US unhappy with political game of Obama’s Asia tour

Cheree Franco 

Obama's whole Asia trip is political. PHOTO: EPA

I want to write about Obama’s Asian tour, but I keep realising that I’m stupefied by the complexity and the pageantry of it all. From America’s view, South Asia is a diplomatic cesspool, confounded by the fact that much of this uncertainty stems from our own past and present policies.
When Obama returns to the White House, he will have visited five countries—Japan, Singapore, South Korea, China and Indonesia. But, barring the G20 Summit, the bulk of press coverage will focus on two of those countries—Indonesia, because of Obama’s personal connection, and India—as well as another country not on the itinerary. The press wants to know: what does Islamabad think about Obama in New Delhi?
Obama’s Asia trip has nothing to do with Pakistan
The most obvious answer is: nothing. This trip has nothing to do with Islamabad—why should it? Another obvious response—isn’t $2 billion in weapons, or $7.5 billion over five years, enough to buy some peace—bad pun intended?
The truth, both in-between and unrelated, is better pondered by someone more knowledgeable than me. But I ponder anyway, and this is what I’ve come up with: Obama’s tour is definitely about weapons—$15 billion worth, plus a couple of nukes for good measure. It’s more about China, less about Indonesia, and even less about the Indians who died in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. But it is about terrorism, or at least, it’s about the potential for increased terrorism on US soil, and it is about capitalism, and maybe it’s even about democracy. To put a long story short—Obama’s trip is about America’s interests, in whatever geographic form they come.
Why India?
And on this trip, America’s interests lay in India’s burgeoning economy. India’s gross domestic product is over $1 trillion annually, and 250 million middle-class Indians form a vast market for American goods. And of course, there’s the teensy fact that India’s looking to drop a few billion in arms contracts. So Obama shook hands, removed sanctions, pushed Boeing and dangled the UNSC carrot. Or at least, that’s what happened publicly.
And India welcomed Obama like a rock star, but not every Indian pundit was thrilled at the prospective visit, and not everything discussed was distributed to the media in press releases.
India thought Obama should have scolded Pakistan for failing to prevent regional terrorism. Indian media is nonplussed that the P-word didn’t come up during his memorial visit to Mumbai. This omission was perceived not only as a lack of sensitivity for regional politics, but as a practical issue as well. The US keeps throwing funds at a Pakistani military that has been accused of traditionally supported terrorism in India.
But India’s huge defense budget also makes Pakistan uneasy, and while America has always been a fair-weather friend to Pakistan, Obama knows that right now we need Pakistan strategically. When St Xavier’s peanut gallery chimed in, he refused to be baited.
There was a little speculation, but the world-wide fear of the Sleeping Dragon didn’t make enough headlines. The US operates under the potential threat of the world’s biggest army and the second biggest economy. We want the most powerful allies to be had in Asia, and India is bigger and wealthier than Pakistan.
The Kashmir question
So while Obama was hedging the American economy and safeguarding against China, influential Pakistanis, including former military leader Musharraf, were publicly denouncing Obama’s diplomatic chat as a targeted alienation of Pakistan. Of course, at the root of this—at the root of everything between Pakistan and India—is the Kashmir conflict. And my guess is, Kashmir is largely why Obama didn’t go to Pakistan.
The world compares Pakistan and India because the two countries obsessively compare themselves. In some ways it seems natural—after all, they used to be a single country. But are the Czech Republic and Slovakia constantly pitted against each other in this “us vs them” forum? Are the former Soviet Republics? Are Pakistan and Bangladesh, for that matter? No, because those countries don’t share a nuclear border, and those countries don’t have a Kashmir.
Obama wanted to make a point. India can be a world-player. India is bigger than Kashmir, and the sooner India realises it and quits obsessing, the sooner the nation can reach its full potential. It’s not about India versus Pakistan because India and Pakistan are different countries in very different situations. Maybe Kashmir was discussed behind closed doors, but if the world cares about Kashmir, it’s only because of the potential nuclear holocaust that could easily occur accidentally, even, because both countries have such a short early detection period—3 minutes or so compared to the US/USSR’s 35 minutes. So the bombs are constantly ready to go, like half-cocked, apocalyptic guns with safeties off.
And I think many Pakistanis and Indians share the world’s sentiments. As my friend Sanjeev Gajjella, 28 and a Mississippi State University doctoral student from Hyderabad, put it—“My generation doesn’t care much about these wars. All I want is a good education for my kids, a good family and good earnings. That’s why there is so much growth in India right now, everybody’s thinking like me. We don’t want to fight over Kashmir.”
I suspect that educated people from both countries wish that their governments would let Kashmiris handle themselves—maybe even govern themselves—and focus on more pressing internal affairs. What does Pakistan want with Kashmir? It can’t handle the undisputed territory that already falls under its jurisdiction. Pakistan should work on increasing its democratic and military credibility so that the world will invest, and Pakistan will become a stable place.
And can India take care of more people? Despite their economic boom, 42% of Indians still live in poverty and those figures are rising rather than falling. Nothing could be more damaging to India’s worldwide ambition than to continue to obsessively pour resources into a regional land dispute.
Reservations against US defense commitment to Pakistan
Finally, India doesn’t understand the US’s new defense commitment to Pakistan. And frankly, neither do many Americans. Throwing money at Pakistan’s military has never solved anything before—why do we expect it to solve anything now?
It’s like America’s invasion of Iraq—how much more credible would that have appeared without Halliburton contracts? How much more credible would the Pakistani military appear to the world without the Kashmir dispute?
The Pakistani military has been played for nationalist thugs. In fact, for the right price, the Pakistani military is willing to be anyone’s thug. The US turned a blind eye on nuclear proliferation and terrorism in Kashmir, because we wanted Pakistan to fight the Soviets. We funded madrassas. We contributed greatly to Pakistan’s factional violence and the rise of radical fundamentalism. Pakistan didn’t get into its current situation alone, but it has to get out alone before the international community can truly be any help. Foreigners can build infrastructure, but they can’t reprogram the philosophy of a nation—both communism and Nazism proved that.
And Kashmir is only one reason the world distrusts the Pakistani military. Perhaps the biggest reason is that the military is always overthrowing civilian governments, and even when it’s not in power, controlling key civilian government decisions. Otherwise, why haven’t civilian leaders been able to undo the damage General Zia inflicted on the country’s constitution and legislation?
Even more than American opinion or investment, India and Pakistan should be concerned with China. Beyond the nuclear border, China is the biggest motivation these two nations have for trying to get along. Even as India and Pakistan individually cultivate friendships with China, they have to realise the potential danger should relations turn sour—and should this occur, India and Pakistan need to be a united force. Right now Pakistan enjoys China’s favour and India lives in fear—but Pakistan should realise how unreliable China can be.
Back to Obama’s Asian tour—no matter what happened or what could have happened, no one is happy. Not Pakistan, not even India, and least of all, America. Americans want jobs, but they don’t relish the idea of huge defense contracts providing these jobs, and they hate the idea of arming powerful nations that aren’t currently fighting their proxy wars. Not to mention, America is fixated on the cost of this trip, and paranoid news sources have milked it, circulating the unfounded figure of $200 million a day.
The long and short of it is, this whole trip is political. Politics are necessary, but does anybody ever win?

