Behind The Invasion of Iraq

Research Unit for Political Economy- Mumbai, India

RUPE's BEHIND THE INVASION OF IRAQ can be read online (consider getting a hard copy to support this important work.)  http://www.rupe-india.org/
 

Why this special issue: (http://www.rupe-india.org/34/pillar.html)
As the US Goes to War against Iraq,
It Declares India a Pillar of its Hegemony in Asia

Readers of Aspects will no doubt be surprised at the fact that we have chosen to bring out a special
issue apparently not on any aspect of India’s political economy, but on the impending US assault on
Iraq. However, we believe the two—India’s political economy and the most important current world
development—are connected, and as the current offensive drive unleashed by the US worldwide
proceeds, the implications for our region will become clearer.

Even as the US prepares to launch a massive assault on Iraq, it has declared India to be its most
important military ally in the Asian region (not including west Asia)—this despite the fact that it has
three bases in Pakistan at the moment. The significance of terming India an ally is not limited to the
possible use of Indian ports and airports for re-fuelling American ships and military aircraft. India
has become an important part of the US strategic order. That order is now focussed on seizing Iraq
and some other states in west Asia; tomorrow it will shift its focus to Asia, which it sees as a region
of increasing strategic importance.

Only the most naive would buy the idea—advanced in the speeches of Indian and US leaders—that
the reason for the US’s newfound interest is India’s increased importance as a world power. India’s
economy is less than one-twentieth the size of the US’s, and its entire Gross Domestic Product is just
about the size of the US trade deficit. Its official military budget is $13 billion or so, compared to the
US’s $379 billion. The object of recent moves by the US is not Indo-US ‘partnership’, but advancing
US interests, using India as a strategic pawn. In the words of US ambassador Robert Blackwill,
“President Bush vigorously pursues strategic relations with India because a powerful India will
advance American democratic values [sic] and vital US national interests in the decade ahead”.

That remark is from a remarkable speech made by Blackwill on November 27 at Kolkata (excerpts
are given in the Appendices to this issue). In it he not only describes the range of recent military and
strategic cooperation between the US and India, but omits any mention of the following familiar
themes: Pakistan, Kashmir, human rights, and, most significantly, the Indian nuclear programme.
Instead, he promotes India as the US’s partner “to curtail the proliferation of Weapons of Mass
Destruction in Asia, and the means to deliver them”. There is no mention of the fact that India carried
out nuclear tests in May 1998, thereby openly declaring that it would be producing weapons of mass
destruction.

Indeed this stance is more than a year old. A September 2001 piece in the New York Times about an
earlier talk of Blackwill’s stated that “The tenor and substance of the ambassador’s remarks
signaled a calm acceptance of India’s nuclear status”. (“US Envoy Extols India, Accepting Its Atom
Status”, 7/9/01) Jim Hoagland wrote in the Washington Post that “There is new thinking about
nuclear doctrine, and India, at the White House. Bush intends to end the sanctions in a matter of
months, according to aides, and wants a new strategic relationship with India.” (“Rethinking Asia in
India’s Favour”, 1/7/01)

In other words, the Indian nuclear programme has become a part of the US strategic architecture for
this region.

There is not a single mention of China in Blackwill’s Kolkata speech, but it is not difficult to
understand the target of the US-India alliance. “Vajpayee’s nuclear strategy is centered wholly on
China”, writes Hoagland. In fact, immediately after the 1998 tests Vajpayee wrote a letter to the then
American president Clinton clarifying precisely this.

The integration of India into US military targeting of China will increase the risk of war for the
Indian people, since China will surely respond by targeting India as the US’s beachhead in the
region. Against such a response by China, the Indian rulers—for all their talk of being a ‘major
power’—would simply seek refuge under the American umbrella. The Vajpayee government not
only endorsed the US’s widely condemned ‘missile defence’ programme1, but is clearly hoping to
be brought under its protection. Hoagland wrote in July 1991 that

“China noticed Bush’s unusually warm welcome of Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh for an
Oval Office chat about missile defence in April. Since then, India has been more supportive of
Bush’s [missile defence] plans than all but one or two of America’s European allies.... China,
however, sees the Bush strategic defence plan as aimed specifically at neutralizing its small but
growing nuclear arsenal. A significant warming of U.S.-Indian ties, powered by conceptual
agreement on missile defense, could cause the Chinese to expand and accelerate their nuclear
upgrades, to poke at India through help to Pakistan and take risks that have not been well
calculated.”

In the face of a US on the offensive, a US-India axis and a missile shield, China might follow the
course similar to that followed by the USSR in the 1980s—namely, building up a much larger force
of nuclear missiles in order to penetrate the missile shield in different places, including over India.
The Americans are well aware that such a programme would be enormously expensive, and would
strain China’s economic strength; indeed, that is one of their objectives. The Indian public, however,
is unaware that it is being thrust into this dangerous strategic chess-game by its rulers.

The Indian rulers have already obtained certain benefits in peonage to global American supremacy.
This was evident in the aftermath of the ruling party’s horrific massacres of Muslims in Gujarat,
carried out in a systematic fashion from March of 2002, with the state machinery as active
participant. The entire operation was in many ways unprecedented in post-1947 India. The BJP has
since then declared its intention to repeat the Gujarat ‘experiment’ in other states. In April, the Indian
government had to face uncomfortable questioning from the European Union in this regard. The
Indian government responded in a strident fashion. Vajpayee declared that “India is being preached
(sic) about secularism.... We do not need to learn from others what secularism and pluralism are all
about.” He could respond in this fashion because of the crucial silence of the United States, which to
date has refused to pass a single official comment on the Gujarat massacres. During this very period
military and foreign policy cooperation between the US and India has developed rapidly. Evidently,
the US’s praise for India’s “democratic values” winks at whatever methods of rule are actually
applied, as long as the parliamentary shell remains in place.

Similarly, US intervention in the Kashmiri political scene has helped the government in Delhi. The
US ambassador has made several trips to the Kashmir valley. Hurriyat leaders indirectly admitted in
September that they were under US pressure not to boycott the forthcoming elections. Indeed the
Hurriyat abandoned plans to hold a parallel referendum on Kashmiri self-determination, and nearly
withdrew their opposition to the official elections.

This special isue of Aspects of India’s Economy, then, is not only about Iraq, west Asia, or oil. It is
about the current US strategic agenda and its implications for the rest of the world. As the Indian
rulers have placed India within that US agenda, it is necessary for us to understand its implications
in depth.

--
Raja Swamy
Academic Computing Manager for the Social Sciences
Wesleyan University
rswamy@wesleyan.edu