Lessons of the missile ‘leak’ — pity the soft state

Flags of India and US | Illustration: Prajna Ghosh | ThePrint

Jawaharlal Nehru once called the Americans the most paranoid people in the world, with the only possible exception of the Bengalis. Usually, you wouldn’t expect Nehru to be so kind to the Americans. But given the problems he was having at that juncture with a certain Bengali pretender for the Congress presidentship, he could be pardoned that indiscretion.

Paranoia, and not supreme, serene self-confidence, is the hallmark of a superpower and India needs to understand that. If you are smart, you can exploit it; if you are at least sensible, you can survive it; if you are bull-headed and inferiorly complexed — as we have been of late — you will be pushed around even more rudely than in 1991-95, the darkest years in Indo-US relations since the Nixon-Kissinger tilt.

It is this peculiar Washington mindset that causes leaks such as last week’s report on the Prithvi deployment in Jalandhar to make it to the front page of The Washington Post. The same US Government-non-proliferation NGO-media nexus that was responsible for the December 1995 leak (this one in The New York Times) that India was preparing for another nuclear test in Pokharan, was behind the missile story now.

Then, the “Pokharan leak”, instead of achieving its intended purpose of increasing international pressure on India on the CTBT, actually turned Indian domestic debate vehemently against it. Red-faced US officials had openly and, bitterly, gone around blaming Gary Milhollin, the leading light of the non-proliferation fundamentalists in Washington and running a whole enterprise whose funding depends on such fears, for the “disastrous” leak. But if he was the one who called The Times, he did not do this without some prodding from the establishment.

There is a pattern behind this paranoia, and a logic as well, and these are easier to understand now than in 1995. The trouble with a soft state like ours is that we cannot fathom the working of a big power’s mind. A nation needs the right combination of intellect, ruthlessness and resources to acquire big power status in the world or even within its own neighbourhood. The Soviets failed because they did not quite have the resources to back the other two attributes. The Chinese will probably succeed if the world gives them the 50 years or so that Deng thought his country needs to build the requisite resource base. The Americans have won because they have all three qualities in ample measure. If now they were to sit back and enjoy being the only superpower it would be contrary to the psychology that brought them here.

It is not in the nature of a big power to see even the most distant threat as inconsequential. So, any nuclear or missile capability in the hands of any powers other than their trusted allies is a threat to their long-term interests or to their allies in that neighbourhood.

That is why all US formulations on an India-Pakistan thaw are laced liberally with lectures on the nuclear/missile issue. But the problem is that, of late, the two neighbours have begun to show the understanding that the nukes are a consequence of their deep-rooted tensions and not the other way around. That if they institute a strong enough regime of confidence-building measures, sort out relatively minor issues like Siachen or Sir Creek and create a notion of stability in their relationship, it may be possible to put at least the nuclear and missile insecurities, if not Kashmir, on the backburner.

The consternation it causes in Washington is not confined to anti-proliferation Taliban. An entire generation of policymakers in the State and Defence departments and the intelligence proliferations has viewed South Asia as the last unsettled Cold War frontier. This became crudely obvious in the arrogant 1991-95 phase with a barrage of official visits to India, pressure at the highest level and a widely orchestrated attack on its defence policy and human rights record. Many Washington veterans were quick to read the pattern then as the various departments under the new Democratic administration with proliferation high on its agenda, the NGOs (particularly the human rights organisations) and sections of the Congress and the media joined hands to pillory India.

They did unfortunately succeed in overwhelming India. The final result was the Rao-Clinton summit where, it is quite evident now, India made certain commitments to mothball Agni, to avoid moving Prithvi to forward locations and to generally slow down its missile programme in return for the US reprieve on Kashmir and human rights. Have we seen a single statement from the administration criticising India’s human rights record in Kashmir since then? Or openly questioning the elections there? Amazingly, even the so-called human rights NGOs have gone quiet, making no more than ritual noises about abuses in Bihar and other similarly unsexy places. Did they function in tandem with their policymakers to subserve their security interests?

Last week’s leak seeks to resurrect the ghost of the missile race and it is easy to see why. A former South Asianist in the State Department describes his fellow policymakers’ discomfiture by comparing South Asia with the Middle-East where the Americans have controlled, directed and paced the peace process to serve their own future interests as well. And here, he says, you could even have a couple of Nobel Prizes awarded for peace without the Americans having played any role other than that of bystanders. Or achieving their own long-term security interests, howsoever minor they seem just now. The big powers look decades ahead.

A decade ago, Nizar Hamdoon, the then Iraqi Ambassador to Washington, wrote a marvellous farewell article in The Washington Post. He explained, with obvious delight, how he managed to mould the debate so astutely that, within 24 hours of his forces sinking a US Navy frigate, Washington was ordering sanctions against Iran instead. Looking back now, he will probably see the picture differently. Maybe Washington just grabbed the opportunity to target, instead of Iraq, the enemy it saw as a more formidable threat for the future. Big powers are not driven by pique. They are driven by their own insecurities and interests.

That India cannot affirm its own rightful place within the region unless it acquires a similar temperament is an argument that might help fill several such columns in future. Right now, it would suffice to understand this reality, ignore the Prithvi provocation as many more that could follow, carry on building on the Male platform and, to use that delightful old Washingtonism, cut the US out of the loop.