Bush in India

From the pages of "The Economist"

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ON THE 13-hour flight next week from Washington to Delhi, George Bush could do a lot worse than to put aside his briefing books and curl up instead with E.M. Forster's best-known novel. “A Passage to India” is a tale, above all, of misunderstanding: of wrong signals, exaggerated expectations, offence unwittingly caused and taken, and inevitable disappointment. It is a parable of the complications that arise when eager Anglo-Saxons go travelling on the Indian subcontinent.

A degree of wide-eyed enthusiasm on Mr Bush's part is forgivable. India is a rich and exotic prize. Its booming high-tech service sector and tens of millions of affluent consumers have already convinced many of the world's business people that India is on the brink of replicating the astonishing burst of growth that transformed China from poor-house to power-house in little more than two decades. Add in the seductive fact that this “new China” is the world's largest democracy, and the arguments for forging a much closer partnership between India and America seem unassailable.
Rising India

It would not be before time, either. America has neglected India in the past. When Bill Clinton went to Delhi in 2000, his was the first presidential visit for 22 years, and it is surely not a good thing that Mr Bush has waited quite so long to make his own inaugural trip there. India is a nuclear power, home to more Muslims than any country but Indonesia; and it borders China, which many American policymakers see as at best a growing rival and at worst a future enemy. India is seldom regarded in the same way, even though it favoured the Soviet side in the cold war and even though Indian firms offer just as tough competition for parts of America's service sector as Chinese factories do to low-end manufacturing.

Despite all this, there are reasons to urge both sides to tread as carefully as angels before they rush in to an over-enthusiastic partnership. Mr Bush needs to avoid two kinds of mistake. The first, and most serious, would be to shower America's new friend with gifts that the United States can ill afford. Unfortunately, this has already happened. In July, when India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, visited Washington, he came home with a remarkable present: a promise from Mr Bush that he would aim to share American civilian nuclear technology with India.

That was too generous. Under American and international law, such technology can be given only to countries that have renounced nuclear weapons and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India has never joined the treaty, and it tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Mr Bush, in effect, was driving a coach and horses through the treaty in order to suit his own strategic ends, a move that invites the accusation of hypocrisy from other nuclear states and wannabes not so favoured. The idea was that India, in return, should take steps to satisfy the Americans on a long list of nuclear-security concerns, such as not exporting weapons technology and continuing to observe a moratorium on testing. Most important, India was asked to separate its civilian and military nuclear programmes, with the former subject to a rigorous inspection regime.

So far, however, the proposals offered by the Indians actually to do all this are far from adequate. As Mr Bush packs his bags, desperate attempts are being made to bridge the gap. The obvious danger is that in order to portray his summit as a success Mr Bush will be tempted to accept even fewer safeguards from India. That would be a dangerous mistake: nuclear proliferation matters too much to allow excessive wiggle-room or create bad precedents. Fortunately, whatever deal is agreed between Mr Bush and Mr Singh will also require the approval of America's Congress, which has already taken a dim view of Mr Bush's nuclear generosity to India.
Fearful China

Sending the wrong signal on nuclear weapons is not the only potential pitfall in America's romance with India. Mr Bush should also be wary of sending the wrong signal about America's intentions towards China. Too often when Indian-American relations are discussed in Washington, the notion is invoked that India might somehow turn out to be a “counterweight” to China. Yet it is hard to see, in practical terms, what sort of counterweight India could actually be. On the contrary, that sort of talk is liable only to reinforce China's fear that America's grand strategic design is to encircle it and block its rise as a great power. That fear has already been strengthened by America's recent transfer of some of its military might from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The United States should not base its Asian strategy on that sort of balance-of-power diplomacy. Apart from anything else, India is far too canny, and cares too much about its own China relationship, to be drawn into such a game. Instead of encircling China, Mr Bush should concentrate on putting the American relationship with it on the right footing: deeper engagement, coupled with a determination to make China play by the rules. Yet Mr Bush's approach to this rising superpower has sometimes seemed almost casual: Hu Jintao, China's president, had been made to wait far too long for his state visit to Washington even before Hurricane Katrina forced him to cancel a visit last August. And Mr Bush has not worked hard enough at home to make the free-trade case against the protectionist hawks gunning for China (though, to be fair to him, he has not given them much comfort either).

Mr Bush must also take care to ensure that friendship with India does not damage his close ties to Pakistan, another American ally the president intends to visit on this trip. Pakistan is infinitely more fragile than India, but right now of much greater strategic significance to America. It is central to the fight against the remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. On top of that, it has an awful record of selling (by unauthorised freelancers, claims its government) nuclear-weapons technology on the open market. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, has lately shown signs of flexibility towards his country's long and dangerous dispute with India over Kashmir. But both countries need to show flexibility on Kashmir, and Mr Bush must take care not to tilt so far India's way that the Indians feel under no pressure to make concessions of their own. That will merely weaken Mr Musharraf and enfeeble a valuable American ally.

India itself has much to lose if its love-in with America goes wrong. For Mr Singh personally, the stakes are quite high. By backing American efforts to tackle Iran's nuclear ambitions, he has infuriated the left-wing parties on whose support his minority government depends, as well as some of his own party colleagues. If he cannot pull off a decent nuclear deal of his own, he will suffer for it. He is already learning that America's embrace is not the uncomplicated affair he might have hoped for. A visionary Indian project would see gas piped from Iran, via Pakistan. But as relations between America and Iran rapidly deteriorate, America is ever more reluctant to see it go ahead. Meanwhile, India's growing trade with America, whether in textiles or software services, is starting to run into a new generation of Asia-bashers in America. As E.M. Forster knew, no passage to India is ever entirely smooth.