A Natural Alliance

Even before Manmohan Singh arrived in the US, pundits were proclaiming his visit to be an empty show, devoid of substance. There is now the added danger that, amid the hoopla over the glitzy White House state dinner, symbolism will overtake substance. The fact is that a slew of agreements covering vital areas of life signed during the visit and the reiteration of values and common political and strategic vision underlying them have shown why Indo-US relations could be, as President Barack Obama put it, "one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century".

The visit also put to rest concerns about the US tilt towards China at India's expense. A reading of the two joint statements one issued on November 17 by Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao in Beijing and the other by Obama and Singh in Washington this week offers a striking contrast. On one hand, the effusive words of the Indo-US statement were imbued with common values and political and cultural perspectives. On the other hand, the body language surrounding the visit and the cautious joint statement in Beijing suggested business-like deals between mutually suspicious partners who have to work together. That statement emphasised that "to nurture and deepen bilateral strategic trust is essential" for their relationship. Building trust is needed to overcome the political chasm that separates them. China sought assurance about its authoritarian rule: "Each country and its people", the joint statement noted, "have the right to choose their own path, and all countries should respect each other's choice of a development model".

Concern over China's unresolved quest to unify Taiwan and protests against its rule over Xinjiang and Tibet was also evident in the reiteration of "the fundamental principle of respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity". Obama and Hu agreed, of course, on a number of issues, including their opposition to "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction". The value of such assertions is, however, questionable: only a week earlier, the Washington Post quoting A Q Khan published a detailed account of China's critical role in the building of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.

Pakistan is clearly an essential US ally in the bid to wind down military operations in Afghanistan. Even so, Obama backed the call for a "global strategic partnership" with India by emphasising "the absolute imperative to bring to justice the perpetrators" of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, who are believed to hail from Pakistan. Indeed, his joint statement with Singh condemned "terrorist safe havens in Pakistan and Afghanistan". Repudiating Islamabad's demands for India to scale back its presence in Afghanistan as a condition for cooperation on counterterrorism, Obama said he "appreciated India's role in reconstruction and rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan" and wanted such efforts to be enhanced.

China was not mentioned by name in the joint statement, but it was very much the ghost at the table if only as the very antithesis of the values India and the US stand for. Obama quoted President Truman to call India a "great nation of free people", and the statement pointedly listed the two nations' common values of "democracy, pluralism, tolerance, openness, and respect for fundamental freedoms and human rights". Although the US does not formally recognise India as a nuclear-weapons state, Obama came close to offering that recognition when he said, "As nuclear powers, we can be full partners in preventing the spread of the world's most deadly weapons, securing loose nuclear materials from terrorists, and pursuing our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons". The US-India joint military exercises, ongoing for more than a decade, will enter a new phase. The signing of two technical agreements providing encrypted communications and accounting for logistical expenses will remove the last remaining bureaucratic obstacles to greater military cooperation.

Rhetorically at least, China now welcomes the US to Asia as "contributing to peace, stability and prosperity in the region" and Sino-US military cooperation and dialogue will resume. But a series of naval incidents and Beijing's ongoing military build-up serve as reminders of Sino-US competition. Chinese and American mutual economic needs oblige cooperation, but political differences call for vigilance. Shared values and political philosophies of New Delhi and Washington, in contrast, open the door to an ever-deepening partnership.