In this issue . . .

EDITORIALS
Sam Nunn on the nuclear transition, plus terrorizing democracies and rethinking Asia
FEATURES
The mirage of Middle East peace, why India matters, a letter from Tehran, and more...
RUSSIA ON THE EVE
Its foreign policy toward the West, its nightmare in the Caucasus, challenges ahead, optimism, and illusions of nationalism
GLOBAL TRENDS: SHAPING THE FUTURE
The individual in an age of information, a postmodern society, and the promise of new energy for tomorrow
CHARLES COOK ON WASHINGTON
Elections 2000: Close Calls and Long Shots

India Matters

Excerpt:

There are recent reports that President Clinton plans to visit India on his own initiative early in the new year. This seems to indicate that the U.S. administration has finally awakened to its folly in canceling the president's scheduled visit to New Delhi in the fall of 1998 in the wake of India's nuclear tests that year. At least three lengthy telephone calls from President Clinton to Prime Minister Vajpayee to discuss the Kargil crisis; the general state of Indian-U.S. relations, including his desire to visit India; and the military coup in Pakistan indicate that Washington has been reevaluating India's position in U.S. foreign policy. There is, however, a continuing propensity among analysts to underestimate India's importance to the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals, especially those relating to Asia. India in fact matters more than many in Washington are willing to admit.

I would like to make this case primarily in the context of U.S. political and strategic concerns, particularly in Asia. In doing so, I assume that in the 1990s there has been growing awareness in the United States of India's economic potential both as a market for foreign goods and services and as a producer of goods and services for the international market. Even at the relatively modest and sustainable growth rate of around 6 percent, India's gross national product can be expected to double in 12 years. Trade and investment data already bear out India's growing importance to the United States. Moreover, given its advantages in terms of both technically skilled manpower and command over the English language by a substantial section of the working population, India has the capacity to play an increasingly important role in the sphere of service industries. The Indian share of the global market is, therefore, likely to grow rapidly as the share of services -- especially in the information and related fields -- in the global economy expands further during the next decade.1 All this is obviously significant to U.S. policy toward India. However, while taking into account the importance of the economic realm, I shall restrict my argument for the sake of brevity and precision to the political and security arenas.

During the Cold War years, India was politically underrated for two interrelated reasons: First, U.S. policymakers were obsessed with the Soviet Union and secondarily with China. These obsessions were dictated by ideological, military, and political rivalries that together constituted the Cold War. Every other foreign policy concern was either relegated to a subsidiary level or perceived and tackled within the Cold War framework. Second, India's policy of nonalignment and later its tilt toward the Soviet Union following the U.S. embrace of Pakistan in the mid-1950s alienated U.S. opinion to such an extent that the policymaking elite became either hostile toward, or dismissive of, India. The widely divergent postures adopted by New Delhi and Washington on the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s added to U.S., and more generally Western, mistrust of India.

Unfortunately, to a substantial extent this mind-set survived the Cold War. India's greater openness to the world economy from 1991 made a qualitative difference in terms of the perception of U.S. business. However, the political and the bureaucratic elite continued to view India for quite some time with the same hostile or dismissive lenses they had become used to in earlier decades. Differences over nuclear nonproliferation issues, especially India's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament in 1995-1996, further augmented the traditional U.S. image of India as a major "spoiler" intent on obstructing America's "benign" designs to make the world safe from weapons of mass destruction.

Paradoxically, it took the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998 to make U.S. policymakers sit up and seriously note India's security concerns and its capabilities. . . .

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