The US, India and Pakistan

Shafqat Mahmood

Some rituals are particularly meaningless. The US ambassador is "summoned" to the Foreign Office to be told of Pakistan's unhappiness at American support for India's Security Council bid. Both sides know of the futility of this routine, but it has to be gone through, and it is. We can make much of what happened during President Obama's visit to India, and we are doing that. The politicians and the "commentariat" have taken umbrage particularly on the Security Council question. While it is unlikely to happen soon, it is something that is exercising us the most. At one level, it is indeed a failure of Pakistani diplomacy that we have not been able to leverage our position in the Afghan theatre to stop the US from publicly supporting India's bid for global-power status. But, on another plane, the so-called American tilt is a simple recognition of India's growing international importance, and there is not much Pakistan can do about it. While fully within our rights to ritually protest some of the outcomes, we have no choice but to understand the games being played for global supremacy, and where India and Pakistan fit into these. If we go beyond emotions and correctly analyse the dynamics, we can still leverage our strategic position to our advantage. A bit of history. For a long time, Pakistan was successful in twinning India by constantly getting into shouting matches with it internationally. India fell into this trap again and again, and the two countries became a single-issue, Kashmir-related, global partnership. This prompted global powers to seek a degree of balance in their relationship between the two. This was a major success for Pakistan because its tactics nullified the huge disparity in size and population that always made India a weightier international presence. Other factors helped too. Indian economy was a virtually closed shop, and foreign investment was actually discouraged. This did not make India a particularly interesting place for foreign businesses. And in the climate of the Cold War, India pushed non-alignment. This translated into a close relationship with the-then Soviet Union, a prospect not liked by the West. All of that has now changed. India's growing economy, and a large middle class with a huge purchasing power, has become a mouth-watering prospect for Western multinationals. India has also created a reasonably good investment climate, prompting foreign companies to stake out a presence in the Indian market. Close economic ties is a potent bond and India is cognisant of it. On the security front too, India has been able to leverage its growing military power as a possible bulwark against Chinese dominance of the region. Although there is no comparison between the two, with China's economic and military power vastly superior to India's. But, for a West increasingly fearful of China, there is little choice but to build India up as a possible counterweight. It should therefore come as no surprise that successive American presidents have sought to build a very close relationship with India. If the rhetoric used by Clinton, Bush and Obama in visits spread out over a ten-year period is compared, there is very little difference in style or substance. It is a recognition, that the US sees India as a major Asian nation whose values and security perspectives are closely proximate to its own. While the US and India are tangoing together, where does Pakistan fit in? It has an important strategic value for the US, but within a narrow beam. The economic relationship between the two, while very important to Pakistan, does not have a major bearing for American businesses. Not only are we a smaller market, doing business here has serious security hurdles. On the global strategic front too, we have our own priorities not in sync with the Americans. For example, Pakistan has a close relationship with China and sees it as a major security partner. This rules out any possible role that the US security interests may have for Pakistan vis-a-vis China. Even on Iran, which the US is close to taking on militarily, Pakistan is unlikely to stand by it, despite Shah Mahmood Qureshi's intemperate remarks about Iran's nuclear programme. If this is the situation, why does the US continue to engage with Pakistan and support it with aid and assistance? Keeping aside whatever prejudices we have, we must recognise that without American help we would have serious problems in getting IMF and World Bank assistance. And direct US aid has been very helpful too, especially on the military side. The obvious reason for this support is Afghanistan, but there is more to it. On the Afghan front, we keep a vital supply open and have played some role in keeping the militants in check on our side. The Americans want us to do more, but recognise that without Pakistan's help their troubles in Afghanistan would be much greater. Pakistan also has an emerging role in Afghanistan where it can play an important part in facilitating dialogue with the Taliban. While all of these issues are important, on a broader level the US worries about Pakistan's nuclear programme and the danger of it falling into radical hands in case of serious state failure. One can argue that this theory has Israeli sponsorship and that there is no such danger but, whatever the impetus, it is something that concerns the Americans. According to conspiracy theories, the Americans are looking for an opportunity to militarily take control of Pakistan's nuclear programme. This is what the US has publicly stated, but only in case of serious state failure. In the meantime, it is visibly trying to bolster the Pakistani military and the state to ensure that radicals get nowhere near the Bomb. Besides the Bomb, the US and the West have other concerns too, which keep them focused on Pakistan. They deeply worry about the growth of radicalism in Pakistan. This is more than just an intellectual question for them, because they seriously fear attacks on their soil from Pakistan-based radicals. The Faisal Shehzad episode just added another piece of evidence to this concern. And add to this the fact that the US believes Al Qaeda and its leadership are ensconced in the Pak-Afghan tribal regions. A quick narration of factors that keep the US interested in Pakistan show a remarkable degree of negative trigger points. While India is an economic partner, Pakistan's economy needs to be given constant transfusions. While India is a strategic ally against China, Pakistan is not, but can be cajoled into cooperating in Afghanistan. There is no terror threat from India, but there is from elements in Pakistan. Not a pretty picture. But instead wringing our hands at what Obama has done in India, we need to deeply analyse our assets and liabilities and then work hard at improving the positives. There is still space to further our economic and security interests, provided we get our domestic act together. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a whole new can of worms. Email: shafqatmd@gmail.com

Obama’s India visit is Pakistan’s wake-up call: analysts

ISLAMABAD: The symbolism, trade deals and fine words of Barack Obama’s courtship of India should be Pakistan’s wake-up call to fix its economy and eradicate militancy to ward off isolation, analysts say.
The US president declared India a world power, the India-US alliance “one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century” and unveiled deals worth 10 billion dollars designed to create 50,000 American jobs in an ailing economy.
Going further than any US president before, he backed India’s quest for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, although with no immediate prospect of reform and likely strong Chinese opposition, it was a largely symbolic move.
Just weeks after Pakistan’s latest round of “strategic dialogue” with the US in a bid to overcome mistrust, the warm embrace between Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stood in stark contrast.
“Pakistanis have to be more realistic on understanding India’s growing international role,” political analyst Hasan Askari told AFP.
“India is investing in the United States while our economy is in bad shape. There is no Pakistani investment in the West, very little in the Middle East. We ask for money from the United States, while India does not.”
Indian deals will funnel 10 billion dollars into the US economy, while under a US Congress bill American taxpayers fork out 1.5 billion a year for development in Pakistan with promises of another two billion dollars in military assistance.
While Obama’s visit reflects the shift in power to emerging nations since the financial crisis, Pakistan is a considered client state with a Taliban and al Qaeda presence plotting to kill US soldiers and fanning the war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan, whose status as a nuclear power still alarms the West, has been stifled by decades of military rule, recession and religious extremism.
Its security forces are fighting a Taliban insurgency in the northwest.
Bomb attacks have killed thousands nationwide and its tribal belt is considered an al Qaeda headquarters subject to a covert US drone war.
Writing in The News daily, public policy consultant Mosharraf Zaidi said the only lesson to draw from Obama’s visit was “the deals being made”.
“While we drown in the inanities of this country’s infinite and perpetual search for identity, we are deepening our current bankruptcy, and ensuring a future of mostly begging for handouts.”
With Obama visiting Indonesia, APEC in Japan and the G20 in South Korea, Zaidi said: “The reason he is not visiting Pakistan is obvious. Pakistan does not belong on that list of countries and that is not India’s fault.”
Analysts say Islamabad should soften its foreign policy, dominated by the anti-Indian military, to avoid isolation as the United States looks to end the war against the Afghan Taliban.
“In today’s world, defeat can be described in one way only: international isolation…Pakistan must learn to be more objective about the crisis it is facing internally,” wrote The Express Tribune in an editorial.
“Pakistan can sort out this crisis through self-correction.”
But there was also gratitude; unlike British Prime Minister David Cameron — who sparked a diplomatic crisis when he accused Pakistan of exporting terror while in India — Obama refused to be drawn into fresh criticism of Islamabad.
He urged India and Pakistan to resolve their differences and called on Islamabad to do more against militants, but acknowledged the country was making progress against what he called the “cancer” of extremism.
Askari said in what was a nod to the US realisation that the country is indispensable to forging peace in Afghanistan, Obama did not sideline Pakistan.
“What he said about terrorist havens in the tribal areas is what the Americans have been saying before his visit…he avoided any criticism of Pakistan which the Indians were expecting,” said Askari.
Former lieutenant general-turned-security analyst Talat Masood said Pakistan was obviously concerned by US-India ties, and would remain apprehensive about India unless relations with Pakistan are normalised.
“But there is not much it can do. Pakistan has to adjust itself to the existing reality. It should improve its own domestic situation,” Masood said

