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US-India ties not all peaches and cream
By M K Bhadrakumar – December 16, 2013
The South Block has every reason to reportedly feel “extremely upset” that the US state department cleared the arrest and handcuffing of the Indian deputy consul general on a Manhattan avenue and forgot to inform the Indian Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh who happened to be in Washington at Faggy Bottom on her maiden trip for consultations as the head of the foreign office.
Clearly, feelings are running high as evident from the fact that no one other than External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid called the outrageous incident an “insult” to India. There is indeed a case for seeking parity for the US mission staff. No amount of spin by the American side can obfuscate the reality that there is no justification whatsoever to handcuff a foreign diplomat and parade her on a street.
To do hair splitting on legal grounds at this stage is laughable. Simply put, the American intentions are questionable. Besides, all this is happening against the backdrop of the hostile activities by the US intelligence against India’s diplomatic and consular establishments in America, as disclosed by the ex-CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
As I noted earlier, the security of the Indian diplomatic establishments in the US has been breached by the US intelligence and the downstream consequences are devastating for India’s national interests.
By coincidence, details have emerged now that during Singh’s consultations in Washington last week, the US interlocutors tried to give a diplomatic dimension to the recent tensions on the Line of Control with Pakistan, but she instinctively sensed the trap and rebuffed the demarche. Quite obviously, this was a motivated US attempt to nudge India into Kashmir-related discussions under US monitoring.
The Obama administration is sold out on the idea that Pakistan’s full cooperation for the US’ regional strategies in Afghanistan and Central Asia will be forthcoming only if there is a reciprocal US willingness to mediate the Kashmir issue. Books have been written on this bizarre thesis by American think tankers such as Howard and Teresita Schaffer and Bruce Riedel who are influential voices in the Washington circuit on South Asian affairs. They have even offered the road map of a solution to the Kashmir problem that meets Pakistani aspirations. They have repeatedly underscored that the time has come for the US to push India to the negotiating table to seek a solution to the Kashmir issue and Washington should make this a collective effort by regional states as well — especially, by involving China and Saudi Arabia.
Suffice to say, diplomatic incidents of the kind that was enacted in New York last Thursday do not take place in a vacuum. The spin doctors have it that US-India “defining partnership” is all peaches and cream. But it really stretches credulity to overlook the strong undercurrents and buy Washington’s spin.
At the end of the day, no one wants to go to the roof top and shout about it, but the point is that the Malabar Exercise in November in the Bay of Bengal turned out to be a low-key affair because Washington ‘downgraded’ its participation, since it was annoyed that Delhi insisted the event should be a strictly bilateral affair. Put bluntly, the US wanted to embellish the event as a dimension to its ‘rebalance’ to Asia, but Delhi refused to play ball.
Then followed Prime MInister Manmohan Singh’s address at the annual combined commanders conference in Delhi where he referred to the US’ “pivot” to Asia as “a development fraught with uncertainty.” Thereupon, the US, on its part, gave some lame excuse to put off indefinitely the meeting of the high-level Defence Policy Group at Defence Secretary level slated for December 4-6 in Washington until there has been a ‘regime change’ in Delhi after the 2014 poll. This is notwithstanding the need to follow up the so-called defence initiative concluded in September during the prime minister’s visit to the White House. The US lobbyists in Delhi feel crestfallen and are already lamenting in newspapers that India is rediscovering its policy of non-alignment.
By the way, while the Foreign Secretary was in the US last week, the state department’s special representative for AfPak James Dobbins gave a testimony at the US senate foreign relations committee where he linked resolution of the Kashmir issue to the stabilization of Afghanistan. He claimed that Pakistan has been making repeated overtures but India is not responding, because, as he implied, India has a lame duck government.
Without doubt, Delhi’s decision not to identify with the US strategies in Afghanistan aimed at establishing the US and NATO military bases and instead to robustly support President Hamid Karzai is a thoughtful and far-sighted move to have an independent foreign policy.
