Bush's journey to India

NEW DELHI--Where, in a world rife with anti-Americanism, can you find most people owning up to warm feelings for the Bush administration? One of those few places is here, in the South Asian giant of India, where President Bush arrives this week to mark rapidly warming relations between the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest.

A recent poll found that nearly 3 out of 4 Indians hold a favorable impression of the United States, solid base for the visiting president. "I like Bush," volunteers a young Indian riding a train bound for the capital, New Delhi, from his home in Agra, best known for the famed Taj Mahal. Adds Mohandas Pai, chief financial officer for Infosys Technologies, one of India's IT whiz companies in the southern city of Bangalore, "He's good for the world. He's the only person who can stop the spread of al Qaeda." Predictably, India's still-strong leftist parties are planning anti-Bush protests, and some ultranationalists also oppose closer ties with Washington. But the government here seems determined to produce happy images for the Bush visit.

The president's stops in New Delhi and the developing high-tech center of Hyderabad will underscore a remarkable turnaround in the once prickly relationship. In the Cold War days, Indian governments viewed the United States as a bully that propped up archrival Pakistan; American leaders were angered by India's pro-Soviet tilt as a leader of the so-called nonaligned movement. India's nuclear test blasts in 1974 and again in 1998 ran afoul of U.S. nonproliferation laws, leading, for a time, to sanctions and to this day to a ban on nuclear trade. But the mood has come nearly full circle. The Bush administration is now engaged in an audacious bit of geopolitical engineering: Its goal, a senior administration official said last year, "is to help India become a major world power in the 21st century. We understand fully the implications, including military implications, of that statement."

Despite enormous problems with poverty, infrastructure, and corruption, signs of India's rise can't be ignored. The economy is projected to double in size in a decade, growth fueled by continuing reforms and privatization. Indian companies are buying rights to foreign oil fields and acquiring computer and steel firms in the United States. Its IT sector is growing at 15 percent a year. India is the No. 1 arms buyer in the developing world, last year eclipsing China and Saudi Arabia, and its active armed forces rank No. 3 in size, behind China and the United States. Its population, already about 1.1 billion, will surpass China's within decades. And Washington gets it. Says Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, "I think if you look at American foreign policy worldwide, the greatest change you will see in the next three or four years is a new American focus on South Asia, particularly in establishing a closer strategic partnership with India."

Deadline. Already, this is reflected in a broad set of initiatives on trade and investment, energy, democracy promotion, space exploration, HIV/AIDS, agriculture and science, and defense. Last week, Burns flew here to try to rescue what is supposed to be the centerpiece of the Bush trip: a breakthrough deal on civilian nuclear cooperation. Indian officials reported progress in the talks, though it was unclear whether key obstacles had been resolved. Washington's terms for lifting trade restrictions on nuclear technology would require India to separate civilian from military facilities and accept international nonproliferation inspections. India's powerful nuclear establishment, however, has dragged its heels out of fear that its nuclear arsenal--believed to amount to 30 to 100 weapons--will be constrained from further growth. India, which touts its record of never having transferred nuclear know-how to others, is keen on shedding its status as a nuclear pariah--and on getting badly needed access to nuclear fuel and new technology. The deal "effectively means recognizing India as a nuclear power," says Sanjaya Baru, spokesman for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

For that reason, the deal is controversial. Nonproliferation specialists warn that carving out an exception for India to the rules of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty--which India never signed--could encourage other countries with aspirations for the Bomb while doing little to restrain India's nuclear arsenal. The Bush administration counters publicly that the deal will strengthen the overall cause of nonproliferation by placing first-ever safeguards on India. But it is also engaged in some realpolitik. "India is special because of its size, because of its potential," explains a senior administration official. The president concluded, says the official, that "we'd be better off creating a special niche for India."

The administration is not alone in its zeal for India. The advocates for closer ties begin with powerful U.S. business interests. India's nuclear market, if opened to the world, could be worth upwards of $100 billion. And Washington has freed contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing to pitch sales of F-16 and F-18 fighter planes. American corporate giants have made India, with its low-cost English-speaking workforce, a top destination for IT and business-processing operations. The Indian-American community, nearly 2 million strong and increasingly active politically, is also lobbying for closer ties.

Hastening India's rise draws support across a wide ideological spectrum. Foreign-policy realists in the United States want to harness India's clout on counterterrorism, weapons proliferation, and revision of global rules on trade and investment. Backers of Bush's spread-democracy theme see India's multiethnic democracy as a powerful model for other countries. Likewise, India's fight against terrorism by Islamist militants--an outgrowth of the ongoing conflict over Kashmir--makes it a country confronting the same threat as the United States. Some neoconservatives bluntly view India as a counterweight to communist China. After the December 2004 Asian tsunami struck, the U.S. Navy joined with those of India, Japan, and Australia to rush humanitarian relief to the devastated areas. That effort may have been a harbinger of power politics: the region's militarily capable democracies banding together--sans China. The administration, sensitive to not offending China, plays down such considerations. Yet a former senior official recalls Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as focused on India's strategic value: "They look at India as a counterbalance to China, which they see as the Soviet Union of the 21st century."

That view, if it ever emerges as official policy, will encounter heavy resistance in India. Here, autonomy and independence are enshrined as core values of the state. So it was not surprising that a firestorm erupted a month ago when U.S. Ambassador David Mulford predicted--in stating the political reality--that the U.S. Congress might kill any nuclear deal if India did not join in censuring Iran for its suspected drive for nuclear weapons. Indian officials bristled at the link, and leftist lawmakers demanded that Mulford be recalled. He was not, and, as it turned out, India did vote with the United States at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But the flap serves as a reminder that India's hard-won independence still colors its view of other powers, including the United States. "Anybody who thinks you can turn India into a client state hasn't spent a lot of time here," allows a senior U.S. official. The Indians couldn't agree more.

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Bush's journey to India

Washington and New Delhi see benefits in a new relationship