Diplomacy by flattery

By Jawed Naqvi

WHEN US President Barack Obama chose to stay at Mumbai`s Taj Hotel last week, it was seen as a gesture of America`s solidarity with India`s fight against terrorism.

The hotel was a target in the Mumbai terror outrage of November 2008. By the time Mr Obama signed a joint statement with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Delhi his choice of the Taj had acquired a more palpable symbolism. The hotel was built with money from the India-China opium trade. The opium export to China was legal under British colonial laws though the Chinese resisted it as an assault on their sovereignty.
The differences resulted in the outrageous Opium Wars between British garrisons and Chinese satraps. Lest we forget, the Chinese resistance to Indian opium was akin to the anti-colonial upsurge against the British crown as evidenced in the Boston harbour.
In a way The Boston Tea Party of 1773 that triggered America`s break from Britain, completed the irony of Mr Obama`s recent visit to India. It involved a significant jostling between three countries that were subjugated in different ways by a common former foe — British colonialism.
While the more readily obsequious among the Indian media parroted the American line in concert with the spurious nationalist assertion about India`s emergence as a global player thanks to Mr Obama`s conditional support for New Delhi`s quest to sit at the UN high table, The New York Times put it plainly, and without excessive waffling.
It observed that Mr Obama`s promise on UNSC membership signalled an American plan for India “that would expand commercial ties and check the influence of an increasingly assertive China”. That the plan envisages pitting India against Myanmar and Iran remains a less discussed fine print.
The timing of the visit was significant. Messrs Obama and Singh are headed to South Korea this week for a meeting of the Group of 20, “apparently in agreement on what is expected to be a significant clash between the world`s big powers over the United States Federal Reserve`s plan to boost the American economy by pumping $600bn into it”.
It so happens that China has severely criticised the move by the US central bank, which it sees as intended to push down the value of the dollar to boost American exports. In fact, Germany`s finance minister equated the move with currency manipulation “with the help of their central bank`s printing presses”.
Mr Obama`s defence of the measure absurdly enough found backing from his Indian host. “Anything that would stimulate the underlying growth and policies of entrepreneurship in the United States would help the cause of global prosperity,” the Indian prime minister ad-libbed.
Should someone have asked him to explain how a weak US dollar was good for anyone wanting to export to America? Dr Singh might have been indulgent because he plans to import huge quantities of military hardware from the US, perhaps for some new wars minus the opium.
It has been a widely caricatured characteristic of the feudal rajas and nawabs that they were susceptible to flattery. Few expected a proud Indian republic to fall prey to the lure of easy praise. However, in a country in which support by Malawi and Tonga for UNSC membership makes newspaper headlines, Mr Obama`s address to parliament was manna from heaven.
The speech, replete with easy praise and distorted history, was naturally applauded by both the ruling Congress and the more stridently nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Had Mr Obama been more objective with his history, his praise for Gandhi`s peaceful methods should have been juxtaposed with George Washington`s military prowess that vanquished British colonialism. His praise for King Jr and Ambedkar should have been followed by a comparison of the continuing and relentless plight of black Americans and Indian Dalits.
However, now and henceforth India was going to be a major military power. It is another matter that its 600 million people, roughly 85 per cent of the population, still eke out a living on a dollar a day. But India was now going to take on all the threatening windmills in its neighbourhood and beyond, militarily if necessary.
Mr Obama would of course not say it to the Indian parliament, but his current four-nation trip of Asia touches base with three other countries — Indonesia, where an American-backed military dictator slaughtered millions of anti-imperialist partisans in the 1960-70s, thus clearing the ground for today`s religious zealots to gain strength; South Korea, where it has stationed troops to sustain an internecine war since the 1950s; and Japan, an economic ally it once nuked. Is there a lesson for India?
For all his talk of global nuclear disarmament in New Delhi, Mr Obama has refused to attend an anti-nuclear meeting of Nobel laureates when he visits Japan because it would be a sign of a weak American presidency to be seen with those who censure the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There is another symbolism in Mr Obama`s stay at the Taj. It was built by its Indian owner after he was not allowed into Mumbai`s “for whites only” hotels. It is just as well that the first couple stayed in a suite that had no view of Mumbai`s most familiar landmark — its massive clusters of impoverished but unvanquished slums. If India survives Mr Obama`s grizzly embrace, it would be partly because life in its slums remains unaffected by kind words or distorted history.

