US media will never credit Bush for his diplomatic successes
PJ O'Donovan
Published 03/03/06
"President Bush has visited South Asia, and one would expect
multilateralist hosannas to be showered on his head. In India, he
worked to cement a burgeoning relationship with a dynamic country
central to a region where - with China on the rise - geopolitics in the
21st century will be very ''interesting,'' in the unsettling sense of
the Chinese curse, ''May you live in interesting times.''
Next on the itinerary was Pakistan, a longtime enemy of India and
another newly minted U.S. ally. That the U.S. is friends with both
India and Pakistan has a lot to do with circumstances (the end of the
Cold War and the advent of the War on Terror), but it also speaks to a
certain level of Bush-administration diplomatic finesse. The
administration won't get any credit for it since it runs counter to the
media's favored ''unilateralist behemoth alienates the world''
storyline.
India especially falls victim to the new liberal standard in
international relations, which is that countries that genuinely like us
are discounted as allies. It's the diplomatic corollary of Groucho
Marx's refusal to belong to any club that would have him. India falls
into the same category as Japan, Britain, Australia, the democratic
countries of Eastern Europe and a few Gulf emirates. These nations lack
the simmering resentment toward the U.S. of a France, so close and
fruitful relationships with them don't earn Bush any multilateralist
points.
In fact, Democrats are perfectly content to alienate these natural
friends. The United Arab Emirates is getting a swift kick to the teeth
in the uproar over the port deal, and no Democratic members of Congress
complained when the press revealed the existence of secret U.S. prisons
in Poland and Romania, thus making it less likely that those countries
would be helpful to the U.S. in the future.
India has always been a U.S. ally waiting to happen, but its tilt
toward the Soviet Union in the Cold War kept the world's two largest
democracies apart. Now, the natural affinities are coming to the fore.
India and the U.S. are both commercial democracies with large middle
classes (India's is more than 200 million strong) and heavily invested
in international trade.
Former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill identifies five
vital U.S. national interests
- defeating Islamic radicalism, checking proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction, pursuing energy security, funneling the rise of
Chinese power in a responsible direction and keeping the international
economy healthy. India, with exceptions here and there, naturally lines
up with us on all of them.
The Bush administration had a notion of this very early on. The
American outreach began in the area of defense, with twice-yearly
meetings between military officials of the two countries. In a crucial
departure, the administration lifted sanctions that had been imposed on
India after its nuclear testing in 1998. Ending the sanctions was a
supreme act of realism, since they were never going to get India to
forswear its nuclear weapons program and were only an irritant in our
relationship.
Now, the administration has cut a deal - finalized on Bush's trip,
and pending congressional approval - to aid India's civil nuclear
program in return for India opening up its civilian facilities to
international inspections. This has prompted charges of hypocrisy: How
can we bless India's nuclear breakout while trying to stifle North
Korea's and Iran's? But there should be privileges to being a
democratic, responsible government presiding over an open society.
Nonproliferation advocates worry about the signal sent to the rest of
the world by the deal - that message should be, ''Create a consistent
record of decent governance, and we won't be as alarmed if you pursue
nukes.''
India will probably never be as close to the U.S. as Britain or
Israel. It has a proud tradition of international independence that
it's not going to entirely relinquish. But it will be an important
friend, partly due to the diplomatic work of the Bush administration.
Multilateralists, take note.."
Donna Evleth
> From: "PJ O'Donovan" <Xen...@aol.com>
> Organization: http://groups.google.com
> Newsgroups: alt.activism.death-penalty
> Date: 4 Mar 2006 07:14:20 -0800
> Subject: US media will never credit Bush for his diplomatic successes
>
> Former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill identifies five
> vital U.S. national interests
>
>
> - defeating Islamic radicalism, checking proliferation of weapons of
> mass destruction, pursuing energy security, funneling the rise of
> Chinese power in a responsible direction and keeping the international
> economy healthy. India, with exceptions here and there, naturally lines
> up with us on all of them.
Given the Bush administration's record on these issues, it needs all the
help it can get.
Donna Evleth