By M K Bhadrakumar – December 16, 2013
By M K Bhadrakumar – December 16, 2013
The South Block has every reason to reportedly feel “extremely upset” that the US state department cleared the arrest and handcuffing of the Indian deputy consul general on a Manhattan avenue and forgot to inform the Indian Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh who happened to be in Washington at Faggy Bottom on her maiden trip for consultations as the head of the foreign office.
Clearly, feelings are running high as evident from the fact that no one other than External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid called the outrageous incident an “insult” to India. There is indeed a case for seeking parity for the US mission staff. No amount of spin by the American side can obfuscate the reality that there is no justification whatsoever to handcuff a foreign diplomat and parade her on a street.
To do hair splitting on legal grounds at this stage is laughable. Simply put, the American intentions are questionable. Besides, all this is happening against the backdrop of the hostile activities by the US intelligence against India’s diplomatic and consular establishments in America, as disclosed by the ex-CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
As I noted earlier, the security of the Indian diplomatic establishments in the US has been breached by the US intelligence and the downstream consequences are devastating for India’s national interests.
By coincidence, details have emerged now that during Singh’s consultations in Washington last week, the US interlocutors tried to give a diplomatic dimension to the recent tensions on the Line of Control with Pakistan, but she instinctively sensed the trap and rebuffed the demarche. Quite obviously, this was a motivated US attempt to nudge India into Kashmir-related discussions under US monitoring.
The Obama administration is sold out on the idea that Pakistan’s full cooperation for the US’ regional strategies in Afghanistan and Central Asia will be forthcoming only if there is a reciprocal US willingness to mediate the Kashmir issue. Books have been written on this bizarre thesis by American think tankers such as Howard and Teresita Schaffer and Bruce Riedel who are influential voices in the Washington circuit on South Asian affairs. They have even offered the road map of a solution to the Kashmir problem that meets Pakistani aspirations. They have repeatedly underscored that the time has come for the US to push India to the negotiating table to seek a solution to the Kashmir issue and Washington should make this a collective effort by regional states as well — especially, by involving China and Saudi Arabia.
Suffice to say, diplomatic incidents of the kind that was enacted in New York last Thursday do not take place in a vacuum. The spin doctors have it that US-India “defining partnership” is all peaches and cream. But it really stretches credulity to overlook the strong undercurrents and buy Washington’s spin.
At the end of the day, no one wants to go to the roof top and shout about it, but the point is that the Malabar Exercise in November in the Bay of Bengal turned out to be a low-key affair because Washington ‘downgraded’ its participation, since it was annoyed that Delhi insisted the event should be a strictly bilateral affair. Put bluntly, the US wanted to embellish the event as a dimension to its ‘rebalance’ to Asia, but Delhi refused to play ball.
Then followed Prime MInister Manmohan Singh’s address at the annual combined commanders conference in Delhi where he referred to the US’ “pivot” to Asia as “a development fraught with uncertainty.” Thereupon, the US, on its part, gave some lame excuse to put off indefinitely the meeting of the high-level Defence Policy Group at Defence Secretary level slated for December 4-6 in Washington until there has been a ‘regime change’ in Delhi after the 2014 poll. This is notwithstanding the need to follow up the so-called defence initiative concluded in September during the prime minister’s visit to the White House. The US lobbyists in Delhi feel crestfallen and are already lamenting in newspapers that India is rediscovering its policy of non-alignment.
By the way, while the Foreign Secretary was in the US last week, the state department’s special representative for AfPak James Dobbins gave a testimony at the US senate foreign relations committee where he linked resolution of the Kashmir issue to the stabilization of Afghanistan. He claimed that Pakistan has been making repeated overtures but India is not responding, because, as he implied, India has a lame duck government.
Without doubt, Delhi’s decision not to identify with the US strategies in Afghanistan aimed at establishing the US and NATO military bases and instead to robustly support President Hamid Karzai is a thoughtful and far-sighted move to have an independent foreign policy.
By M K Bhadrakumar – December 16, 2013
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