Iqbal Day Special: An existential quest

In his poetry, which was by his own admission only a tool to convey his ever evolving thought, Iqbal raised many a magnificent existential question: Who am I? What am I here to do? What is my role, for myself, my community, my people, and humanity as a whole, in the great scheme of the cosmos?
These are some of the fundamental questions with regard to the human condition that Iqbal struggled to answer. His peculiar existentialism predates the mid-20th century preoccupation of western thinkers like Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus; it is also a far cry from the inherently selfish strain of a very individualism-centric thought that we see in the 19th century Kierkegaard and Nietzsche; or the alienation witnessed in the works of Dostoevsky and Kafka right after them. While European modern thought, a pre-curser of post-modernist thinking, developed in industrialising societies, Iqbal’s thinking took shape under a dual influence exerted on him by his European education and travels and his experience of the human condition in a pluralistic India under the Raj, a pluralism which was historically ill at ease with itself.
The Historical Context
In recorded human history, India was a place where the nobility, whether home grown or of foreign origins, practically enslaved the vast majority and their resources. Only a strong central authority gave India a semblance of being one, albeit a diverse, whole. Democracy did not come naturally to the Indian soul; British colonial rule, despite its modernity, remained just that. The British not only refused to Indianise themselves, they also could not bring themselves up to calling India home. This was very unlike the Muslim rulers who had ruled from Delhi or the Deccan before they were ousted.
Iqbal’s identification with and his concern over the fate of all colonised nations of the East—not India alone—by mighty powers of the West called for a wider shift in the entire power paradigm that was in place in his time. This he sought by transcending the relatively smaller canvas of India, which had historically shown itself to have been intellectually and militarily docile in the face of foreign aggression century after century. With the entire Muslim world under virtual colonisation of the West after the debacle of the Turkish caliphate, and considerable weakening of the Persian Empire that struggled between Russian pressure exerted from the north and British protectorates to the south, it was the Muslim East—once a formidable power and a civilization—with a history and idiom of its own, that Iqbal invoked as a counterweight to western hegemony.
He did this for two reasons: one, better the devil you know, and two, in a bid to weave a parallel but indigenously sourced modern thinking, the wherewithal of which some from his generation had acquired through their western education, and by rebelling against the West’s Orientalism. He was ready to travel further on the road that Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had taken before him. This was because the Indian National Congress’s Swadeshi politics and Bande Mataram-like trappings reeked too much of an idiom that increasingly became exclusionist of non-Hindus; likewise, the social change-centric Arya Samaj movement’s belief in the supremacy of a Hindutva-based mechanism (albeit in a milder form than the ideology later espoused by the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh and the like) as a counterweight to colonialism, left a Muslim thinker who was well versed in his own tradition and secular, western education with little choice.
A Troubled Pluralism
This was the troubled pluralism of India that Iqbal grew up in, and which practised communal segregation often bordering on apartheid: upper caste versus lower caste; untouchability of the other in its many forms; food segregation; Persian, Arabic and Urdu education for Muslims, the fallen nobility; Sanskrit and Hindi for Hindus; Gurmukhi and Khalsa educational institutions for Sikhs; missionary schools for the Christian converts and modern natives, etc. Then there was the caste/ biradari system that divided both Hindus and Muslims equally within their own respective creeds, virtually barring any meaningful social interaction, sharing of rituals, intermarriages, etc., even among the many sub-communities within the larger communities.
Secondly, Iqbal could only communicate in the languages and the idiom that he was comfortable with; he chose Urdu and Farsi for poetry and English for prose, but kept his idiom firmly rooted in the Muslim tradition of knowledge and philosophy, which despite being Islamic was secular enough to embrace non-Muslims, in that it had a heart big enough to historically take in a very diverse cross section of humanity, from the desert Bedouin to the culturally refined Arab of the Fertile Crescent, to the sophisticated Persian to the warrior Turk, to the diverse North Africa of many tribes and tongues, to the Spanish, on the one hand, and the diverse peoples of the Far East on the other side of the spectrum. This was Iqbal’s universe of the humanity, including India, that suffered either under direct colonial rule or its debilitating influence over their affairs, and which he tried to address.
A Wider Outreach
As for the outreach of secular Muslim learning as it developed in India despite the segregation and apartheid practised in society, Urdu and Farsi, as opposed to Hindi, appealed to a wider informed audience interested in the arts and literature. It is a great historical contradiction that can only be resolved by taking into account the fact that the Muslim learning tradition and its cultural manifestations became secular under the great Mughals. The trend continued despite Aurangzeb’s half a century of intolerant rule which decisively weakened the latter day Mughals. In Iqbal’s time it stood revived first through the Aligarh movement and later under a modern, secular, Fort William College, Kolkata, Oriental College, Lahore, Osmania University, Hyderabad, Jamia Millia, Delhi and many Anglo-Mohammadan colleges across the empire, to continue even after independence. India churned out some of the finest non-Muslim Urdu writers and poets from across northern India, particularly from Uttar Pradesh, Kashmir and Punjab, whose idiom, like Iqbal’s (and even Pandit Nehru’s), remained very Muslim, if you like, in its cultural context. One need only look at the works of the likes of Ratan Nath Sarshar, Munshi Premchand, Jagannath Azad (an Iqbal scholar of authoritative standing in his own right) and his father, Tilakchand Mehroom, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Krishan Chander, Firaq Gorakhpuri, etc. In our own time there are ace critic/scholars like Gopi Chand Narang and the inimitable Bollywood lyricist, poet and writer (Sampooran Sigh) Gulzar, along with the nearly entire pre-1990s Bollywood industry; even the prolific and much anglicised Khushwat Singh is Urdu-Farsi literate, for it stemmed naturally from their native cultural and learning milieu.
