In a unipolar
world it makes sense to ally with the dominant power and India is
abandoning its nonaligned status to curry America’s favor for the
benefit of technology and foreign investment. The critical question is
at what price. America’s interests are to use India to contain China in
conventional military strength. It wants India to maintain a large
modern armed force. Only India can match China in numbers. It has common
land borders with China and thus can serve as a launching point for
American air and land forces in any future conflict with China, just as
Britain did against Germany in WW2 due to its contiguity.
John Mearsheimer’s book on great power strategy clearly delineates that
no great power can achieve world dominance unless it has nuclear
dominance. This is why America continues to improve and maintain its
nuclear arsenal in violation of the letter of the Nuclear Proliferation
Treaty. It is however hampered by Russia which has been dethroned in
economic and conventional military terms, but still retains nuclear
parity. To counter that, America has spent over a hundred billion
dollars on anti-ballistic missiles and is militarizing space with
so-called rods from god. Mearsheimer points out that it is absolutely
imperative that the sole regional hegemon like America, thwart the rise
of a distant regional hegemon. He illustrates the historical failure of
any regional hegemon to project power beyond large bodies of water. The
best strategy is to create regional competitors. Thus America has
promoted the remilitarization of Japan in Northeast Asia and is shifting
naval and armed forces to Guam in the Pacific ocean.
It has failed in South Korea which is becoming more hostile to both
America and Japan and likely to remain neutral or possibly even friendly
towards China. America’s foolish policy towards North Korea and not
reining in Japan on the matter of a few disputed islands is the cause of
this. America therefore wishes to buttress India on China’s southern
flank, but does not wish India to achieve an independent nuclear
deterrence or missile delivery systems to match China. It has made its
second foolish mistake by enriching China by trade to appease the greed
of its multinational corporations which finance its two equally
irresponsible political parties. It knows that India can be bullied
presently but ultimately it may show the same independent streak like
China, which has come to haunt America presently.
Thus it has twisted India’s arms to vote against Iran twice at the IAEA,
jeopardizing its energy supplies. Similar pressures have been put about
India’s energy deals with Syria, Sudan and Mynmar. Rumor has it that it
is currently pressuring India not to test Agni 3, its 3000 Km. ballistic
missile. The current Indian prime minister is too beholden to Sonia to
make independent decisions and she is subject to American pressure. Thus
India’s policies are at the mercy of a chain of puppets.
What is interesting is that Pakistan has resisted pressure and is going
on with the Iran gas pipeline. It also will not serve as an airbase
against China and its land connection to China is the highly vulnerable
Karakoram highway. It is greatly beholden to China and unlikely to
provide an attack base against China for all the tea in America. It did
so against its progeny Taliban in Afghanistan to save itself from
American bombardment. It cannot abandon reliable China for unreliable
America which has left it at the altar on more than one previous
occasion. It knows that America needs it to pressure Iran and serve as
an entry point to Afghanistan and access Central Asian energy reserves.
This is why it can partially thumb its nose at America by refusing to
allow the interrogation of A. Q. Khan.
India seems
to be blissfully unaware of its importance to America and thus it
remains hanging dry in the wind as American Congress modifies the
nuclear deal to ban any further tests and now floats the cutoff of
production of fissile material. It is interesting that it has allowed
Japan to amass enough Plutonium for nearly 5000 bombs. The Indian
leadership behaves as though it has a screw loose in rushing into
treaties and hoopla without forethought or foresight. Now America is
tightening the screws on India.
The current American administration lurches from blunder to blunder out
of neo-con hubris as the unraveling of Afghanistan and Iraq show. It has
rejected sensible compromises with North Korea due to persistent
belligerence, as pointed out by Selig Harrison and others and
gratuitously insulted China during Hu’s recent visit and pointed fingers
at Russia which resulted in a sharp hostile rejoinder by Putin. In the
meantime China and Russia are expanding the SCO to lock out America from
the region and trying to be inclusive to Iran and even India.
America suffers from a credibility gap like the boy who cried wolf.
After the Iraq debacle no one pays attention to its scare tactics on
WMDs. Its foolish partiality in dealing with the Palestinian and North
Korean crises have Convinced the Arab street and South Korea that it is
not an honest mediator. Its tolerance of the autocratic regimes in
Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States and Azerbaijan makes
a mockery of its agenda to promote democracy. Its neoliberal
exploitation has disenchanted the Caribbean and Latin American nations.
Its promotion of free trade agreements is ignored because of its
domestic agricultural subsidies and selective tariff trade barriers to
appease domestic vested corporate interests. Thus its proclamations
barely elicit anything more than bored yawns the world over.
India’s problem is a crisis of confidence and will, compounded by the
naive ignorance of any realpolitik by its leaders. Its parliament
consists of a large percentage with criminal charges against them. The
scandals of the American Congress and lobbyists, though of lesser
magnitude are a close match of India’s corrupt elected leaders. The
bumbling pair are destined to step on each others toes to the detriment
of both.
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