Tag Archives: Devyani Khobragade

The Indo-US Nuclear Deal – Ten Years On

18 Sat Jul 2015

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It is ten years to the day since the Indo-US nuclear deal was announced. At the time, there were great expectations – for Indians, the deal signified an end to the US-led era of atomic apartheid while the United States hoped that it had opened up a huge market for its wares while simultaneously securing an ally to balance a rising potential rival. A decade down the road, these illusions have evapourated and there are recriminations on both sides. Critics of the deal had repeatedly warned that Washington would not find in India the ally or market that it sought. This has borne out to be true, though it is difficult to tell whether the prognosis was insightful analysis or just fate that the Bush administration overlapped significantly with the “lost decade” in Indian politics. Whatever be the reason, India’s slavish adherence to a foreign policy ideology well past its due date compounded with its ill-advised nuclear civil liability law doused any hope of transformative politics in the Indian Ocean Region.

The first warning that the Indo-US nuclear deal was not going to usher in an era of growth and prosperity was in the length of time the Lok Sabha took to ratify the agreement and the manner in which it was done. After three years of histrionics in parliament and a cash-for-votes scandal, the nuclear agreement was finally accepted just before the end of the strongly supportive Bush administration. There was a great deal of suspicion about the United States and its motives in India, not entirely unreasonable given Uncle Sam’s unabated mischief in neighbouring Pakistan. Few Indian parliamentarians demonstrated the imagination to look past antiquated Cold War binaries and fewer still could fully fathom the implications of a civilian nuclear programme separated from military goals and targets. The passing of a strong ally in the Bush administration from Washington while Delhi dithered was a lost opportunity for India to hasten the several benefits of the nuclear deal.

The Manmohan Singh government was able to squeak the historic nuclear deal through Parliament but at great cost. Among the stipulations of the agreement on civil nuclear cooperation was that an explicit nuclear insurance system be established. Convention dictated that the operator was solely responsible for any accidents at a nuclear facility but the India’s lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, thought it best to make suppliers of nuclear equipment just as liable. Perhaps the psychosis of the 1984 Union Carbide accident clouded their judgment or their arrogant faith that the Indian market was too big to be ignored was their undoing or even their bloody mindedness not to give the historically anti-US United Progressive Alliance the fruits of four years of labour by the National Democratic Alliance, but the Bharatiya Janata Party along with the Communist Party of India made the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill an albatross around the neck of the nuclear deal. Despite Russian, French, and American interest to build some 24 reactors at four sites across India, only one at Kudankulam from a 1988 deal with the Soviet Union was completed in the ten years since the nuclear deal.

It is not true to say that the Indo-US nuclear deal was dead on arrival: it did have an anaemic pulse. Thanks to the opening of nuclear commerce to India, the supply of nuclear fuel was suddenly not a bottleneck in India’s nuclear energy programme. Reactors that had been operating at load factors between 35 and 50 per cent almost overnight caught up to international levels of operation. The average load factor at a nuclear plant in India today hovers around 72 per cent and some units like RAPP V have shown the remarkable potential of the entire programme by operating at continuously for 765 days with a load factor frequently above 95 per cent. Even this, sadly, is a drop in the bucket to what could have been achieved over the past ten years.

The Indo-US nuclear deal did not occur in a vacuum. While some Indians view it as merely setting right a a four-decades-old wrong, a breakthrough in such a sensitive area is always coupled with greater expectations of broad geopolitical synergy. For the United States, this primarily meant a response to a growing Chinese menace. Washington reasoned that a stronger, more confident, and assertive China that also shares a border with India would be reason for concern to Delhi. Given the overlapping interests, it was only reasonable to expect enthusiasm from India on closer defence cooperation and consultation on issues of geopolitical interests. If only.

Washington did not count on the cold reception to their proposal in Delhi. After all, how could cooperation against a common foe concern elicit ill will? However, Indians read the opening as a US offer to India to play second fiddle in a grand alliance against China. The Indian ego could certainly not accept this, regardless of the indubitable American superiority in military, economic, and technological capabilities. With a disregard for reality that has rarely been seen outside postmodern theory classes, India fell back on its old platitudes of strategic autonomy and non-alignment to spurn an alliance with the United States but pretend to a “relationship of equals,” The prevailing wisdom of the time – and all the times before then – was that India should not antagonise China unnecessarily or it may invite hostility from Beijing.

