When he headed for Washington this week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had two basic political objectives. One was to try and hold President Obama to the broad understanding of his predecessor on India?s role in Asian balance of power. The other was to nudge Obama away from Bush?s policy of uncritical reliance on Pakistan in the pursuit of US objectives in Afghanistan.
By any measure this was an ambitious agenda that was somewhat obfuscated by other themes that dominated the public focus. There was all the soft stuff about Singh being the first ?state guest? to be entertained by President Obama.The second was about the multilateral agenda?the soft stuff of international relations?that is dear to the Obama Administration. There was widespread concern in Delhi that climate change, non-proliferation, and the revival of the Doha round of trade talks would turn out to be Obama?s pressure points against India.
For all of the Obama administration?s tall talk on multilateral issues, big question marks remain on the President?s ability to mobilise domestic political support for his multilateral agenda. It is by no means clear if the US Congress is with the President on climate change and nuclear disarmament. It certainly is not with him on trade liberalisation. In any event, Singh had made sure there was some new flexibility in India?s traditional unyielding positions on these issues.
What mattered for Singh were the American policies towards the two most important security challenges for India?China and Pakistan. In the last few weeks, especially after Obama?s Asian tour, Delhi?s chattering classes had turned increasingly pessimistic about Obama?s world view and India?s place in it. Few analysts in Delhi were willing to bet on Singh?s ability to move Obama?s positions on China and Pakistan. Yet it seems Singh has raised some hopes for continuity in the US policy towards the Sino-Indian balance and engineered a measure of discontinuity in Washington?s approach to Pakistan?s intransigent support to cross-border terrorism.
On China, Bush?s premise was that helping India?s rise would not only help limit Beijing?s expanding influence in Asia, but also shift the global balance of power in favour of ?freedom?. During the last few months it appeared that Obama?s foreign policy had little room for a celebration of democratic values, as he sought to reach out to America?s semi-authoritarian interlocutors across the world?from Venezuela to Iran?and reset America?s ties with Russia and China. As the financial crisis revealed the mutually assured financial destruction between the US and China, Obama seemed to have no choice but to show new deference to Chinese sensitivities.
When Obama talked of a role for China in the subcontinent, it seemed the bottom had fallen out of the Bush framework for engagement with India during the last eight years. If working with India to preserve the Asian balance of power is no longer a guiding principle, it would be reasonable to assume that Delhi and Washington would return to squabbling with each other in such places as New York, Vienna and Copenhagen. Singh seems to have averted that danger.
At the end of his talks with Singh, the President appeared quite eager to compensate for his diplomatic errors in Beijing. If Obama had gone too far last week in Beijing by offering China a role in the subcontinent, he was emphasising this week India?s role in the building of a new security order in Asia. The difference between a democratic India and an authoritarian China was there for all to see as the Indian-American clich?s on shared values and democratic traditions were thrown about at every turn throughout Singh?s visit to Washington.
While the talk of democracy also differentiates India from Pakistan, Singh?s focus on this front was to get Obama to raise the pressure on Islamabad on bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack to book. The US interest in resumption of an Indo-Pak dialogue gave an opportunity for Singh to underline his own commitment to the peace process and his readiness to pick up the threads with Pakistan, if only Islamabad was ready to give satisfaction on cross-border terrorism. It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that Pakistan charged seven conspirators of the Mumbai outrage while Singh was in Washington and a day before the anniversary.
Even more importantly, Singh appeared to have engineered a ?meeting of minds? with Obama on Afghanistan. Until recently it seemed that Afghanistan was dividing the Obama administration and India. At the end of the visit, the two sides were underlining their shared interests in defeating the sources of terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. India-US counter-terrorism cooperation, which started to acquire a measure of significance after the Mumbai attacks, is now being institutionalised and elevated to an unprecedented level.
Singh?s gains in Washington should not, however, be over-estimated. They are certainly reversible given the fact that US stakes are real and high in both Beijing and Islamabad. Having moved the US towards a more helpful position in relation to India?s challenges vis-a-vis China and Pakistan, Singh must now fully leverage it by demonstrating diplomatic agility and strategic purposefulness in dealing with its two nuclear neighbours.
For now the PM has shown he has the skill to manipulate the complex dynamic with the US, China and Pakistan. But the game has just begun.
The author is Henry A Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC