A dramatic shift?
NOW that the euphoria over President Clinton's visit is over it may be possible to make a more sober assessment of what it has all meant in terms of the future of Indo-US relations.
ACHIN VANAIK
RE we seeing a dramatic shift in
A
• Indo-US relations? Is the US going _to jettison Pakistan in favour of closer ties with India? Is there now a possibility of an anti-China Indo-US axis emerging? All these are, of course, the staple themes around which any number of *strategic experts' are speculating. And speculating is the right word because so much of what is called strategic thinking about the future is simply speculation. This is unavoidable. But there are more and less intelligent, more and less disciplined, ways of speculating. To responsibly speculate is to understand the profound limitations of the framework in which 'conventional strategic thinking' takes place.
### Game of nations
Such thinking is obsessed about what can be called the 'game of nations'. This is supposed to be a game played by only a few big-time players, the great or potentially great powers among which are to be counted the likes of USA, Russia, China, India and probably Japan and Germany. It is the foreign policy of these 'main players' that is supposed to shape the world order and therefore to engage in 'strategic thinking' is to advocate appropriate foreign policy perspectives, ie. mediate most effectively between different and sometimes competing 'national interests' between the 'key' countries. As a general framework for understanding the shifting patterns and problems of international relations, this gives rise to some serious problems.
Firstly, what lies outside the game of nations — various transnational forces, be these the pressure of ideas spread more easily than ever before through a globalizing communications network, of an unrelentingly expanding world capitalist economy, of ecological deterioration, of a multiplicity of social, political and cultural movements and structures - is in the longer run not only more important than the conventional foreign policy interactions of nations but also more strongly shapes the general contours in which the game of nations itself is played out. This makes playing the game all the more difficult, uncertain and unpredictable. For example, the shorter term gains that China might have thought to have secured from clever diplomacy', its strategic entente with the US in the early seventies against the USSR, have turned out to be of much lesser consequence than the systemic collapse of Communism as an alternative to capitalism, the break-up of the ex-USSR, and the new pre-eminence of the USA more by default than by anticipation and intention.
Secondly, even within this game the asymmetries of power between countries and the complexity of the very notion of power make the pursuit of 'power politics' a far more nebulous and confused affair than most foreign policy establishments would ever concede it to be. The starting point for any evaluation about the future prospects and positive possibilities (and for the most part these should be understood as possibilities and not probabilities, let alone certainties) for Indo-US relations must be a cool-headed and objective assessment of their relative strengths in the global arena.
### US dominant
At the turn of the millennium, in the game of nations the US finds itself exceptionally dominant. For another twenty years or more there appears to be no comparable rival or combination of rivals that could "balance' its integrated (economictechnological-military-cultural) power. This does not mean the world has become unipolar or is dominated by the US, which is some consolation. It only means the US dominates the game of nations which is cause for some despair.
This peculiar situation emerged in the nineties. It is peculiar because throughout the twentieth century significant rivalry
India * between states was a given. In the first half there was the story of eroding British dominance challenged by the USA and Germany; in the second half it was the challenge of the USSR to US power militarily and politically and the challenge to American economic power from Germany and Japan. In the nineties the former challenge disappeared and the latter one faded as the US through an unprecedented boom (which did nothing to improve the plight of its burgeoning poor) nonetheless enhanced its relative economic competitiveness.
For all the talk of China as a future economic giant, even twenty years from now, judged by per capita income standards it will remain a poor or middle-ranking country. In terms of its scientific-technological-military might it will not even come close to approximating the level of challenge that the former USSR was able to pose to the US and the West. As for its political and ideological challenge what are we talking about? This is a China bereft of any ideological vision of its own apart from desiring to emulate Western prosperity and trying to hold the line against internal political pressures aiming to democratize the country according to ideals themselves Western-inspired
Chinese threat
The Republican right in the US ever on the look-out for a global 'enemy' to justify American imperialism, and Indians desiring to promote a possible Indo-US tie-up, may both wish to magnify the potential and actual 'Chinese threat' but the brute reality is that China cannot play this role of a dangerous bogey.
Not only is it deeply defensive in its relationship to the US - it could do nothing except sober down when the US sent its navy into the Taiwan straits, and little besides ineffective public diplomatic protest when its Embassy in Belgrade was bombed not long after a respectful visit by the Chinese president to the US - it is simInternational Viewpoint #322 June 2000 31