Dangers Of Dithering

Vajpayee's visit to the US was undoubtedly a success but before they start wallowing in troughs of complacency, Indian officials would do well to pay closer heed to the dissonant undertones that have begun to be heard once again. For this, one needs to go beyond the Clinton state department and listen to what academics and policy entrepreneurs are saying in the think-tanks that abound inside Washington's beltway. For this is where the policy of the next administration is being cooked today. These voices reflect a growing impatience with India's eternal procrastination on key issues such as the ctbt and the resumption of a dialogue with Pakistan over Kashmir, and a mounting distrust of its motives.

Both these sentiments were reflected in a recent lead editorial in The New York Times titled 'A Tilt Towards India'. It argued that since India is by far the largest and most stable country in South Asia, the initiative in defusing tension and resolving problems must come from it, no matter what its neighbours do. Somewhat paradoxically, it believes that the initiative in allaying China's fears must also come from India. Implicitly therefore, and this is the important point, it's India, and not China or Pakistan, that's to blame for the rising threat of war, not to mention nuclear war, in South Asia.

The view from New Delhi is, of course, entirely different. Far from feeling in control of its future, India feels imperilled and caught helplessly in a maelstrom of change in its immediate neighbourhood. These changes are taking place in both of its traditional antagonists, Pakistan and China. In contrast to India, neither Pakistan nor China are either democratic or stable. Lacking any alternate basis for political legitimacy, China's leaders are repressing all dissenting voices at home and beating the drum of nationalism abroad. Such a state can only grow more unpredictable over the next few years. So far, Pakistan's military regime has failed to solve even one of the country's chronic problems. It's backtracked on its tentative effort to curb abuses of Islamic law such as the misuse of the blasphemy laws. It hasn't been able to tax traders or discipline the smugglers whose 'duty free' imports cut the government's revenues by about 30 per cent. And it has failed to engineer a disengagement in Kashmir. If the failure persists, army rule too will be discredited, and only the jehadis and fundamentalists will remain. Pakistan's 'Talibanisation' will then be imminent.

The growing internal crisis in China may be one reason why it's not merely continuing but has intensified its collaboration with Pakistan. For instance in July, Pakistan switched from enriched uranium to plutonium as the fissile material for its bombs. This was made possible by the commissioning of an unsafeguarded nuclear reactor at Khushab provided to it by China in flagrant violation of its obligations as a nuclear signatory to the ctbt. At a conservative estimate this has more than doubled the rate at which Pakistan is able to accumulate fissile material. President Clinton brought this up with President Jiang Zemin when they met at the millennium session of the UN in New York, but as he did during Clinton's visit to Beijing in June 1998, Jiang simply brushed the subject aside.

The Americans are fully aware of these developments. If despite that they are displaying a mounting impatience with India it is because, to use an American expression, they've begun to suspect that India is 'yanking their chain'. From their point of view this incipient distrust is understandable. After nine or ten rounds spread over almost two years the Talbott-Jaswant Singh talks appear to have yielded precisely nothing. Worse still, India has given assurance after assurance that it'll sign the ctbt in a year; after building a national consensus, and that it won't stand in the way of the ctbt coming into force, i.e will sign when the US and other countries including Pakistan do so. But India didn't sign the treaty during Clinton's visit to India, it again did not do so during Vajpayee's US visit. The suspicion is therefore growing that India is indulging in 'typical Hindu deviousness' - a feeling that is being fed assiduously by Pakistan, China, and somewhat surprisingly, by Britain.

The distrust is carrying over to their appraisal of New Delhi's refusal to resume a dialogue with Islamabad. Pakistan's 'track two' diplomats have sowed the suspicion that India is adopting an unreasonably hard line as it believes it has the Clinton administration in its pocket. Their reflexive response has been to ask the US to build up pressure on India to start talking to Gen Musharraf. If the distrust is allowed to bloom, chances are that even a Gore administration will rapidly distance itself from the cosiness that was built up during the past two years. US policy (as distinct from pronouncements) will become markedly more unfriendly. Sanctions will continue; India will continue to be denied cutting-edge technology and weapons, affecting its armed forces; Indian aerospace companies will remain on the black list and China's transgressions of the npt will continue to be ignored. On top of this the US is likely to start exerting itself more forcefully on Kashmir.

The way to stop these developments is to sign the ctbt. This is in any case desirable as in lieu of doing so India has surreptitiously taken on far more onerous restraints. Thus it has suspended further development of the Agni; it has only now ordered 300 more Prithvi missiles, but has given assurances that it won't deploy them with nuclear warheads and, reading between the lines, it has not married any warheads to missiles. Far from harming Indian security, signing the ctbt even at this late date will free India from some of these constraints and enable it to catch up with Pakistan which is rapidly building a second strike capability by locating some of its Ghauri missile silos in the mountains of Baluchistan where they cannot be reached by either the Prithvis or the Indian Air Force.