Iqbal’s Context: Then and Now
Thus, Iqbal, by using a so-called Muslim idiom and symbolism, is by no means the poet/ thinker of Islam or of Muslims alone, although his idiom remains firmly rooted in Muslim lore via Urdu and Farsi sensibilities. The appeal of his social thought, which takes precedence over his so-called religious thought, which was anathema to many of his contemporary Muslim ulema/ scholars, found ready admirers from among the progressive literati, including Faiz Ahmed Faiz. This was because Faiz never read Iqbal out of the context from which his thoughts flowed—and those thoughts are quite diverse when seen in their entirety as they progressed over the years. It must also be noted that Iqbal was a poet and a thinker, and not a politician, much less a crystal ball gazer. The possibility of the miracle of democracy taking root in a post-independence India, which Nehru and Ambedkar, and Maulana Azad getting the pride of place, managed to pull off, eluded him. It eluded him by what was to be the turn of events as they unfolded, and not because of a lack of vision on his part. Iqbal died in 1938, long before Britain would be exhausted of its military power in the Second World War to be able to hold on to India by the end of 1945, and seek rather hurriedly to pull out of India. In the years that followed, India’s troubled pluralism decisively settled for a majoritarian and market-oriented socioeconomic paradigm; in the process of democracy taking root, Urdu was gradually but virtually wiped out from the place of its birth, and with it also died the all-inclusive Muslim secular sensibility. The saving grace may be that secularism of the state, despite being under threat from the now electorially popular and now rejected Hindutva, has managed to survive, but it has extracted a heavy toll all the same: no Iqbal, not even an Abul Kalam Azad, will henceforth sprout from the Indian soil, because the Muslim sensibility in India that groomed such stalwarts has died an unsung death. Only the likes of Darul Uloom or the integrated mainstream citizen, for whom being Muslim is just a personal statistic, and not an entire way of life and thought, remain.
His Peculiar Existentialism
While Iqbal rejected Kierkegaard and Nietzsche’s self-serving individualism, he, like them, prodded one to rethink the human condition to seek answers that would serve the individual, thence a growing number of individuals and on to the collective whole of humanity. Only such a growing and all-inclusive human chain of thought, of consciousness, to him, could lead to true intellectual freedom that would not be subservient to a colonial or any hegemonic mindset in any of its manifestations, be it under the garb of religion, western academia or military muscle, three forces which have now appropriated all power at the expense of humanity at large. Falsafi se hai gharz mujh ko aur na mullah se/ Yeh dil ki maut, woh aqeeda-o-nazar ka fasaad (Neither the philosopher nor the priest I contend with/ One spells death for the heart, the other runs riot with his conflict of conviction and vision), he wrote.
Religion to Iqbal is morality and social justice that it ensures, as forming the basis of a humane society, a living spirit imbued with ‘Love’ for that elusive human ideal. Religion is certainly not a bunch of rituals or a set of archaic tribal Arab customs that should be implanted in a soil where they do not belong; any morality thus implanted will never take root let alone bring peoples and cultures together under a set of values that apply universally. Iqbal knew this well enough. ‘And what is that one value based in the refined realm of the human experience that can deliver humanity?’ he seemed to ask himself repeatedly; until he found the answer in Love, and cried out loud and clear: Bande-ye-azaadam, ishq ast imam-e-man/ Ishq ast imam-e-man, aql ast ghulaam-e-man (I am a free man; Love leads me on/ Love leads me on; reason is my slave).
Here was a clear bid to alter the Nietzschean recipe for putting meaning in individual life through acquisition of sheer power, power of the ruthless variety, if it be so, by replacing it with Love as a natural, positive human sentiment and value that can empower the individual and through him more individuals until the fraternity grows into one vast sea of humanity.
Powered by Love that is so intrinsic in human nature, Iqbal then spoke of the individual regaining his self-esteem (khudi), which then widens its appeal to include the collective humanity, thus leading to temporal and spiritual fulfillment. Likewise, Iqbal sees man’s Biblical fall from Paradise not through Milton’s lament of Paradise Lost; on the contrary, he considers it man’s call to action on Earth. The ‘fall’ from Paradise is a descent on Earth, not man’s disgrace but his rightful and earned opportunity to exercise freedom of choice and of will, and do so responsibly, by which he proves his mettle and builds his self-esteem, individually and collectively. Then, he can even confront God: Mujh ko jiddat ki talab hai, daal tarh-e-nau koi/ kyun mujhe sagashta-e-imroz-o-farda kardiya (Innovation I seek, start a new order/ Don’t let me be caught up between yesterday and tomorrow—Faiz’s translation from the Persian).
This is the renewed human spirit in action in Iqbal, of looking God (or the powers that be) in the eye as did the classical Greek heroes, with the difference that Iqbal is not into writing tragedies, but stories of triumph of human endeavour and dignity and inspiring improvement in the human condition. References in his poetry to Biblical and Quranic anecdotes and phraseology could be seen in their symbolic, allegorical context and not always literally. In that Iqbal has improved tremendously on the 16-century existentialism of Mulla Sadra (in theological Muslim thought), who had argued that all and any existence precedes all and any essence of all matter and mind, thus acknowledging change as a constant running factor defining man’s interaction with the divine and the cosmos; this theory altered the course of medieval philosophical thought in Europe as well as in the Muslim world.