That wisdom turned out to be not so wise after all. Delhi’s supplication did not bring the result it sought. Over the past decade, China’s military assistance to Pakistan has increased and it continues to develop Islamabad’s nuclear programme. Of late, Chinese submarines have become more frequent in the Indian Ocean and there have been at least two major incursions into India by the Chinese Army at Aksai Chin. The Chinese presence in the Gilgit-Baltistan region has only solidified with Pakistan handing over some of the Indian territory it occupies to Beijing. China still supports insurgents in India’s northeastern sector, not to mention their sympathisers in the neighbourhood. None of this has abated while Delhi chose not to antagonise Beijing but ten years were wasted in empty posturing between the United States and India. To be sure, the tempo of joint military exercises between the two nations has increased as has defence sales but those are accidental and insufficient causes that will not deliver their full potential until an honest chat on Asia’s geopolitics has been had.

The tepid response from Delhi strengthened the hand of the Pakistan lobby in the US legislature. The United States continued to court Pakistan beyond a level India was comfortable with to the detriment of the latter’s position in Afghanistan. Unfortunate misunderstandings such as the Khobragade affair soured relations even further between two countries that were both already disappointed with each other. Ironically, the US denial of a visa to present prime minister, Narendra Modi, in 2005 turned out to be almost a non-issue despite the media painting it as a bit of a train wreck in the run-up to India’s general elections in May 2014. There have been disagreements over the sale of some military equipment but that has been largely due to India’s refusal to sign what the Americans call ‘foundational documents.’ These agreements allow the United States to verify that India is indeed the sole end user of the equipment that is sold to them and that they are not selling it to anyone else. The agreements also allow the US and Indian militaries to work in a more integrated manner in their zones of mutual interest. However, India has refused to accept such close scrutiny or linkages and as a result has been refused some equipment and has been given more primitive versions of other systems.

The nuclear deal was supposed to signify a change in mindset and be the dawn of a new era in Indo-US relations. It was not just about the sale of reactors and nuclear fuel but about a common vision of a new world order. Almost upon its tenth anniversary, we see that those dreams have not yet taken off. For all the effort that went behind making the Indo-US deal – special waiver for India from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an India-specific Additional Protocol from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the amendment of domestic laws in at least a couple of countries – no one has anything to show for it. If anything, the nuclear deal is an epitaph to unbridled optimism and faith in reason in the realm of international affairs. As PG Wodehouse wrote in My Man Jeeves, “…it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.”

Obama in India

25 Sun Jan 2015

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As you read this, US president Barack Obama lands in Delhi to attend the Republic Day celebrations. This is not his first trip – he visited India previously in 2010 and this, his second trip, makes him the only sitting POTUS to visit the country twice. Litres of ink have been spilled on articles about this visit, as was the case during his last visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States in September, and every senior delegation from the United States to India over the past five years.

Unfortunately, these meetings have been unable to provide any major breakthroughs on the issues that find the two countries at loggerheads. To be fair, progress has been made, but only in inches while new differences – such as the infamous Devyani Khobragade case – have been significant. However, such is the nature of India-US relations – despite little by way of tangible measures to show for their ‘strategic relationship,’ ties between the two countries remain fuelled by emotion and hope in the enormous potential of finding the right frequency.

There was little reason to write new op-eds for this visit – recycling any old one would have done just as well. During this trip, one is most likely to hear the same buzzwords being mentioned: nuclear suppliers’ liability, defence manufacturing, weapons sales, access to technology, cooperation in counter-terrorism, climate change, economic reforms, time to sweat the little stuff, strategic partnership, importance of symbolism. The denial of a US visa to Modi in 2005 will also find the obligatory mention.

There is nothing wrong with this menu – indeed, these are many of the issues that vex lawyers and lawmakers in India and the United States. Yet it is this same menu that has been brought out at every state visit. Years of hoping for an administrative alignment that would deliver on the breakthroughs achieved during the Bush administration leaves one resigned to the bureaucratic stagnation that has been the flavour of India-US relations ever since the agreement on civil nuclear cooperation.

