Although the Indian media collectively swooned on President Obama, and breathlessly informed its audience about how many rooms he had booked at various five-star hotels, there was surprisingly little discussion on two key questions. What is Obama’s foreign policy record? Moreover, what impact will his visit have on most Indians?
Supporters of the President tend to point out that he is better than his predecessor — George W. Bush. This is correct but misses an important fact. Obama’s policies differ significantly from the policies of the first Bush administration — when the U.S. ruling elite believed that it could control the world by brute force — but are eerily similar to those of the second Bush administration by which time the United States was in strategic retreat on several fronts.
Obama himself put it well in 2004: “There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage.” He has lived up to those words after coming to power; for example, he persisted with Bush’s secretary of defense — Robert Gates. The much vaunted withdrawal of “combat troops” from Iraq is not only specious, since it leaves behind about 50,000 “non-combat troops,” but also just a partial implementation of a “status of forces agreement” that the Iraqi government forced on a reluctant Bush administration in 2008.
At an anti-war rally in 2002, Obama explained that he opposed the Iraq war only on strategic grounds “I don’t oppose all wars … What I am opposed to is a dumb war.” On the other hand, he consistently supported the war in Afghanistan and, earlier this year, ordered a “surge” in the U.S. military presence there. This earned him the gratitude of his predecessor who, in a recently published memoir, explained that he was glad that “President Obama stood up to critics by deploying more troops.”
Contrary to what its supporters claim, the Afghanistan war has been deleterious for its people, and has done little to advance women’s rights. Nor is it supported by those who are genuinely concerned about these issues. Malalai Joya, a brave and independent woman, and also the youngest member of the Afghan parliament put this succinctly: “Stop the massacres in my country. Withdraw your foreign troops so we can stop Talibanization.” She also pointed out that “Obama is just like Bush, if not worse, because he is escalating the war and bringing it to Pakistan.”
These wars and the U.S. drone-attacks on Pakistan — which have escalated sharply under Obama — have had horrific human consequences. In 2006, a study published in the Lancet estimated that the Iraq war had led to more than 600,000 excess deaths — a figure that is likely to have risen substantially. The tragedy in Afghanistan is no less, except that no one has even bothered to estimate the devastation caused by the U.S. invasion.
“Passe!” exclaim India’s realist leaders. A government’s first responsibility is to its own people — so the theory goes — and if that requires us to look away from the human consequences of the U.S. policy in the middle-east, then so be it. However, this realism is just a veneer; the insensitivity that allows the Indian government to ignore the plight of the Iraqi people also leads it to aggressively promote the interests of a small elite at the expense of ordinary Indians.
Ten days before Obama’s arrival, the planning commission decided that it was in favour of allowing Foreign-Direct-Investment in multi-brand retail. Does the commission seriously expect us to believe that it reached this conclusion independently after carefully considering the welfare of the millions of workers whose livelihood depends on this sector? Just the timing of the decision confirms the role played by Obama’s impending visit and pressure from companies like Walmart.
The same concern for American profits, coupled with callous disregard for Indian life, was on display a few months ago when the Government tried to protect the interests of U.S. manufactures by repeatedly inserting insidious clauses in the nuclear liability bill. Soon after this failed, an unnamed “senior union minister” told the Business Standard that “private suppliers could still sign agreements …. stating that their responsibility ended with the handover of equipment” thereby evading responsibility for an accident.
Closer to Obama’s visit, the Government realized that it would be improper to publicly discuss means of subverting the law, and piously disavowed any such plans. However, the joint statement issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Obama declares that “India … is committed to ensuring a level playing field for U.S. companies seeking to enter the Indian nuclear energy sector.” This refers to the U.S. gripe that competitors from France and Russia have an unfair advantage over its nuclear manufacturers because access to state finances would help them avert bankruptcy in the event of a serious accident. Evidently — unless vigilant activists are able to thwart this through the use of Right to Information requests — the Government plans to contractually indemnify nuclear manufactures.
The “jobless recovery” that the United States has witnessed over the past year, was a major factor in the electoral drubbing that Democratic party received just before Obama commenced his Asian sojourn. So, in an article that he penned for the New York Times, Obama explained that his trip was aimed at opening up Asian markets — facilitating Walmart’s entry into India’s retail sector falls into this category — but emphasized that he was visiting India to also earn “billions of dollars in contracts that will support tens of thousands of American jobs.” The Indian government and private sector promptly obliged with contracts of almost USD 15 billion.
What is ironic is that the latest National Sample Survey estimates suggest that the period between 2005 – 2008 saw, as the Economic and Political Weekly pointed out, “the lowest rate of employment generation in the last three decades” in India. Under these circumstances is it acceptable for the Indian government to encourage the export of capital to the richest country in the world? Could these billions of dollars not have been used in productive sectors of the Indian economy to generate domestic employment?
Finally, what of Obama’s promise to support India’s entry into the UN security council (UNSC) as a permanent member? Whether or not permanent-membership will translate into tangible benefits for Indian citizens is debatable but, in any case, this is likely to take several years. What is important is that, in return, the joint-statement declares India’s immediate support for U.S. objectives in the Security Council: “as India serves on the Security Council over the next two years … [Indian and American] delegations in New York will intensify their engagement and work together.” This engagement will help ensure that “all states … comply with and implement UN Security Council Resolutions.” This, of course, does not refer to Israel that is in violation of dozens of UNSC resolutions but is meant to guarantee Indian compliance on Iran. Furthermore, the chimera of a permanent seat will probably stop the Indian government from participating even in modest multilateral actions, which do not meet with U.S. approval, like the Brazil-Turkey-Iran initiative.
Obama’s major foreign policy achievement has been to restore American soft-power. So he was not met with protests of the kind that greeted Bush. However, unless sustained public pressure forces the Manmohan Singh government to reverse course, it will go ahead with deals that not only advance U.S. hegemony but are also pernicious for the vast majority of Indians.
By Suvrat Raju
18 November, 2010
Countercurrents.org
(Suvrat Raju is a physicist at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute (Allahabad) and an activist. The views expressed are personal)
This article was first published in Kafila.org