Not the time to take on the US

Zafar Hilaly Yes, indeed, some were miffed that Obama excluded Pakistan from his trip to India. And what's wrong in wanting Pakistan to be treated on a par with India? It's as much a common courtesy as a legal right among nations. And why has what was once a common comparison suddenly become invidious? Because India's GDP is so much more, even if it is not yet equal to that of the miniscule Benelux Arrangement? And why should we believe those who say that money can do everything, just because they can do everything for money? Their credo is that $10 billion can do no wrong, and our offence consists in doubting it. Ah, well, imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of the life of some, though, in the case of a rare few, they make up all of it.
In any case, it is not that Obama travelled to India and excluded Pakistan mostly because of money or a concern for American jobs. That's a ruse which an electorally chastened Obama wants his electorate to believe. When you can literally print your own money, buy your own debt, ratchet up your deficit at whim, spend more on acquiring weapons than the rest of the world combined, invade and occupy two countries and still give a tax break to your people, money isn't your problem. No, "it's (not) the economy, stupid."
Obama skipped Pakistan to make the very obvious point that it will be India, inexorably and inevitably, that will henceforth have priority in Washington. Admittedly, this policy has been in the making for some time, and much before Obama's assumption of office. And why not? Our interests and those of the US do not coincide or overlap, except to a limited extent and only at the tactical level, whereas those of the US with India, for balancing China and the prospect of a large market, are more extensive. However, there being definite limits on our wisdom, but none on our stupidity, we did not educate the public about this. Perhaps because we did not believe that America would so brazenly remove its mask of even-handedness. Or perhaps because of the hype created every time Hillary smiled or Obama called. All added to the public's bewilderment, which seemed astonished that:
(a) America should strategically feel so weak as to grovel in order to enlist India's assistance against China. And to promise India support for a Security Council seat as a reward for ignoring all the Council's Resolutions on Kashmir.
(b) Induct India into the Afghan quagmire so that Afghanistan, already a battleground between Pakhtun nationalists and American forces, should now also sport a proxy war between India and Pakistan.
(c) Obama would so easily renege on his pre-election pledge to help settle the Kashmir dispute and turn his back on Muslim Kashmiris' yearning to be rid of India. Or so blatantly practice what he so much preaches – against. His silence on Kashmir, even as he berated Myanmar and Iran for human rights violations, was not only deafening but obscene. It put him beyond the pale as far as public opinion here is concerned.
(d) America's rush to rearm India even as the weapons were off the shelf for Pakistan. And enable India to divert its indigenously produced fissile material towards building more nuclear warheads, while using America's abilities in rocket science to perfect its nuclear-weapons delivery systems under the guise of space cooperation. For someone whose idol is Gandhi the eagerness, bordering on glee, with which Obama peddles weapons was breathtaking.
By ignoring Pakistan, Obama has exposed the horrible prospect that the US-India nexus poses for Pakistan's security and wellbeing. As this sinks in, our efforts to quell anti-Western feelings in Pakistan and bring to book those who thrive on hate will inevitably flag. And, although that would be very wrong, they may even be abandoned. Indeed, finding ourselves in a financial and strategic crunch we could revert to the bad habit of using jihadi groups to augment our defence capability, again a temptation that we should scrupulously avoid.
Nevertheless, even as the US lines up with India against Pakistan – of course, pretending all the time that it is not – we would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we treat the US as an enemy or revert to our jihadist approach, because that would play into the hands of the extremists and strengthen the hands of demented hardliners in Pakistan and India.
Obama's non-visit was a defining moment in not only US-Pakistan relations but for the political soul-searching it will set off in the Pakistani establishment, which until now felt cosy in America's embrace. As Pakistan is left to fend for itself with a foreign policy that no longer makes sense in the changed circumstances, and a political system based on Western political values that has failed to deliver, so the people will turn away from Western-style democracy to a political system that is either on the lines of the Taliban or that in existence in Iran. And the longer Western democracy hangs about ineffectively, the stronger will become the opposition to it. Mr Zardari may have been elected, but increasingly, as Pakistan radicalises, he will become, like the Shah of Iran, a symbol of discredited American influence. And it will not be his fault, as much as that of the Pakistani establishment, which now runs our foreign policy and, of course, of Obama who hung Zardari out to dry by ignoring him, even as he frolicked with Manmohan Singh.
Actually, as India celebrates the outcome of the Obama visit, which is as much a material as a psychological triumph for India, Pakistan has seldom seemed more vulnerable. The popular feeling here is that our neighbour, now supported by America, wants to fashion us in their mould, or else wants us dead. Manmohan Singh has refused to engage with Pakistan unless, as he implied, we stop churning out terrorists. We are not, but as he believes that, he will have to wait till the cows come home. So we can forget about confidence-building and wait for the next jihadi attack against India. Unfortunately, so great is our vulnerability that escalation will occur at a frightening pace once that happens.
Perhaps, it may all happen even before Obama visits next year. It's up to the terrorists. Anyway, no one is particularly excited at the prospect of having Obama here unless it is an Al Qaeda squad for reasons of their own. Nor do we really want to hear from Obama, if and when he finally gets here, why he has deigned to come. Bill Clinton's explanation for a similar lapse was considered just so much hot air.
Our angst and disappointment notwithstanding, this is not the time to take on the US. Besides, our fundamental problem is the internal mess. We cannot have an effective foreign policy when this regime is clueless about how to deal with the problems that confront us domestically where, sadly, anarchy looms. The trouble is that no one takes them, and perhaps Pakistan, seriously anymore.