Is anything different this time? Perhaps. A new government has come to power in Delhi, one that holds a single-party majority in the Lok Sabha. The last time this happened was in 1984. This gives hope that any bold decisions that have to be taken will meet with less resistance and avoid the perilous scrutiny of coalition politics. Furthermore, Modi has surprised his supporters and detractors alike on being quick to embrace the United States and its president despite the common Indian perception of a White House lukewarm towards India. On all other fronts, including the much vaunted American pivot to Asia, there is little change.

There have been some rumblings about the United States setting up a manufacturing plant for one of its unmanned aerial vehicles, the RQ-11 Raven, in Bangalore. There has also been talk of the establishment of a nuclear insurance pool for suppliers, enabling them to skirt the liability they would face as per present Indian law. It is hoped – that magic word again – that the Raven manufacturing facility will be the first of many but several hurdles are yet to be crossed – land acquisition, licenses – and processes streamlined if such investments are to become common. To this end, a somewhat unrelated but constructive step is the acceptance of a few key protocols such as the Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) and the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA). Reports that the Modi government is considering this is heartening for it would pave the way for enhanced military cooperation between India and the United States as well as contribute to the building of trust between the two countries.

It should be noted, however, that such trickling of cooperation has always preceded or followed a state visit. India has bought increasingly sophisticated arms and recently the anti-tank guided missile FGM-148 Javelin was also offered to India after initial hesitation. Obama’s trip also carries such trinkets but sustained and institutionalised betterment of relations may yet be a bridge too far. This is disappointing, given that relations between Washington and Delhi have been generally on the upswing for the past 17 years. After a low point in the immediate aftermath of the Pokhran II nuclear tests, the Jaswant Singh – Strobe Talbott channel paved the way for a constructive dialogue between Delhi and Washington. The nuclear agreement in announced in July 2005 came on the heels of this groundwork and several smaller measures during the Vajpayee government.

It would be nice to see some positive developments that establish India-US cooperation on a firmer institutional setting during Obama’s current visit. If Hope lived in Pandora’s box amidst all sorts of nuisance and evil, surely we can also hope and reread the old op-eds on India-US relations until things actually begin to change.

This post first appeared on Swarajya on January 25, 2015.

Mr. Modi Goes To Washington

01 Wed Oct 2014

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Even before the wheels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Air India One left American soil, commentators have dismissed his meeting with US businessmen, senators, and president Barack Obama as more pageantry than substance. This impetuous judgment, however, is either terribly naïve or deliberately pessimistic.

Indeed, Modi did not return with a Percentages Agreement or a trillion-dollar aid package – one wonders if even those would have satisfied his critics – but to pass off the Indian prime minister’s trip as pageantry entirely misses the history of Indo-US relations and the situation the two democracies find themselves in. For that matter, no Indian prime ministerial visit to any country comes to mind wherein agreements were made that altered the course of history; the announcement of the Indo-US nuclear deal during Manmohan Singh’s visit in July 2005 is perhaps the sole exception and that was arguably an entirely American initiative.

The unseen agenda of Modi’s meeting with Obama after his visit to the United Nations was damage control. After a positive start to better relations under President George W Bush and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, relations between India and the United States began to fray during the tenure of the United Progressive Alliance. Over the decade of UPA rule, India-US relations sank to their lowest since the end of the Cold War despite the resumption of civil nuclear cooperation by the international community with India.

It is easy to hold the Indo-US nuclear deal up as a shining example of close strategic relations between the world’s two largest democracies now but the negotiations over the path-breaking agreement were a trying period. The treaty was ratified by the Indian parliament with great difficulty and only after a cash-for-votes scandal rocked the UPA.

Since then, India’s nuclear civil liability law (2010) has effectively blocked the expansion of nuclear energy in the country as no firm, including India’s own Nuclear Power Corporation of India, was willing to bear the burden of supplier’s liability. The United States, who had strongly supported India in the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the International Atomic Energy Agency, was left out in the cold as their hopes for an abiding nuclear relationship with India faltered.

