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Seema Sirohi

India-US dialogue suffers as both sides get distracted

When US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott called India’s outgoing foreign minister Jaswant Singh last week to say farewell, it was more than two officials indulging in formalities. Together they had tried to give shape to a new relationship, taking it beyond the limits prescribed by history.

But with the fall of the government in New Delhi and the Kosovo crisis dominating the American agenda, the Indo-US dialogue has been pushed aside to give space to other more pressing problems. Talbott almost exclusively is working on pushing Russia to broker a deal in Kosovo and Singh is crafting strategies for the Bharatiya Janata Party for the impending elections. The momentum they built in the eight rounds of talks is likely to be lost in the heat and dust of change.

US officials are concerned not only about the fate of the dialogue but also of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on which they desperately want India’s signature. But given the fluid situation in New Delhi, there is little chance of a decision coming through on the contentious treaty.

More importantly, the give-and-take necessary between the two countries to allow the lifting of US sanctions against India will suffer a setback. World Bank loans will remain blocked as will technology exports from the United States to nearly 200 Indian companies and government agencies named on the dreaded "entities list." The hiaitus will work against India’s interests in delaying relief from sanctions. Even though the sanctions are not hurting the economy in way they were intended to, they act as a disincentive for foreign investors.

US officials, eager to extract concessions for their agenda, are frustrated by the frequent changes in New Delhi which make the slow pace of progress with India even slower. Long-time India hands are wondering whether coalition politics is a curse or a blessing for a young nation struggling to change. They say the effort to heave Indo-US relations out of the swamp of indifference and inactivity will have to be redoubled with the new government. It seems fate and fact always intervene to keep the two countries from realising the full potential of the relationship.

Less than a year ago relations had hit rock bottom when India conducted nuclear tests, blowing a hole in the Clinton Administration’s non-proliferation agenda. What India saw as its legitimate security interests, Washington saw as counter-productive. Negative rhetoric flew from both sides, creating a sense of gloom. The goodwill painstakingly built in the first few years of the administration through high-profile visits to India evaporated overnight. It was replaced by a push to punish with sanctions as the United States led the effort to isolate India in the international fora, heaping upon it one condemnatory resolution after another. It seemed the negativity always detectable in Indo-US relations through the decades had reached its logical conclusion.

But Singh and Talbott cut through the fog of accusations, realising that both countries needed each other albeit for different reasons. If the United States could not declare victory on its non-proliferation goals without India’s signature on the test ban treaty, India could ill afford to remain isolated from the world's sole superpower. India needed to have the sanctions lifted. The two sides started a high-level but largely secret dialogue and began debating issues that were never before in the ambit of bilateral discussions. They talked about nuclear weapons, missiles, India’s perception of the Chinese threat and its aim to develop a credible nuclear deterrent.

In the process, Singh and Talbott developed a close personal rapport in what diplomatic observers say was the first such friendship between two senior interlocutors of the two countries.

And personalities matter in a relationship where there is little content to sustain it over the bumps of political upheavals. In the case of China, it would matter little if the key players were to change overnight because the US stakes in the Chinese economy are so high as to make a good working relationship a necessity not a luxury. But the Indo-US relationship has never crashed through the threshold of formality and small exchanges.

Indian politicians or diplomats rarely initiate telephone contact with their American counterparts except when absolutely necessary. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is unlikely to pick up the phone to call Indian politicians to seek their support for air strikes against Yugoslavia as she did with scores of foreign ministers worldwide. Partly cultural, partly political, the failure of India and the United States to establish a "working" relationship is a major problem in resolving differences, observers say.

But Talbott and Singh had crossed these hurdles to some extent, going beyond the typically starched exchanges of the past. As a result of the eight rounds of talks between them, there was a greater appreciation in Washington of India’s security concerns vis-a-vis China. The success of the dialogue could be judged from the alarm it raised in Beijing which vociferously opposed any accommodation of India by the United States.

Senior Chinese officials publicly and privately berated the Clinton Administration for talking at all to New Delhi. They oppose any coming together of India and the United States for obvious reasons because it will lessen their primacy in Asia.

As India undergoes another metamorphosis of government, the bureaucracy must continue working for better relations with Washington. Both sides need to carry on a sustained dialogue which could form the basis of a more trusting relationship. They need to recognise that without a solid partnership they can not meet the challenges of the 21st century, be they in the realm of security or trade or environment or population.

The Indian bureaucracy could take a more activist role in policy making instead of acting like yes-men to the frequently changing cast of political characters. Instead of waiting for signals from the prime minister's office on every small issue, senior bureaucrats must push to strengthen relations with key Western countries. Instead of using their power to block interaction with other countries, they must enable it.

India could follow the example of Italy where the bureaucracy tends to make big decisions because of the frequent changes in government and officials are said to function better in the absence of politicians.

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