by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Narendra Modi, after being elected Prime Minister two years ago, finished his fourth visit to the US last week amid an impressive address to a joint session of the US Congress; he was the sixth Indian leader after Jawaharlal Nehru to be accorded the honour. It was topped up with a reception in his honour by the Senate and House foreign relations committees and the India Caucuses in the House and the Senate. This being the election year in America, Barack Obama, the outgoing President, who struck up a good personal rapport with Modi, the duo have certainly taken the Indo-US relations to a hitherto unachieved height. It goes well beyond the "strategic partnership", to an emotional level where one friend understands the difficulties of the other. In his address to US Congress, Modi tellingly said that "our relations have overcome the hesitations of history", and "through the cycles of elections and transitions of Administrations the intensity of our engagement has only grown".
The speech attracted 64 ovations, nearly 50 of them with members being up on their feet. But doubts lingered about the end results of the visit on two counts. First, it is time that has been playing tricks. When former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had courted the previous US President George W. Bush to win him over on the India-US civil nuclear deal, despite India not having agreed to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the world was then on the cusp before a drastic change. While the US economy was heading for a recession, Europe went deadbeat, and China reigned supreme. But, all said and done, Washington still had the final word.
The world has since become multi-polar during the Obama presidency, without even most Americans not knowing it. I think the otherwise inexplicable popular support to Republican candidate Donald Trump is a response to America's falling global stature. The US under President Obama might have captured and killed Osama Bin Laden, the 9/11 villain, but it is left with little control now on a cancerous ideology that may have ISIS as its focus but is spreading out everywhere on its own momentum. It has greatly impaired America's ability to rebalance itself with the forces of terror. And China is law unto itself. It is no wonder therefore that Modi's fourth trip to the US was unlikely to lead to any tangible gain. It's neither an entry into the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which has been in the bull's eye for India ever since the signing of the civil nuclear deal, nor a clear assurance that it can indeed have NextGen military contacts with the US which alone can give it the technology edge in line with the 21st century. The Indo-US Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), first proposed in 2004 and resisted by left-wingers in the UPA (specially former Defence Minister A.K.Antony) for a decade, is waffling even now because the US is clearly lacking in the nerve to carve out bade facilities in a new ally in the Chinese neighbourhood. But LEMOA alone could give India familiarisation with cutting edge strategic weapons, an advantage that Pakistan had obtained in another age, as member of SEATO. India is of course claiming that a LEMOA draft may be ready anytime soon but the hope that there will be a time-line announced during Modi's latest US visit has been belied.
NSG membership is a dire necessity for India in view of its spiralling energy needs. It is committed to increase its non-fossil fuel energy production to 40 per cent of the total by the year 2030, a target which can hardly be met without scaling up nuclear power. That calls for not merely nuclear power plants, of which there is no shortage. In fact the first lot of six US Westinghouse Electric Company reactors, the firm now owned by Japan's Toshiba Corporation, should start arriving as soon as next year. But what is not easy to come by is uninterrupted supply of enriched uranium, the fuel, and a whole array of products and processes that makes nuclear technology so exclusive. For example, the disposal of radioactive waste is a challenge.
NSG is a cartel of nuclear traders. All its 48 members, including France and Russia, are signatories to NPT. In the evening of the uni-polar world, ex-President G.W. Bush thought his word would be enough to get India edgeways into the club despite being a non-signatory to NPT, a step that it had to avoid for its own geo-strategic reasons. President Obama merely picked up the thread from where it was snapped. A meeting of NSG is scheduled this month, but it is unlikely that the American push will be productive because NSG decisions are based on consensus, not majority, and, thanks to China's constant prodding at the behest of Pakistan, vocal members like New Zealand, Turkey, Ireland, South Africa and Australia are now throwing spanner in India's works.
Nevertheless, Modi’s spirited defence of his cause, and his powerful argument of Pakistan being the largest “incubator” of terror in his neighbourhood, has got the country’s position unambiguously stated. It will remain so, irrespective of a change of guard in Washington, if not an ideological shift. But, with global power fractured like never before, it is natural for Modi to shuttle across countries and continents. In two years, he has made 38 foreign trips on five continents. If it is a record, it is also indicative of a global power shift, from behemoths to states that are small and strategic. To stand up to it requires a leader free from jet-lag, like Modi. He is already on the world stage and three million strong Indian Diaspora has made him stronger in the US too.
