as policy toward Myanmar, Iran and the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks. Condoleezza Rice repeated that, along with others in the administration.
In addition, just in case any irresponsible
Indians missed the point, in came Henry Kissinger to New Delhi, warning that
the end of the deal was likely to be the end of New Delhi's hopes of joining
the United Nations Security Council as a permanent member and being regarded by
the United States as a "reliable" partner. Kissinger's contempt for
India and its leaders is a matter of public record, and he must have relished
his Oct. 29 sermon.
If the United States was not informed by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about his volte face on the deal, and suffered
the mortification of learning it from the news channels, the reason was that
Singh was himself given less than ten minutes' notice by Congress Party boss
Sonia Gandhi that she had decided to save her government from collapse rather
than defying pressure from two pro-China communist parties and implementing the
deal. Such a course would have meant defeat for the Congress-led United Progressive
Front in Parliament, and fresh elections, in which case the Congress Party and
its key regional allies would most likely fare poorly.
It is a measure of the political naiveté of
Singh and Gandhi -- not to mention the incomprehension of the U.S. side - that
they believed that a deal opposed by much of the scientific, strategic, and
political elite in India could be made to fly. It is precisely because India is
a functional democracy that the deal, regarded by the majority within
Parliament as unacceptable, was finally put on hold by a regime that saw it as
having the same autocratic power as a King Abdullah or General Secretary Hu.
If the Rice-Kissinger logic is accurate,
democracy can be defined as any opinion congruent with that of the West. Thus,
in the Palestinian territories, only the Palestine Liberation Organization is
democratic and not Hamas, while in Lebanon, it is only the Gemayelist cohort
that represents true democracy.
As for India, so what if the majority of
members of Parliament are against the nuclear deal? A responsible power would
ignore such bagatelle and implement the agreement -- even though it was
unacceptable from the time Bush clarified in 2005 that India was expected to
join the lowly "recipient" group under his Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership, rather than being a "donor" nuclear power, the status
given to higher breeds such as Japan and Germany.
If the Bush team ever advised its European
partners to demonstrate a similar contempt for elected representatives, that
opinion has been conveyed in private and not through klaxons, as has been done
with India -- obviously viewed as a lesser breed of nation-state than the NATO
allies.
Unfortunately for U.S. and EU diplomats,
apart from what may be termed the "Old Elite," modern India does not
see itself in a slot subordinate to that of the NATO powers. Corporations, for
example, have invested as much as US$36 billion in overseas entities in the
past year alone, and made more than 600 acquisitions, an exponential leap from
the past. In line with Sonia Gandhi's policy of seeking to return India to the
Nehruvian days of a controlled economy, Singh's government has passed a
retrogressive Competition Act designed to smother the trend toward overseas
expansion. But because of the weakness of the ruling coalition, India's
corporations are expected to succeed in diluting its provisions enough to avoid
being smothered.
Since the communist-backed United
Progressive Alliance came to power in 2004, there has been a slew of
restrictive legislation designed to reverse the economic liberalization begun
under former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao in 1992. However, the rapid growth of
the Indian middle class and corporations has constrained the ability of Gandhi
and her team to implement (as distinct from enact) restrictive regulations
whose only value is as a source of bribes to politicians and officials.
India has shifted from the Nehru style of
big government into an economy where the market has taken on a life of its own.
This is evident in the stock market, which has shrugged off several vicious
steps taken by the Finance Ministry to scare away investors, and in the more
than 20 percent annual growth rates of several leading businesses. In the list
of the world's five richest individuals, two -- Lakshmi Mittal and Mukesh
Ambani -- hold Indian passports, as do their immediate family members.
By relying on India's Nehruvian "Old
Elite" to deliver what the West wants, the United States and the European
Union are making the same mistake in India that they are in Africa and Latin
America, where they are backing old elites in their losing struggle against
modern competitors.
Seeing the world in terms of the West and
the Rest, U.S. and EU diplomats are blinded to the resentment that the
condescending behavior of their countries' officials and legislatures are
creating in India -- a country that is a natural ally of the West in both the
War on Terror and the War on Want.
By 2025, India will have half a billion
people speaking English, a figure larger than the present populations of the
United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada combined. Its
democracy and Western-style educational and institutional framework will bring
this Asian giant ever closer to the West, on condition that the artificial and unacceptable
separation between its own rights and status, as compared to those of other
U.S. partners such as France and Britain, is pulled down.
Condoleezza Rice, pull down that wall!
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
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