Everyone seems to want stronger ties with India. The U.S., Japan and Germany all seek India's favor. Does this signal a change in Asian focus?
by Graemme Marshall
On the heels of U.S. President Bill
Clinton's tour of India in March, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander
Downer (a strong critic of India's bomb) arrived in New Delhi on a fence-mending
trip. Soon after came the Turkish premier, a Muslim leader who disapproves
of Pakistan's military rule. The diplomatic traffic went both ways as
India's defense minister visited Japan and Vietnam. What's behind this
flurry of diplomatic activity?
Indian strategists see it as an
overdue recognition of their country's world status following nuclear
tests in 1998. There are signs of an informal security-cooperation
chain forming between India, Japan and Vietnam-all of which share a
common strategic concern over China.
India's foreign minister, Jaswant
Singh, maintains this is merely India's belated due. "We export no
destabilizing or even disturbing ideology," he says. "We have no expansionist
designs and we desire no one's land. Civilizationally and culturally,
India's presence in Asia is a soothing presence" (Far Eastern Economic
Review, April 13, 2000, p. 20).
U.S. interest
In May 1998, India stunned the world by
setting off five nuclear explosions in the Rajasthan desert. Nearly two
years later, talks between the U.S. and India have failed to get India
to the table to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to halt
nuclear testing. Back in March, Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution (a Washington think tank) said India's failure
to sign would make it harder for New Delhi to "extract economic and technological concessions from the
United States" (Far Eastern Economic Review, March 2000, p. 24).
This prediction fell apart with
the Clinton visit later that month when animosity between the two countries
was put aside. President Clinton toasted a "new beginning" although
he had recently described India as "the most dangerous place in the
world."
