The Hindu Business Line : Bush victory: Time to build on US-India partnership

With George W. Bush back in the White House, the nation's security will certainly be the foremost priority of his Administration. The election pledge to exterminate terrorism may have a beneficial fallout for India in that the US may be able to make Pakistan conform to accepted norms of behaviour. On the business and technological fronts, however, India has some catching up to do, says B. S. Raghavan.

The United States has undertaken a historic transformation in its bilateral relationship with India. India (is) a growing power with which we have common security interests and a shared fundamental commitment to political freedom and representative Government.

— US Republican Party manifesto for 2004 presidential election

WITH the White House in the bag, the way is clear for the re-elected US President, Mr George W. Bush, to determine the course the nation would take in the next four years. There are several reasons why he can be expected to put a new verve and zest into the execution of his election plank.

Being his second and final term, he would not be inhibited by any considerations of victory or defeat in seeking a further tenure. Unlike last time, when there was a shadow over his selection as the President by the Supreme Court by the majority of a single vote, this time around, he has won by a convincing margin of more than 3.5 million popular votes, with 51 per cent support, against Senator John Kerry's 48 per cent.

Mr Bush has been able to appeale to a preponderant proportion of voters newly registering themselves and the record turnout, especially of the youth, seems to have gone in his favour, instead of contributing to the anti-incumbency factor, as was presumed by psephologists and political pundits.

Unfinished business

For all the good, clean fight put up by his "tough, worthy and honourable" opponent, the answers Senator Kerry had for rooting out the spectre of Islamic terrorism, indelibly etched in the minds of majority of Americans by the tumbling towers of the World Trade Centre on 9/11, seemed to them tepid compared to the clear-cut, faith-based convictions of Mr Bush.

For them, again, making America safe and secure was of over-riding importance and took precedence over all other issues such as the astronomical deficit, rising unemployment, lack of health care for large numbers of the population — particularly the elderly, inadequate social security, and so on.

In this frame of mind, they were only too keen to enable Mr Bush to complete the unfinished business of wiping out the blight of terrorism in all its forms from the face of the planet, by whatever means and at whatever cost, whether by pre-emptive strikes or regime changes, and whether on the basis of concrete evidence or cooked up pretext. Moralising on these matters probably seemed to them a waste of time and opportunity since all is fair in love and war.

In the end, therefore, Mr Kerry was unable to cut ice with the array of clinically logical arguments professorially articulated by him against the "mess in Iraq" — the failure of Mr Bush "to win the peace", "outsourcing" by Mr Bush of the job of capturing Osama bin Laden to the Afghan warlords who were in cahoots with him, cornering of Iraq reconstruction contracts by the company (Halliburton) with which the Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, was associated before joining the US Government, and the undermining of the "coalition of the willing" against terror by Bush Administration's mishandling of the allies.

In the light of all that happened in the run-up to the election, one can be certain that the nation's security will be the foremost priority of the Bush Administration.

It would also be unwise on its part not to utilise the new lease of life it has got by impressive popular mandate to redeem the pledge repeatedly made by Mr Bush to exterminate terrorism, and to capture, dead or alive, Osama bin Laden, wherever found, with his hatchetmen.

There is every likelihood of the search for them being intensified all over the globe. One thing about Americans is that, once they set a mission for themselves, they pursue it with dogged determination, and it should not be surprising if Osama, like Saddam, falls into the net spread for him very early in Mr Bush's second term.

Sampler of Pakistan's doublespeak

This may have a beneficial fallout for India. Hitherto, the US was treating Pakistan with kid-gloves, and winking at the blatant acts of duplicity, exposed in all their luridity by the print and electronic media in the Western countries, in general, and the US, in particular. The Pakistan President, Gen Pervez Musharraf, has so far been able to get way with his game of double-speak.

Just look at the sampler of perfidy: Professing to go along with nuclear non-proliferation and pardoning A. Q. Khan (lest he spilt the beans) who was at the centre of the web of a conspiracy to sell, share and otherwise spread the wherewithal of nuclear capabilities to what the US regarded as "the axis of evil"; pretending to be an ally in the fight against terrorism in all its manifestations and providing material, human, financial, and infrastructural resources, and arms and weapons, and political and moral support, to terrorist groups engaged in cross-border terrorism against India, and sabotage and subversion within the country; promising to restore democracy and persisting with all the rigours of military dictatorship; proclaiming eternal fealty to the US to benefit from the flow of billions of dollars of debt-forgiveness, aid and the like, and undercutting its operations against Islamic extremists by soft-pedalling action against pro-Osama and pro-Taliban elements within its own jurisdiction.

On the other hand, in international relations, and more particularly, in its dealings with the US flowing from the concomitants of the strategic partnership, India never promised more than what it could deliver and has remained true to what it promised.

Reading between the lines of statements of high American officials and writings in the media, one gets the impression that the difference between the policies pursued by India and Pakistan had not escaped the US Administration's notice.

There is reason to believe that the US has reached the end of its patience with Pakistan and will see no more need to pamper it at the cost of India, a sister democracy with all its shared values. It will be all to the good of both India and the US if the latter gets tough with Pakistan so as to make it conform to accepted norms of behaviour.

If, indeed, the US decides to play this role of disciplining Pakistan, there will be a price to pay for India. In the eyes of the US, the India-Pakistan peace process, is important next only to that of West Asia, because of its obvious implications: Drain of resources that could be profitably employed for economic development; danger of nuclear conflagration; and detriment to the war on terrorism, America's vital concern.

India must prepare itself for some forthright exhortations from the US to hasten the process towards an early conclusion, on pain of the US itself coming up with its own suggested solution.

India Council

On the purely economic and technological fronts, India may have to do a lot of explaining on the stop-go nature of its second-generation reforms.

However, the US business and industry, which have already established beach-heads in India, are by now fully au fait in regard to the compulsions of coalition politics, even showing admiration for the deftness of its balancing act.

China has got over the hiccups that used to arise in its economic and industrial relations with the US by setting up in 1992 a China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, with all the top brass of the Government and CEOs of US business as members.

Dr Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister at the time, attended a meeting organised in 1993 by C. Subramaniam in Delhi to launch an India Council on the same lines, based on a blueprint prepared at his instance, and expressed his enthusiastic willingness to go ahead with it. It may be worthwhile for Dr Singh to implement the idea that he once found so much to his liking.

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