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Wanted: a foreign policy with backbone and competence

Today I heard that US President Bill Clinton is going to stop by in Pakistan, after all, during his visit to South Asia. I generally expected this outcome, for a couple of reasons: one, Clinton wants to be seen as some Great White Chief in the Sky dispensing Pax Americana; two, the US foreign policy establishment has long-since concluded that India's foreign ministry has no spine.

The fact that Clinton is encouraging the dictator Musharraf, the architect of the Kargil war, after whose coup the scale and intensity of the proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir has increased manifold, is of no concern to the Americans. They are merely looking after their own interests, which in this case are a. nuclear proliferation, b. Osama bin Laden. India similarly needs to look after its own.

America is neither friend nor enemy; only a strategic partner when India's interests happen to converge with America's. Something this fact of realpolitik is ignored by India. You either have foreign policy wonks who are awed by the US, or you have those (usually JNU Marxists) who are congentially anti-US. Moderation and expediency are missing in these fundamentalists' views.

As I said before in my column, 'Just say No! to Clinton', the objective is to get something out of this Clinton lovefest. As I also suspected at the time, India's foreign policy types are so out to lunch that they would muff this excellent opportunity to show some inkling of cojones.

Now I really do hope that the Indian government is not planning to sign the CTBT during Clinton's visit -- not after it has been made very clear that the Big Five nuclear powers have no intention of cutting down on their nuclear programmes, and not after all the bullying tactics (courtesy China, the US, and Australia) to coerce a sovereign nation into signing a treaty it didn't want, and not after Clinton's own Senate rebuffed him. I wouldn't be surprised if it did, though. Just saddened.

Similarly, if Clinton starts poking his nose into the affairs of Jammu & Kashmir, a pre-emptive strike would be to inform him that we consider the annexation of Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona by the United States in the 1840s is something we consider non-final, and that we support the return of these territories to Mexico. We should demand referenda in those states, where all immigrants after 1846 not being allowed to vote. This would surely frame the Kashmir issue in a different light, won't it?

I will by no means gainsay the benefits of a US presidential visit to India -- the entire American press corps suddenly has 'discovered' India, and the attendant publicity is useful; after all, the coverage of India in the western media is so abyssmally negative that it couldn't possibly get any worse. Fortuitously, India's high-technology successes are also coming to the fore at this time.

Nevertheless, there is no need to do what Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, known for colorful speech, calls "BOGU" -- bend over, grease up. That is, to be completely at the mercy of the Americans, as though this were some great favor they were doing to poor, supplicating India. If Indian negotiators were cleverer, they would get a lot more mileage out of this trip.

To begin with, the foreign ministry should never have acceded to this being a trip to "South Asia". This was a fundamental mistake in framing the problem, and we are now paying for it -- bringing in Bangladesh into the picture was an unnecessary red herring that allowed the Pakistanis to insinuate themselves. India should have insisted that it was a trip to India, period. I have strong feelings about this "South Asia" nonsense anyway -- it is a mechanism which essentially diminishes India's importance by lumping it with others. India gains nothing from this.

After all, in US presidential visits, there is no insistence on covering a wide geography. When Clinton visited China, he did not make it an "East Asia" trip, covering Japan and Korea at the same time. When Jimmy Carter came to India in 1978, he did not visit Pakistan.

Incidentally, Pakistan Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, came up with the absolutely brilliant deduction that because Carter did not visit Pakistan in 1978, the Soviets felt free to invade Afghanistan! What a remarkable flight of fancy! Surely Lodhi doesn't believe it herself. (Actually, the counter-argument is that Pakistan should be happy about this, because their troops essentially control Afghanistan now, in the garb of the Taleban; and they got huge amounts of money and material from the Americans.)

The other argument Lodhi et al made was that if Clinton didn't offer the dictator Pervez Musharraf some recognition, Pakistan would fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Really, as compared to what? It has already happened: Pakistan is in the hands of extreme and fanatic Muslim fundamentalists exporting terrorism worldwide; and Musharraf is their sugar-daddy!

The whole exercise by the Pakistani lobby in the US (which, incidentally, used its clout through a former Clinton lawyer, Lanny Davis, on its payroll) was most illuminating. They blackmailed the US; why the US, including the likes of ultra-nationalist Jesse Helms, should stand for this is unclear to me. What the Pakistanis said was, "If Clinton doesn't bless the dictator, then Pakistan will fall apart."

This is a remarkable negotiating tactic. It reminded me of an aggressive beggar I once encountered in New York City -- he threatened to cut himself with a knife if I didn't give him money! They tyranny of the terminally hopeless, I suppose.

In general, I rather like Maleeha Lodhi. She's telegenic, attractive, and a good spokeswoman. Being a journalist, good at image-building, she is effective. Benazir Bhutto sent Lodhi to Washington first a few years ago; Lodhi was a 'Potemkin woman' -- Bhutto was saying to the Americans, "See, we have smart, aggressive women, who are not oppressed". Maybe not too many such exist in Pakistan in reality, but the positioning worked.

