asianaffairs

'Curzonian' Clinton, incredulous India

While India's relationship with America has flourished over recent years, Delhi is wary of coercive US policies, and balks at the prospect of joining selective efforts for regime change, writes G Parthasarathy.

By G Parthasarathy

VISIONARY: In Chennai, Hillary Clinton sketched a portrait for India's role in the 21st century that enthralled her audience

Tired of the slow administrative procedures afflicting administration in India, an exasperated Imperial Viceroy Lord Curzon proclaimed that India has 'the characteristics of an elephant, regal in gait but lumbering and slow'. It was Curzon who envisaged a role for the Indian elephant to counter Russian Imperial expansionism at the Khyber Pass and protect Imperial interests from Aden to Malacca. Thousands of Indian soldiers perished in two World Wars in pursuit of this vision. Contemporary Indian strategists have no argument with the present day relevance of Curzonian thinking, but they have one crucial difference regarding his imperatives: India will today exercise its influence across its strategic frontiers, not to advance the interests of distant Imperial powers, but to promote its own enlightened strategic interests.

Speaking to a select audience in Chennai, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sketched a vision for India's role in the 21st century that enthralled her audience. She spoke of India-US co-operation in the G20 to 'rebalance' the world economy and to try and curb global nuclear proliferation. She reiterated American commitment of support for India's candidature for Permanent Membership of the Security Council. Most importantly, she sketched a vision of the potential for India-US cooperation in efforts to build an inclusive architecture for co-operation and security in Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.

For good measure, she added that, like the US, India looks 'both east and west', to the 'Atlantic and Pacific', while calling for a larger Indian role in Central Asia and assuring her audience that India would have a role in the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, which she stressed would be Afghan-led.

Tired of the slow administrative procedures afflicting administration in India, an exasperated Imperial Viceroy Lord Curzon proclaimed that India has 'the characteristics of an elephant, regal in gait but lumbering and slow'. It was Curzon who envisaged a role for the Indian elephant to counter Russian Imperial expansionism at the Khyber Pass and protect Imperial interests from Aden to Malacca. Thousands of Indian soldiers perished in two World Wars in pursuit of this vision. Contemporary Indian strategists have no argument with the present day relevance of Curzonian thinking, but they have one crucial difference regarding his imperatives: India will today exercise its influence across its strategic frontiers, not to advance the interests of distant Imperial powers, but to promote its own enlightened strategic interests.

Speaking to a select audience in Chennai, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sketched a vision for India's role in the 21st century that enthralled her audience. She spoke of India-US co-operation in the G20 to 'rebalance' the world economy and to try and curb global nuclear proliferation. She reiterated American commitment of support for India's candidature for Permanent Membership of the Security Council. Most importantly, she sketched a vision of the potential for India-US cooperation in efforts to build an inclusive architecture for co-operation and security in Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. For good measure, she added that, like the US, India looks 'both east and west', to the 'Atlantic and Pacific', while calling for a larger Indian role in Central Asia and assuring her audience that India would have a role in the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, which she stressed would be Afghan-led.

While Clinton's words in Chennai were reassuring and welcome, Indians are wary of the lack of consistency and periodic shifts in American policies towards Pakistan and China, two neighbours locked in a mutual embrace to 'contain' India. The US zeal for nuclear non-proliferation is seen in India as being selective, as it constantly ignores the continuing transfer of nuclear weapons designs, Plutonium facilities and missile systems from China to Pakistan. Thus, while there is immense satisfaction in India at the way India-American relations have grown in recent years and expectations that this process will continue, New Delhi is wary about US policies that could erode its strategic autonomy on crucial issues like its energy security. Moreover, while India is willing to share its democratic experiences with those who seek to avail of it, New Delhi has no interest in joining selective efforts for regime change, like those now underway in Libya.

American attempts to undermine India's payment arrangements for oil imports from Iran have infuriated policy-makers in New Delhi recently. While India has scrupulously abided by UN sanctions on Iran and even backed US efforts in the IAEA to compel Tehran to be more transparent about its nuclear programme, India has, like China, Japan and South Korea, refused to end oil imports from Iran. Like the United States, India has endeavoured to avoid over-dependence on any one source for its growing oil imports, though over 70 per cent of its imports are from the Arab Gulf countries and Iran. The US has, however, progressively reduced its dependence on oil import from the politically volatile Persian Gulf region. But, at the same time, the Americans have no inhibitions in retaining Hugo Chavez's Venezuela as one of their four largest suppliers of oil. Chavez has lobbied in OPEC for huge rises in petroleum prices and courted American adversaries like Cuba and Iran. The Americans in turn have lobbied against arms sales to Venezuela and failed in efforts to ostracize Chavez in the Organization of American States. Yet all this has not deterred the United States from continuously increasing its oil imports from Venezuela, because of its proximity.

What Indians are asking is that if the US is prepared to overlook its political and diplomatic imperatives and guarantee its own energy security by oil imports from a nearby country like Venezuela, what moral right do the Americans have to undermine the energy security of countries like India and China by coercive moves to disrupt imports from Iran? India is now confronted with a serious challenge to its energy security by unilateral American moves to undermine and disrupt arrangements that are in place for making payments for its oil imports from Iran. The US has acted to disrupt payment arrangements for oil imports under the Asian Clearing Union. It has pressurised European Banks utilized for Indian oil imports from Iran directly and through European Leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to terminate arrangements with India for oil payments to Iran. These pressures led to the German Government compelling the Europaisch-Iranische Handelsbank A G to end facilities for Indian payments to Iran for its oil imports. India has a huge trade deficit of over $10 billion with Iran, making bilateral/barter arrangements for a settlement unworkable. China, on the other hand, has large scale project involvement in Iran and can better limit its deficits. Despite this, even China is reportedly facing problems on payments for Iranian oil imports.

While Saudi Arabia has agreed to meet India's needs, following the impasse over payments for Iranian oil imports, it would be dangerous for India not to have a wide range of options in this regard. There has been a remarkable improvement in relations between India and Saudi Arabia in recent years. Indians cannot, however, forget that in 1974 Saudi Arabia withheld oil supplies, attempting to compel India to close the Israeli Consulate in Mumbai. Given the volatility of the situation in the Persian Gulf, India has to retain a wide basket of countries to meet its energy needs. Following a concerted diplomatic effort, payments for oil imports from Iran have now tentatively been arranged through a Turkish Bank, the Turkiye Halk Bankasi. But coercive American diplomacy on this issue will remain an irritant, clouding an otherwise increasingly co-operative relationship.

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