India Is Game and America Is Being a Good Sport By Donnel Jones, July 20, 2003	Home   Search   Forum   Terms

Recent indications point to a renewing of relations between India and the U.S. rather than a souring. It is more accurate to say they are forming stronger ties for the first time. India is still game. And on its own terms. I'm glad to see that our nation is a good sport. The U.S. may seek to re-establish the South Asian version of NATO, called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization or SEATO. SEATO would place India as a major player. As it so happens, Pakistan has fallen from grace and would not become the leading player in this alliance. That leaves India which is, after all, a democracy.

A report from the Chinese, discussing this development also claims:

Washington's basic purpose for closer ties with India by creating an Asian version of Nato is to extend its status as the world's sole superpower, the report underlined.

Don't believe everything the Chinese are telling you. Sure they have every right to be nervous, but, excuse me for waxing sentimental, they could also join us in the fight against terrorism. India is more readily willing to do so. Who said we would ignore a rising power like China when we really need its cooperation? North Korea, anyone?

Soon enough the U.S. will have to discover multi-lateralism. And a post-colonial power, India, is teaching it this very lesson. India turned down the U.S. request that it send troops to aid the Americans in establishing law and order in post-Saddam Iraq. The U.S. graciously accepted the bad news. Now it will be interesting to see if India takes up Kofi Annan's offer of U.N. aegis for sending troops to Iraq by expanding that international body's involvement in decision making. India explicitly stated, in its refusal to the Americans, it would consider such an option under U.N. cover. An Indian and U.N. connection would signal to the world that that institution, humiliated by its own incompetence, moral equivocating, and by the political akido of the Bush administration, could assert itself again, making possible for the behemoth power to get what it wants from India only, however, through triangulation.

In this way America will be checked or, from a post-colonial perspective, put in its place after exerting enormous muscle to negate U.N. authority to invade Iraq. Whether we like it or not, America cannot ignore the U.N. if India opts to get involved with us via its and not America's auspices. Similarly, whether the rest of the world likes it or not, the U.N. has to be reformed. That means cutting out the joke of having Qadhafi head of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. You know, the same guy who recently said AIDS is a benevolent disease to keep the West from re-colonizing Africa.

Anyway, SEATO would bring India and the U.S. together in close cooperation to offset the influence of China and bring in another front on the war against terrorism. No wonder the Chinese are not too happy with it but, if they are wise, it could come to their advantage. No nation, really, wants terrorism to threaten it. And no nation, most certainly the United States, wants to fight that war alone. Not in today's world.

SEATO is nothing new. It was dissolved in 1977 during the Cold War. Now it might be up and running in the war against terrorism. Both nations would clearly benefit from such an alliance. Just remember, Europe, America's ancestral culture, will not always remain its primary relation. The tectonics of the international political mantel are shifting under our feet. The political compass will no longer point only North but also East and South. Isn't this what the Left always wanted? It would seem Bush's radical shift in American foreign policy will help make such multi-lateralism ultimately possible. The reactionary Left, in an irony lost on them, wants to put a stop to this at every step.

I, too, dread the U.N. For a brief moment I wanted to believe the U.N. was forever irrelevant last April 9th. Very quickly that mood was wiped away by the U.N. refusing to lift sanctions against Iraq after Saddam's regime was removed.

But live with it we must and proceed accordingly. That seems to be the case with other recent developments: The U.S. is also sending Tommy Franks to discuss business with the Indians about, guess what, sending troops to Iraq.

Stay tuned.