Regular readers of this column (Mother!) will know that it has long been optimistic on India--economically, politically and strategically.
Economically
, the Indian economy woke up from its long decades of socialist slumber in 1991 and is now growing at the remarkable rate: six per cent on average over the last fifteen years growing to almost eight per cent last year. If these rates of growth continue--likely but far from certain--the Indian economy will overtake the Italian economy in ten year and become the world's third largest economy after China and the U.S. by 2040.Politically
, India's democratic system of government has now survived (with only one brief wobble of authoritarianism in the 1970s) for almost sixty years. It provides a rare mixture of freedom and stability under the rule of law. And its multi-party system seems to be evolving towards the even greater stability of a two-party system on the American model with the Congress party, now in government, providing a reformist center-left coalition opposed by a reformist center-right coalition under the BJP, both relatively moderate and welcoming to foreign investment. All in all India's political institutions provide government that is open, honest and increasingly efficient--though also over-large, too bureaucratic and fussily interventionist.Strategically
, the end of the Cold War liberated the country from both its counter-productive alliance with the Soviet Union and its mistaken self-image as a leader of the Third World. Since then terrorism (from which the country has suffered disproportionately) has pushed India towards a closer relationship with the U.S. in the war on terror. And though India enjoys good relations, including massive trade, with its fast-growing super-power neighbor, China, no Indian government can forget the brief Chinese invasion of India only forty-four years ago. Delhi knows that even an emerging superpower needs reliable friends.Still, assuming all these trends continue, India will be one of three dynamic economic and political superpowers by this middle of this century (the others being the U.S. and China with the rest of the world nowhere.)
Today the rest of the world is catching up with this column in realizing the importance of the sub-continent. President Bush arrives tomorrow in Delhi for a state visit that he hopes will fasten down the strategic partnership between the U.S. and India that former U.S. Ambassador Robert Blackwill began to forge five years ago. Bush's first order of business will be to sign a civilian nuclear agreement with India to supply it with nuclear materials.
That agreement will both reward India for refraining from nuclear proliferation to third powers and remove what has been until recently a large obstacle to good Indo-U.S. relations--namely, treating India and Pakistan as equal violators of nuclear proliferation agreements. Bush's change of policy here reflects two facts: first, we know that "rogue" Pakistani scientists have passed nuclear know-how onto other Islamic countries; second, U.S. policy distinguishes between democratic states like India, judged reliable enough to be trusted with nuclear secrets and material, and despotic states like Iran judged positively dangerous on that score.
With that agreement signed, the president will hope to persuade India's reformist Prime Minister, Moammar Singh, to continue the growing military and diplomatic cooperation between the two countries seen not only in the war on terror but also in such civilian enterprises as the naval relief operations a year ago for victims of the tsunami.
But Bush will have plenty of competition. Many other powers would like to have India as a special partner in trade, diplomacy and strategy. Among those beating a path to Mr. Singh's door in the early part of this year are Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, Aussie Prime Minister John Howard, and French President Jacques Chirac who would prefer India to develop a strategic partnership with the European Union. Nor is it certain that India will choose the U.S. as its favorite.
India is not a neurotic superpower--as the Japanese were until Prime Minister Koizumi knocked some common sense into them--but it is still an ambivalent one. Almost all the economic and political developments cited above point the country towards adopting an economy strategy of free market globalization and a political one of alliance with the U.S. The two countries share a common language, common liberal democratic values, similar legal and political institutions (inherited in both cases from the British), a common strategic rival in China, and a common enemy in Al Qaeda. These similarities help to explain the growing Indian diaspora in America, the boom in U.S. companies outsourcing to India's own Silicon Valleys, the ease of military cooperation between Indian and U.S. military forces, and the fact that the U.S. is more popular in India than in any other country anywhere.
In a perceptive article in Newsweek, international editor Fareed Zakaria, himself the American son of a former Indian Cabinet Minister, argues that Indians and Americans are similar in deeper ways. The politics of both countries are vigorous, raucous, and messily democratic; the economic development of India is more similar to American individualism than to the state-directed modernization of the Asian Tigers and China; the culture is livelier and less solemn as the word "Bollywood" indicates.
Altogether, India's progress is bottom-up rather than top-down. It is also bi-partisan. Both government and opposition have advanced the economic reform agenda in the last fourteen years. So a change of government would probably not mean a drastic change of policy. It is likely to last.
Yet there are powerful groups which for various reasons dislike the switch of policy from socialism and neutralism to globalization and a pro-American diplomatic stance. India's "Regulation Raj" is naturally opposed to losing its control over economic life. Traditional industries would like to keep their protective subsidies. Influential left-wing intellectuals dislike the new official embrace of free market capitalism and globalization. Factions in the Congress government, including some ministers, hanker for India's former role as the morally upright leader of the Third World sympathetic to global socialism. And in addition to this nostalgia for the recent past, some Indians are simply nervous about getting into bed with a partner as large and overwhelming as the U.S.
Bush should therefore go carefully in wooing Delhi. Rather that stress the exclusive nature of the Indo-U.S. partnership--which frightens as well as flatters--he might want to point out that other friends of India are also linking themselves more closely to the U.S. in the post-Cold War world. John Howard's Australia is one. Tony Blair's Britain another. Following the recent election in Canada, Stephen Harper's new government is likely to move closer to the U.S. In fact the English-speaking world, plus Japan, is gradually emerging as an informal U.S. alliance. And in that alliance India would be a junior partner to nobody except the U.S.
There's safety in numbers--not only in the war on terror but also as a way of avoiding unintended domination in alliances led by a generous but sometimes careless U.S.
ENDS
John O'Sullivan is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, editor at large of National Review magazine, and a member of Benador Associates through whom he can be contacted.
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