Indian defence purchases from the United States was also thought to be a sign of warming relations. Although an improvement from the days of the Cold War, Delhi’s defence equipment procurement has been ad hoc and was initially hindered by the lack of an adequate legal and operational framework between the two countries. The United States lost out on the Indian Air Force’s tender for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft and Washington was hesitant to sell India its Javelin anti-tank missile until Delhi began considering the Israeli Spike. A few deals were indeed signed, giving India the F414 engine for its quasi-indigenously manufactured Light Combat Aircraft,  the C-17 Globemaster III, the C-130J Super Hercules, the AH-64 Apache assault helicopter, the P-8I Neptune, and other weapons systems and missiles. However, despite their high dollar value, these purchases were seen as merely transactional and did little to reverse the drift that was increasingly being felt by officials in Washington and Delhi.

The Obama White House has always been accused of allowing US relations with India to slide after the previous administration’s persistent wooing of Delhi. Whether there is some merit to Delhi’s complaint or whether the urgent crowded out the important in Washington, the optimism and energy in the US-India relationship waned rapidly during Manmohan Singh’s second term as prime minister. Several crises around the world – the South China Sea, the Caucasus, North Africa, and the Middle East – captured the US mind share while India boosted its welfare spending, failed to deliver on economic reforms, neglected its infrastructure, was mired in corruption, and instituted bizarre tax policies that chased business away from its shores. There was little reason for the United States to look to India as a valuable partner except for the hope that the South Asian country would get its act together and arrest its descent into chaos.

In February 2012, the Centre for Policy Research released a document titled, Non-Alignment 2.0. The report, put together by a small team of former government officials, retired military men, academics, businessmen, and journalists, was unfortunately titled in that it recast Indian foreign policy in the same old Nehruvian mould widely considered to be a failure. Furthermore, Nehru’s non-alignment was usually soft on Moscow and made Washington the target of its ire. The release of Non-Alignment 2.0 was hardly a sensible move, especially at a time when the United States and India were trying to move past casual indifference and towards a strategic relationship.

In December 2013, the arrest of India’s Acting Consul General in New York, Devyani Khobragade, sparked a heated diplomatic tit-for-tat between the United States and India. After the strip search of the Indian diplomat was explained away as “procedure,” Delhi similarly enforced Indian law strictly and removed concrete barricades around the US embassy that were encroaching on a public roadway. In the wake of a recent deadly assault on the US embassy in Tripoli, Washington was incensed at what it saw as Indian petulance putting its officials in danger. Ultimately, the US ambassador to India, Nancy Powell resigned and the post remains vacant (though a new appointee has just been nominated and awaiting Congressional confirmation).

For all the newspaper columns painting a rosy picture of US-India relations, the reality was far more dreary. If anything, it was the potential of a genuine relationship that kept the idea on life support until sunnier days. The new prime minister had the difficult task of rekindling a relationship that had accumulated more than its fair share of cynicism in both capitals over the past five years.

There is, of course, Modi’s personal baggage – the refusal of a visa to him by the United States in 2005. This was compounded by the issuance of a summons by a federal court in New York for his role in the Gujarat riots of 2002 – was the United States serious about a flowering relationship with India or not? Admirably, the Indian prime minister has not allowed these personal slights to obstruct national interest; he has gone to Washington and delivered the loud and clear message that India is open for business again.

During Modi’s stay in the United States, he took the time to meet with business leaders as well as elected officials. This was a smart move, given that the United States does not hold sovereign wealth the way Japan or China do and the president himself would not be able to do much more than encourage American business to invest in India. Modi has promised to push forward on economic reforms and eased the visa norms for Americans to come to India. This small step will have a greater footfall in terms of investments than is apparent immediately.

On top of the moribund relationship Modi inherited from the previous administration, there are indeed disagreements of substance between India and the United States – nuclear proliferation, Iran, Pakistan, food stockpiling, intellectual property rights, and the environment to name a few. Not all of these require the highest executive attention and will be hopefully handled at their appropriate levels over the next five years. Modi’s mission, however, was far simpler and yet more difficult – to convince the world’s largest economy and greatest military power that India was ready to talk turkey once again. If pageantry was what would sell the message, then that was what was to be done.

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on October 02, 2014.