In the Indian subcontinent, Washington, DC has isolated Dhaka, punished Colombo and is straddled with a strained alliance with Islamabad. Now, with its callous handling of the Khobragade, issue, it has also pushed away New Delhi, its only friend in South Asia, writes NEElAM DEO and MANJEET KRIPAlANI
It’s a good thing that the US economy is on an uptick these days, for Washington, DC is facing a depletion of stock in the friends department. After upsetting partners in east and south east Asia by obeying China’s December 2013 diktat on the no-fly zone over the Senkaku Islands, the US is now losing friends in South Asia too.
India first: On January 9, the New York attorney’s office indicted Ms Devyani Khobragade, Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, of alleged visa fraud. Having turned a diplomatic spat into an international incident, the State Department expelled a diplomat to whom it had granted immunity just the day before.
Washington, DC could have sought a way of reducing the charges against Ms Khobragade — especially given that diplomats are generally treated discreetly on the basis of reciprocity, and some like the Saudis in the US, excessively so. Expelling Ms Khobragade was a way out of the impasse, certainly; but it was perhaps the worst way out embittering both Indian politicians and serving professional diplomats.
Also, Washington will do well to view its actions in a mirror. For the immunity issue a la Khobragade is a small thing compared to what it is demanding from Afghanistan, for instance. The US wants full legal immunity for all its forces staying on in Afghanistan, as also the 1,00,000 contract employees under its cover and has threatened Afghan President Hamid Karzai that it may otherwise exercise a zero troop option, as it did in Iraq.
Immunity is also what the US demanded — and extracted — in Pakistan for embassy contractor Raymond Davis who, in 2011, shot dead two Pakistanis in broad daylight. Is this exceptionalism gone haywireIJ Former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates in his new book, reveals that he has defended Pakistan in the US Congress but believes that Pakistan is no ally. What a way to treat a ‘friend’ with whom you are co-fighting the ‘war on terror’IJ
Terror is just what is being unleashed in Bangladesh by the BNP-Jamaat combine — but the US prefers to assess it differently. Washington was supportive, sotto voce, when the Egyptian military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power last year. Certainly the Brotherhood was unpopular, but it was elected.
In Bangladesh, however, the unelected Jamaat, a more vicious version of the Brotherhood which committed genocide on its own people in 1971 in complicity with the Pakistani Army, is receiving sympathy from the US over the secular, democratically elected Awami league.
Despite India’s diplomatic efforts to support a moderate Government led by Sheikh Hasina, the US still looks at Bangladesh through the lens of Pakistan, as it did in 1971, suspicious of the Awami league’s outreach to China and Russia for development contracts.
Finally, Sri lanka: Washington has been critical of Colombo, as has India, over the endgame of the war against the lTTE. But while India has been hobbled by domestic Tamil politics, the US has frittered away its influence in this strategically-placed island in the Indian Ocean.
The emerging narrative is this: Three major Islamic countries in South Asia are in flux, and the US’s role is far from constructive in appreciating the efforts of their secular and democratic forces.
Towards India, which is experiencing the arrival of an optimistic new governance agenda, the US is flippant, disregarding a relationship which yesterday was characterised as the most critical one of the 21st century. Caught in the game are vital interests.
This is a loss for both sides, certainly. A secure south and east Asia is in the interest of both India and the US. But miscalculations have set back the agenda. Now both will have to focus on resuming initiatives and rebuilding trust when instead the two countries should have been in close consultation over the changing security matrix of an Asia
(The authors co-founded Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relation)