Does India crave international recognition?
Barack Obama , the charmer, won over India. The US President enthralled Indians by declaring that “in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member” . He comforted them by saying he will “continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice.”
He flattered them by recalling India’s ‘treasured past’ , its invention of the digit ‘zero’ and its civilisation that “has been shaping the world for thousands of
years” . And he delighted them by labelling the US-India relationship ‘the defining partnership of the 21st century’ . Mahatma Gandhi found mention in almost all his speeches, to the extent that he linked his rise as president to “Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world” .
Obama came as a salesman for his country, bagging multibillion-dollar deals and laying the ground for more big contracts, yet the visit will be remembered for his public diplomacy in seeking to elevate his host nation to ‘its rightful place in the world’ . A year earlier, Obama had stroked India’s collective ego by inviting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his presidency’s first state dinner, leading to the joke that while China gets a deferential America and Pakistan secures billions of dollars in US aid periodically, India is easily won over with a sumptuous dinner and nice compliments.
India actually has exposed its main weakness for long — a craving for international recognition and status. While some states have been able to surmount their colonial legacies, India remains hobbled by a subaltern mindset. It attaches greater value to receiving external recognition and approbation than to the pursuit of resolute, goal-oriented statecraft . It is thus particularly vulnerable to seduction by praise. Other powers play to that weakness through pleasing but empty gestures or statements amounting to little more than ego massage.
In fact, Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush, openly played to India’s ego and to Pakistan’s longing for security while unveiling his momentous decision to sell F-16 s in March 2005 to Islamabad . The same day his administration patronisingly offered to help make India a ‘major world power in the 21st century’ . The Indian elation that greeted the offer helped obscure the larger implications of the F-16 decision.
That decision marked the beginning of a major US rearming of Pakistan with largely India-centric weapon systems. Such lethal supply to Islamabad has continued to date even as the US has emerged as the single largest arms seller to India since 2008. Indian diplomacy has not only failed to persuade Washington to stop arming a terror-exporting Pakistan , but also has put up with the US building parallel intelligence-sharing , defence cooperation and strategic relationships with Islamabad and New Delhi.
US policy effectively has moved from hyphenation to parallelism. The new approach involves following separate parallel tracks with India and Pakistan, thereby allowing the US to push its interests better. That approach also permits the US to prop up the Pakistani state without causing a crisis with India, with Obama pledging more than $10 billion in aid to Islamabad since last year.
He flattered them by recalling India’s ‘treasured past’ , its invention of the digit ‘zero’ and its civilisation that “has been shaping the world for thousands of
years” . And he delighted them by labelling the US-India relationship ‘the defining partnership of the 21st century’ . Mahatma Gandhi found mention in almost all his speeches, to the extent that he linked his rise as president to “Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world” .Obama came as a salesman for his country, bagging multibillion-dollar deals and laying the ground for more big contracts, yet the visit will be remembered for his public diplomacy in seeking to elevate his host nation to ‘its rightful place in the world’ . A year earlier, Obama had stroked India’s collective ego by inviting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his presidency’s first state dinner, leading to the joke that while China gets a deferential America and Pakistan secures billions of dollars in US aid periodically, India is easily won over with a sumptuous dinner and nice compliments.
India actually has exposed its main weakness for long — a craving for international recognition and status. While some states have been able to surmount their colonial legacies, India remains hobbled by a subaltern mindset. It attaches greater value to receiving external recognition and approbation than to the pursuit of resolute, goal-oriented statecraft . It is thus particularly vulnerable to seduction by praise. Other powers play to that weakness through pleasing but empty gestures or statements amounting to little more than ego massage.
In fact, Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush, openly played to India’s ego and to Pakistan’s longing for security while unveiling his momentous decision to sell F-16 s in March 2005 to Islamabad . The same day his administration patronisingly offered to help make India a ‘major world power in the 21st century’ . The Indian elation that greeted the offer helped obscure the larger implications of the F-16 decision.
That decision marked the beginning of a major US rearming of Pakistan with largely India-centric weapon systems. Such lethal supply to Islamabad has continued to date even as the US has emerged as the single largest arms seller to India since 2008. Indian diplomacy has not only failed to persuade Washington to stop arming a terror-exporting Pakistan , but also has put up with the US building parallel intelligence-sharing , defence cooperation and strategic relationships with Islamabad and New Delhi.
US policy effectively has moved from hyphenation to parallelism. The new approach involves following separate parallel tracks with India and Pakistan, thereby allowing the US to push its interests better. That approach also permits the US to prop up the Pakistani state without causing a crisis with India, with Obama pledging more than $10 billion in aid to Islamabad since last year.
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