Font size: 
A crushing blow was dealt to the communists and caste-based and regional politics. The communists will take a long time to recover from the drubbing, while the aspirations of the Dalit, or low-caste, queen of India, Kumari Mayawati Das, suffered a major setback. The incumbent Congress party can now continue to disentangle the socialistic mess created by earlier leaders. This is good news for U.S. business and diplomatic interests.
Obama should therefore put the “China first” advice of his foreign policy advisors on the back burner and work on the “India first” policy. Obama’s advisors have privately been unkind to India. Now it is time for him to come out and state in his own words, “In India we trust.”
Obama will eventually make a trip to India; preferably before he visits China. That would publicly indicate that the United States values India as much as China. In return, India should be ready to advise the United States on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
India knows much more about these two countries than the U.S. Embassy officials in Islamabad and the U.S. think tanks. The United States must factor in Pashtun culture and pride when it decides its policies. It should also distance itself from Pakistan’s self-serving opinions.
Pakistan has exploited the Pashtun people for the last 50 years. Not a single dollar of the aid Pakistan has received from the United States has ever been spent in Pashtun-dominated areas. The fugitive Osama bin Laden was a tool that the Pakistanis used to extract military aid from the United States for the last eight years. When this dirty trick became public knowledge, the Pakistanis invented their own Taliban. Now they want the U.S. drone technology for free.
The United States must take bin Laden out of the equation. The more they look for him the more elusive he will become. As soon as the United States loses interest in him, he will be found dead in a cave, killed by his Pashtun protectors for bringing death and destruction to their homeland. The same fate awaits Mullah Omar of the Afghanistan Taliban for inviting Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan. Both these individuals should be ignored for the greater good of the area.
Pakistan should be handled sternly for misleading the United States for the past eight years. All economic and military largesse should be stopped immediately. The current leaders making news belong to the tribal belt, and although they are leading the jihadi movement, they are not honest patriots. They are Pakistani agents stirring up trouble to serve the country’s strategic needs. If aid to Pakistan is cut they will all disappear in a jiffy.
Pentagon officials and the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan have been cleverly hoodwinked into believing that Pakistan is an honest middleman. As a matter of fact it is anything but honest.
The second reform Obama should undertake is to shut down the anti-India lobby in the United States, especially in the State Department, which still lives in the Cold War era when India was treated as an ally of the Soviet Union. These officials should be reminded that 28,000 U.S. soldiers died at the hands of the Chinese in Korea only a generation ago. Some U.S. soldiers who fought in Korea are still alive. Ask them who the enemy is and they will name China.
In the last 60 years, no U.S. citizen has ever been killed by a bullet fired by an Indian. So why is there so much pro-China attitude in U.S. official circles and so much anti-India backlash? Even the clearheaded policies of former U.S. President George W. Bush are being sidetracked.
India compromised a lot to satisfy U.S. laws in signing the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, while the United States compromised nothing beyond bending a few laws that were hastily enacted 30 years ago and do not reflect the current reality. Treaties and agreements must be revised to reflect current situations.
Even the U.S. Constitution has been revised umpteen times to make it current. Hence revising the U.S. nuclear trade-related laws was not totally unusual. It is in the best interest of the United States to strengthen ties with India in order to establish peace and stability in South Asia and face up to China. The Indo-U.S. nuclear deal is part of that strategy.
India, like China 20 years ago, is in need of US$500 billion to upgrade its infrastructure and industry. The United States has happily provided this sum to China since 1990. So why is it so shy to deal with India? Why do horror stories of India’s infrastructure keep circulating in the U.S. media? Why has nobody gone to China and visited the quake-hit areas of Sichuan province and found horror stories of shoddy workmanship and materials? Why is the United States fascinated with India’s slums? Rather, the United States must make efforts to upgrade this relationship, as its powerful democracy and India’s “largest” democracy have much in common.
Obama should visit India for a firsthand look at what the country is and offers. He has charmed the Europeans and Turks and quite possibly the Chinese. He should charm the Indians too, who are dying to see and hear him. So why not satisfy their curiosity?
The third point is the growing influence of China, which is using its cash reserves to exert diplomatic influence in the West and grab greater political influence in Asian affairs. It is also flexing its military muscle. The United States should cut back on Chinese imports and give the country three years to balance its trade. If it fails to do so, the United States should revise its currency relationship with the Chinese yuan. It could also impose an additional excise duty on imports where Chinese businessmen gain unfair advantage through state subsidies and cash grants.
China should be told that its mad rush to gain military advantage with pirated and stolen technologies is unwarranted. Last year China demonstrated its satellite shooting capability, which has put the U.S. satellite-based command and control in jeopardy. By building a navy matching that of the United States in the Pacific, they intend to negate U.S. power in the region. This is a replay of rising Japanese power before World War II. Wisdom says that spending on social welfare is far better than military warfare. China should be told this, to avoid an arms race in the region and another Pearl Harbor.
So Obama should redouble his efforts to strengthen ties with India. The excuse that India had only a caretaker government prior to the general elections, and an uncertain future, must now be cast aside. A strong Indian government willing to work with the United States is now in place. Both countries must now move rapidly forward.
--
(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud.)
