NEWSLINKS US EDITION COLUMNISTS DIARY SPECIALS INTERVIEWS CAPITAL BUZZ REDIFF POLL THE STATES ELECTIONS ARCHIVES US ARCHIVES SEARCH REDIFF
The non-proliferation centre of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- the most influential private think-tank in the United States -- believes there is a strong vested interest in India's enthusiastic endorsement of President George W Bush's proposed national missile defence system.
In an analysis titled 'New Delhi: Searching for an "Alliance of Interests" with Washington', the Carnegie centre said, "The Indian government had calculated that a Bush administration in search of missile defenses to secure its homeland will be more understanding of the BJP's nuclear weapons-related efforts to secure its homeland."
It said, "Three years after the nadir in US-India relations, the turnaround is striking. India, still under US post-nuclear tests sanctions, has been virtually alone in its unprecedented and enthusiastic endorsement of the Bush Administration's push for missile defences."
The analysis points to the quid pro quo New Delhi is angling for -- namely, that India's support for Bush's NMD will be met by a Washington more open to India's acquisition of a nuclear deterrent -- and says that mindset was apparent in Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's statement responding to the proposed NMD system.
On May 11, Vajpayee said India welcomes "every move towards lightening the shadow of nuclear terror under which we live today. It is in this context that we have welcomed President Bush's suggestions for steep reductions in nuclear arsenals and a move away from further development of offensive nuclear technologies."
But, the Carnegie analysis points out, "he also reiterated his government's commitment to a credible minimum nuclear deterrent", which Vajpayee had declared was "a basic security umbrella which we owe to our people", and also reflected that the world had "a much better appreciation now of [India's] perceptions of [its] security environment, which had guided that decision [to test]".
In other words, as the analysis points out, Vajpayee was using Bush's NMD proposal to justify India's own nuclear tests.
The analysis points out that China and Islamabad had strongly criticised the Bush NMD plan and voiced what they said was international concern at the development and deployment of a ballistic missile defence, which, they said, could jeopardize strategic stability and trigger a new arms race.
The Indian government had described President Bush's May 1 speech, wherein he outlined his vision for an NMD system, as "highly significant and far-reaching". The Indian viewpoint has been that "there is a strategic and technological inevitability in stepping away from a world that is held hostage by the doctrine of MAD (mutually assured destruction) to a co-operative, defensive transition that is underpinned by further cuts and a de-alert of nuclear forces".
Carnegie said New Delhi's enthusiasm had been tempered only slightly when Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov visited India on May 3. In the course of his reciprocal visit to Moscow, Minister for Defence and External Affairs Jaswant Singh tempered the Indian enthusiasm only slightly, when he remarked that the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty "should not be abrogated unilaterally".
According to the Carnegie analysis, this was just to mollify Moscow, since India buys most of its military hardware from Russia.
The analysis also points out that Bush's expression of willingness to reach out to Russia on the issue of missile defences "has given India the space for endorsing the administration's position".
Carnegie credited former president Clinton's highly successful visit to India in March 2000 for the change in Indo-US relations. "Consequently, in the waning days of the last administration, New Delhi and Washington discovered each other as 'natural allies' and the ruling BJP now anticipates that the Bush administration will take ties where they have never been before," the analysis says.
The Carnegie analysis points out that given the administration's open antipathy to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it is unlikely that Washington will push a non-proliferation agenda that is unpopular with India.
It argued that "the taste of a growing importance in Washington with the expectation that sanctions will be removed and high-level defence ties restored, the prospect of emerging as Washington's preferred ally in its effort to 'balance' China in the region, a sense of inevitability of the US direction on missile defence and the opportunity to isolate Pakistan, have all contributed to the BJP's shift in strategy".
The analysis argues that Jaswant Singh's remarks, after a visit to Washington in April, in the course of which he met President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, lent credence to this contention.
Singh said at the time that today's reality requires "a re-evaluation of all the fixed points of assessment... There is now a very interesting coincidence of India's national interest and the security of the United States."
The task ahead, Singh declared, is "how to convert this reality of interests into an alliance of interests".
Back to top
Tell us what you think of this report
