Diplomacy is the best weapon for the weak. And sometimes the weakness gets exposed. The last President of the then Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, adopted this policy, but could not save his country from dismemberment. This is perhaps now happening with the United States of America. Its frequent-flying President, Barack Husain Obama, while speaking in Beijing, urged China to monitor India-Pakistan relationship. He also agreed that Tibet is a part of China. This naturally elicited strong protest from otherwise friendly India as the statement came less than a week before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with him in Washington on November 24.
It is the weak President (Obama) who bowed before the Emperor (Akihito of Japan) on whose father’s name (Emperor Hirohito) millions of US-men and women died or suffered serious injuries during the World War-II. Hirohito was the Emperor of Japan then and even after defeating that country the US did not dislodge him though they executed a large number of top military officials on the ground that they were responsible for the war genocide.
Today in the post-recession world President Obama started his East Asia trip with a bend to pay obeisance to the Japanese Emperor and his wife and ended with a diplomatic concession to China. The otherwise overbearing United States seldom delegates power to other countries to monitor certain region.
If Obama’s bow before the Emperor outraged many in the United States, his statement in Beijing evoked a sharp reaction in India. Is it that, in a way, the United States has abdicated the responsibility of a super-cop? It has acknowledged that China is a big power that should be entrusted with such a sensitive responsibility. The monitor in the international diplomacy cannot be equated with the one in classroom, who plays a limited role. Even there the monitor is a boy or girl above the other class-mates, who are all equal. India is not going to accept the bigger role for China, the country which has its own interest in Pakistan, and at the same time be equated with the latter.
The problem with Obama is that he has been touring the world too much in the initial months of his Presidency. Perhaps never before the United States President has visited so many hot spots in initial phase of Presidency. Within ten months of taking over on January 20 last he visited China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea as he knows the growing importance of these countries when the clout of the United States is weakening. Obama chose to skip India and there is no such plan to visit India in the near future too.
Obama not only visited East Asia. Much before that he flew to the Middle East. Turkey was the first stop, within three months of his Presidency. This was followed by handshake – not bowing down – with the Saudi king in Riyadh; and Egypt where he made the Assalam-o-alaikum speech at Cairo University on June 4.
In the last week of April he embraced Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leaders, with whom the relationship of the United States was never cordial in the past.
Though Indo-Pak region is one of the trouble spots of the world, Obama not only chose to skip it, but left it up to China to deal it notwithstanding the fact that it has its own vested interest in the region. It seems that the Untied States has started taking friendship with India for granted. The US has been systematically ignoring it and even indulging in arm-twisting over CTBT, yet our policy makers are taking the country deeper into the US camp – at least this is the perception.
True, our Prime Minister could not have cancelled his visit, which was planned much before, just because US President made such a statement in China. But Obama administration’s giving more importance to China and other countries and overlooking India only speaks of the importance it is giving to us.
Instead of a Presidential visit, the United States administration deemed it fit to send its Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to India. But Obama is not the first President to give more weightage to China than India. The two US Presidents who visited India in the recent years, Bill Clinton and George Bush-II, both paid official visit to India in the second term of their office, when there was much less to be done on the foreign policy front. Bill Clinton, in particular, came in the last years of his office.
Mere strong protest will not increase our bargaining power before the United States or stop it from equating India with Pakistan. We need to work a lot to increase our own national prestige. With the United States growing economically weak and diplomatically isolated, it is the best time for India to improve its standing. If not, the US will continue to ignore us as it has been doing whether it is the issue of permanent membership of Security Council or nuclear non-proliferation.