In sharp contrast to this stands India's career diplomats -- I just had a chance to observe the current Indian ambassador to the US -- who have little charisma, and no way of engaging the short attention spans of the Americans. It is a shame that India does not send as its emissaries US-educated, young, articulate, non-bureaucrats whom the Americans can relate to. This is the most important ambassadorial job for Indians, I wish the country wouldn't bungle it. Oh, for someone like Binyamin Netanyahu when he was Israeli ambassador to the US! Or even an Arundhati Ghose, the CTBT negotiator, a woman with nerves of steel!

The other problem is the remarkably poor job the chosen lobbyists are doing. Is the Indian embassy not paying enough money to find good lobbyists? They have hired some firms that have Bob Dole and Stephen Solarz on their payrolls, but is India getting its money's worth for the $ 75,000 that it shells out every month? Pakistan seems to be doing better with their $ 52,000 a month.

The efforts of a Gary Ackermann and a Frank Pallone and the India Caucus does not seem to be enough to tell the US that India and Pakistan are not comparable. Last week, the market capitalization of Wipro alone was greater than the GDP of Pakistan! Pakistan is a failed, medieval, terrorist state, not what the immortal Robin Raphel once said: "a modern, model, moderate Islamic state". Famous last words.

Then there is the issue of procedure. Why doesn't the foreign ministry designate a single spokesperson, like the US has James Rubin, and the Chinese have somebody named Zhaobang Xao or something like that? You need an obnoxious, self-important person who can pontificate on every topic with an air of omniscience. Given that I do can do this very well, I hereby volunteer to be the Indian foreign ministry's spokesman. Just kidding, but really, we need a spokesperson.

Said spokesperson could then hold forth on various issues, dispensing advice to all and sundry. Rubin feels free to suggest that India's increase in its military budget is too much; Zhaobang (whatever) tells India that it should not give refugee status to the Karmapa who fled Tibet.

The Indian spokesperson should similarly feel free to offer advice. To the Chinese: "Why don't you work out your differences with the Taiwanese through peaceful means instead of saber-rattling?". To the Americans: "Why don't you guys apologise for the harassment of 40 Indian engineers, especially when your economy would tank if it weren't for foreign skilled labor?" To the British: "We would be delighted to be intermediaries in your Irish troubles, as we are neutral and objective." Yes, I would love that job!

I was also incensed by the fact that the Americans went to the Chinese to ask if Clinton should visit Pakistan; of course the Chinese said yes. So when Clinton is in India, we should lecture him about fact that the Chinese are war-like and dangerous, citing chapter and verse in their army's recent suggestion that unless the US kept mum over Taiwan, China would send a few nuclear missiles winging their way to Los Angeles.

Clinton has a lot of skeletons in the cupboard regarding Chinese funding of his candidacy, the transfer of sensitive and advanced military technologies to China with his apparent connivance. India should make a point of pontificating about how much all this has hurt the security situation in Asia, and how much the Chinese are now bullying their neighbors over the Spratlys etc.

Also, I found it infuriating that the Chinese, in recent security talks with India, advised India to roll back its nuclear program according to some Security Council resolution. India should have retorted that we would do this as soon as the Chinese stop supplying M-11 missiles to Pakistan. Why we don't have the backbone to do this, I shall never know. Remember, this is China we're talking about, a country with more bluster than substance (see my column, "China doesn't matter").

Finally, there is protocol and Jaswant Singh. When he was a minister without portfolio, it made sense for him to be engaging a low-level aide like Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state. But as soon as he was made foreign minister, he should have immediately demanded that by protocol, he couldn't deal with anybody other than his equivalent, Madeleine Albright. The fact that Albright is a loudmouthed boor is a different matter.

The vaunted marathon talks between Talbott and Singh have yielded nothing of substance that is visible to the naked eye -- America has not moved one inch from its insistence that it will never accept India as a nuclear power. Neither has it moved away from its continuous equating of India and Pakistan, as is evident from this trip as well. I have to wonder, exactly what has Jaswant Singh accomplished? He is beginning to look like Inder Gujral, Mark II -- someone who is taken advantage of by clever interlocutors.

With a foreign policy establishment that has no strategic planning skills, no clear agenda, and no spine, it is no wonder that everyone thinks they can push India around. We need a thorough revamp of the system -- India needs professionals using sophisticated game-theoretic models, calling in the expertise of sympathetic outsiders, and above all, officials with prickly self-respect.

Postscript: Several readers spoke about the proposals I made to protest against the INS's treatment of H1-B programmers. I do hope some of you organise and do some thinking about how to take that forward. I also got several mails about the incarceration of Dr Pradhan due to charges that smack of racism at the Texas A&M University. Since the information has already been posted on rediff I will not go into detail, but I agree with the appeal from his daughter for the community to do whatever it can to support a fellow-Indian-American who looks he's being harassed.

Rajeev Srinivasan