Reverse The Craven Pro-US Policies

Prakash Karat

GEORGE Fernandes was strip-searched twice by the US airport security authorities in 2002 and 2003 when he was the union defence minister.  This recent revelation is a minor footnote to the disgraceful period of the BJP-led government’s craven policy towards the United States. It required Strobe Talbott’s  book to expose this humiliating treatment meted out to India’s defence minister.  Fernandes has confirmed that these two incidents had occurred.  He has also said that he had reported the matter to the external affairs minister and the prime minister’s office. Yet, on both occasions, Fernandes himself and the Vajpayee government kept quiet. There was not even a mild note of  protest. This behaviour typifies the servility of the Vajpayee government to the US which has angered millions of Indians. 

The Fernandes episode is just one in the chain of events leading up to only one conclusion that the much vaunted ultra nationalists of the BJP were nothing but fawning courtiers of Washington. From Vajpayee’s letters to the White House after the Pokhran blasts and the September 11 attacks, where the prime minister went out of the way to pledge fealty to the United States, to the NDA government’s prompt welcome of Bush’s announcement of the National Missile Defence system – here was a regime which was, in essence, no different from the one across the border run by President Musharaff. Both were in competition to woo the United States and convince the imperial superpower about their reliability to act as its agent.

Foreign policy is considered remote from the people’s concerns and cloaked in secrecy and diplomatic obfuscation.  The truth about foreign policy is at times starkly exposed before the people by some dramatic decisions. One such was the Vajpayee government’s commitment to the United States to send Indian troops to Iraq. It is now widely known that a division of the Rashtriya Rifles to be commanded by a Major General was selected for despatch to Iraq. It was only after the public outcry against such a move that the BJP-led government was compelled to renege on its promise. 

Coming back to the Fernandes affair, the Americans must have got the full measure of the Vajpayee government’s spinelessness much before this event happened. In the span of six years, the Vajpayee government worked single-mindedly to convert India into a `junior partner’ of the United States.  The silence of the BJP leadership and its refusal to explain why they kept quiet about the insulting treatment to a senior cabinet minister is revealing. The Indian ruling establishment should learn from Brazil, another major developing nation. When the United States ordered the fingerprinting and photography of all visitors who require a visa to enter the United States, Brazil, by a federal judge court order, decided to impose similar regulations on US visitors to Brazil.  From January this year, all Americans entering Brazil have to be fingerprinted and photographed.  The US government protested against this step, but the Brazilians have resorted to this reciprocal step as a matter of national dignity.  China, in March 2004, lodged a protest with the US government against the fingerprinting of its citizens. One cannot imagine the Vajpayee government  taking such a step.

More serious than such lapses of the Vajpayee government were the various steps taken by it to hitch India to the US global strategic military plans. Under the wide-ranging strategic and military collaboration initiated since 1998, Washington has been drawing India into its global strategy. Two issues are of immediate concern which must be addressed by the UPA government.

Firstly, India’s participation in the American missile defence system. The Bush administration plans to spend $53 billion pursuing its National Missile Defence programme. There is great opposition to this plan as it represents a new aggressive phase for global domination and it is also an unworkable system. Under the auspices of the Indo-US Defence Policy Group, a working group on missile defence was set-up. The BJP-led government had been holding discussions  on India’s participation in the American plan.  The hawkish  pro-American circles in the previous government saw the participation in the missile defence programme as a way  to curry favour with the Americans while at the same time counter Pakistan’s missile capabilities. Apart from the pointless endorsement of a destabilising missile system, such a course will lead to a ruinous escalation and arms race in the sub-continent. 

The second issue concerns the US-sponsored Proliferation Security Initiative  (PSI), which the Bush administration is pushing India to join. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, on his visit to India in January 2004 had stated that they would like India to participate in the PSI. In the name of countering proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, the US plans include the interdicting and stopping of third country ships on the international waters. The United States is targeting many countries like Iran, China, North Korea on the charge of proliferation. The US expects India to provide naval and military wherewithal to conduct its counter-proliferation activities.  So far, eleven countries who are the close allies of the US have joined the PSI such as Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Spain, Italy and so on.  The Vajpayee government behaved as if India is amongst this category of allies. 

The UPA government will have to decide on these matters based on the foreign policy direction set out in the Common Minimum Programme. The CMP adopted by the UPA states: “The UPA government will pursue an independent foreign policy keeping in mind its past traditions.  This policy will seek to promote multi-polarity in world relations and oppose all attempts at unilateralism.”

Such a framework provides for close relations with the United States without getting entangled in America’s strategic military offensive which has been stepped up in the name of fighting terrorism worldwide after September 11.  If the UPA government is to steer an independent foreign policy and promote multi-polarity as envisaged in the CMP, it will have to redefine Indo-US relations by making a break from the harmful course adopted by the Vajpayee government. 

The President’s address to parliament, which was the first major policy statement of the UPA government, did not fully reflect the outlook in the CMP. It once again brought in the “strategic” relationship with the USA and attached importance to collaboration with Israel.  For the Left and progressive forces, the adherence to the foreign policy and security framework in the CMP will be an important issue in the coming days.