By embracing the US, has Modi drawn India into the quicksand of geopolitical conflict?
Amidst the hype and hyperbole of excessive media coverage of Modi-Obama summit, followed by the din of Delhi elections, a significant event with far reaching impact on India's foreign policy and geopolitical interests has been drowned and lost sight of. And defence minister Manohar Parikkar's statement that US and India are following up on the Modi-Obama joint statements and will be signing a defence deal which allows and offers among other things, military bases at each others' countries and facilities for refuelling their planes, docking their ships and replenishing their troops - a kind of staging base, confirms the worst fears of Nehru acolytes that Non-Alignment which was the sworn and sacred foreign policy of India has been given a quiet burial. Even though immediately after Nehru's demise, and the China war and defeat, India tilted toward Russia and entered into a friendship treaty encompassing defence, in effect abandoning Non Alignment, die hard Congressmen, the dyed in the wool Nehruvian socialists, continued to paint India's foreign policy as one dictated by Non-Alignment. Immediately after the Indo Russian treaty Pakistan became a military ally of America. Does this sudden switch in India's open defence alignment bode well or ill for India?
The agreements on Defence and Trade and Strategic Initiatives, Modi signed with the US may have huge beneficial defence and economic impact on India and also bring to bear geopolitical consequences. It may also complicate matters and draw India "into the shifting strategic sands of global geopolitical interests and conflicts, risking our credibility before creating our capabilities," according to Srinath Raghavan, a senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
Modi must tread with caution. The lofty speeches of the world leaders of mighty nations either of the US or its allies can not camouflage their true intent. Their moral preaching of democracy and liberty while sacrosanct in their own countries, ring hollow and are put aside without any qualms while dealing with the rest of the world. Their record over the past few hundred years during colonisation of the rest of the world and even after the second World War in the new world order that emerged, is a shameful record where countries under dictatorships which put millions to death or imprisoned, with flagrant violation of human rights, have been nurtured and supported by the US - the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos in Philippines, General Franco in Spain or General Nasser and Anwar Sadat in Egypt to name a few examples - give a lie to their moral preaching. Even today, America and its allies are supporting dictatorial regimes like Saudi Arabia who are no better when it comes to matters of freedom of speech, democratic values, fundamental rights of their citizens especially women's rights. Some of these regimes which the US supports are as barbaric and cruel as the ISIS or the Taliban, where women are stoned to death for adultery, hands are chopped off for stealing, people are hanged in public for blasphemy, and imprisoned and lashed in public for speaking their mind to media or on social websites and exercising their right to freedom of speech. President Obama did not think twice before rushing off to the funeral and eulogising the Saudi King at his funeral after his visit with Modi, a monarch who is regarded as one of the most cruel despots in modern history. It is obvious that what matters, are not morals or sudden love for India or personal chemistry and rapport with Modi, but hard geopolitical strategic economic interests of the US. The US has over the years supported the worst rightist dictators with arms as long they were capitalists and not communist dictators and there was business opportunities and critical oil and mineral resources available for exploitation. The US and other Western countries have the shameful record of supplying arms often to both sides in a conflict. If on the contrary they were Leftist dictators then the US shunned them and waged direct or proxy wars on them. It is the same with Russia which is reasserting itself as a global super power on the opposite sides in a conflict as in Syria or Iran or Afghanistan 20 years ago when India supported Russian invasion. Russia has just lifted its embargo of arms supplies to Pakistan three months ago and signed a Military Cooperation Agreement with Pakistan. If India has defence ties and moves closer to the US then Russia argued that it's free to supply arms to Pakistan. If a war breaks out soon, then the Indian and Pakistani troops will fight each other with arms supplied from both the super powers. China the third power that has emerged, after the fading of the bipolar world of the US and Russia that existed in the aftermath of the Second World War is moving with speed and filling the vacuum in many parts of Africa, South America, and South Asia, and flexing its muscles to secure critical resources and influence the course of events to its advantage. To complicate matters further, Russia and China have moved closer to counter the US, increasing global meddling with many nations.
The only moot point then is whether this new realignment of our strategic interest with the US is in India's best long term interests? There are wheels within wheels. While on "Climate Change", the US has done a bilateral deal with China, detrimental to India's interests and against the interest of the underdeveloped countries with brazen hypocrisy, on WTO disregarding the sanctity of the preeminent global trade forum, the US is charting its own interests through the Trans-Pacific partnership a special free trade zone in Asia-Pacific to counter China. The excessive oozing bonhomie between Obama and Modi may have helped remove some hurdles but Obama is on the way out and when the new government takes over after Obama completes his term in less than a couple of years, it will only look into the India-US relationship through the prism of US strategic economic interests and not through the lens of personal friendship of heads of state or what's good for India. Even a cursory study of the way the US has supplied arms and money to Pakistan in the last two decades, in order to secure access to Pakistani bases to strike at Taliban and al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, with scant disregard to India's interests, knowing full well those arms are being channelled to the ISI-supported terrorists for crossborder terrorism on India, as well as the al-Qaeda should alert Modi to the reality that this may be a good move to immediately counter China and Pakistan, but there are dangers of being naive and blindly embracing the US.
The long-term answer is for Modi to make India militarily strong and keep all options open and realign its interests as we go along, as international alignments are ever changing. To be militarily strong, india has to be a strong economy. That demands equitable growth for stability and social harmony- both of which are an underlying prerequisite. That will serve India's best interests and make it secure and earn respect internationally.