Opinion Before the chance fades

After her election as the senator from New York,Clinton founded the India caucus in the upper house of the US Congress. When most leading lights of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy establishment were rallying against the controversial Indo-US civil nuclear initiative during 2005-08,Clinton was unwavering in her support.

With those credentials,Clinton has had no problem dispelling New Delhi’s apprehensions that the Obama administration might turn its back on India to focus on ties with China and Pakistan.

There was even greater concern in New Delhi about President Barack Obama’s loud thinking on Jammu and Kashmir,which this newspaper drew attention a few days before he was elected president,

As he settled down in office,Obama made it clear that there was no question of meddling in Jammu and Kashmir and that he would build on the advances in Indo-US relations made during the Clinton and George W. Bush years.

In the last couple of weeks,Hillary Clinton has gone a step further. She has taken ownership of Washington’s ties with New Delhi,and has promised to mobilise the full weight of the US government in boosting the bilateral relationship to a higher orbit.

As they set about this ambitious task,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Secretary Clinton must salvage the Indo-US discourse on global issues from the persistent negativism in both countries.

The American liberals (see the dripping condescension of the The New York Times editorial on Saturday) and the Indian conservatives (who cannot imagine life without American pressure on trade,global warming and non-proliferation) seem convinced that Indo-US train wreck on global issues is unavoidable.

Manmohan Singh and Clinton know that these multilateral negotiations involve any number of actors with varying motives and goals. Coming as they do from messy democracies,the prime minister and the secretary are acutely aware that clinching deals at home will be far tougher than at Geneva and Vienna.

Selling emission cuts to American sceptics will be as hard as convincing India’s “per capita fundamentalists”. On the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,New Delhi knows that the US nuclear weapons laboratories will oppose it as much as those in

India who never liked a nuclear treaty that they have seen. And need we mention the incessant contestation on trade politics in US and India?

One must be more than paranoid to believe that Clinton comes with a strong domestic consensus on the Doha round,global warming,and nuclear disarmament. For India,then,the question is not about resisting American pressure but of exploring together with the United States a way forward on pressing global challenges.

For more than more than six decades,the United States,as the world’s pre-eminent power,has organised and maintained the global order on trade and finance. Washington has also defined the rules for the management of our global commons.

We do know now that US cannot forever bear this burden unilaterally. As realists,Obama and Clinton are saying that the US needs other powers — old and new — to share the costs of producing collective goods and managing the global commons.

If a rising India does not seize this opportunity for leadership on global issues,America will have no choice but to turn to China. If India is short-sighted it will make the emergence of the “Group of Two” — or the Sino-American condominium — inevitable.

What the Obama administration has been looking for is a change of strategic direction on New Delhi’s part. In the last few days,the prime minister has indeed signaled that India is ready to take up its international responsibilities. The prime minister and the secretary must now order their bureaucracies to translate the notion of shared leadership on global issues into mutually acceptable terms.

Turning to the bilateral agenda,which in the end is far more consequential than the multilateral one,the two sides will hopefully clear much of the accumulated backlog. A whole host of mutually beneficial agreements had been held up either by political resistance in New Delhi and bureaucratic pettifogging in Washington.

Clearing the table of past agreements,Manmohan Singh and Clinton must be bold enough to begin an honest conversation on Pakistan. For far too long,the US has either lectured India on what it ought to do with Pakistan or ignored India’s genuine concerns on US-Pakistan relations in the name of de-hyphenation.

New Delhi,in turn,has swung wildly between objecting to Washington’s unsolicited advice and soliciting American support to restrain Pakistan’s pursuit of violent extremism.

As their security interests converge for the first time in the north-western parts of the subcontinent,the time has come for India and the United States to think and act together in helping Pakistan move towards political moderation,economic modernisation and regional integration.

If Washington and New Delhi recognise that neither of them has the power to unilaterally change Islamabad’s course,it should not be impossible for them to begin coordinating their policies towards Pakistan and Afghanistan and create the basis for a historic reconciliation in the subcontinent.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,Nanyang Technological University,Singapore express@expressindia.com