US designs in India

Afshain Afzal

President Obama in his just covcluded Indian visit has announced that he would relax technological export restrictions imposed after India’s nuclear tests in May 1998. Interestingly Washington also announced trade and defense deals with New Delhi worth 10 billion dollars which are going to create 50,000 jobs for the Americans. While addressing the Indian businessmen, President Obama said “As we look to India today, the United States see an opportunity to sell our exports in one of the fastest growing markets in the world”. Earlier this year, there was an agreement between India and US over the dumping of nuclear wastes in Indian soil. However, as yet, this could not be confirmed from either the Indian government or that of the US. Visit of US president also corresponds with pressure on Islamabad to give up idea of awarding contract to Chinese Company for the estimated 2.2 billion construction of 1,100MW hydro power project in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Of course, China is one of the best friends of Pakistan on which we can even rely in the future. Those pressurizing Islamabad to sidle line Chinese firms must understand that we cannot sacrifice our national interests. Islamabad needs to be aware of the Indian Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and other Indian agencies. The presence of Israelis in Indian Held Jammu and Kashmir and frequent visits of foreign intelligence personnel from US is matter of concern. One must not forget that US Vice-Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, who was head of the US DIA, along with undercover officers agents visited Indian Held Jammu and Kashmir in January 2002 and thereafter it became a matter of route to get update briefing on Kashmir every fortnight. US President’s recent visit basically aims to ink secret agreements with New Delhi to bring changes in world order. India would collaborate with US and other western partners in confining five countries which include Pakistan, China, Iran, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Interestingly, President Hamid Karzai, former puppet, has been excluded from the list of favorites and is seen with suspicion by both US and India. As Washington and NATO would try to pullout their combatants from Afghanistan from this Christmas, there are fears that these five countries may inflict damage to fleeing foreign troops. US intends to replace the occupying forces with reconstruction personnel, agents in Non Governmental and International Organizations and parallel intelligence agency namely the Centre for Afghanistan Pakistan Excellence (CAPE), headed by Colonel Derek Harvey (R) and others from US Defence Intelligence Agency. The agency would focus on training military officers, covert agents and analysts. In fact, US has setup training centre at the Central Command to train Pakistani and Afghan officials and secret agents to focus on these countries. Indian leaders who believe that their military and intelligence collaborations with US would give boost to Indian economy and military might must recall the fate of those leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan who cooperated with US on the same lines. The question arises that after the ten years of occupation of both the countries which took place with the connivance of local leaders against the popular groups, what are the results today? Do we have US’ promised Shia governments in any of these countries or independent Kurd state? In fact, these people had been playing in the hands of foreigners as ever, against there own people. Unless New Delhi opens her eyes and watch its steps, in the coming years India would be another example which sold its sovereignty but gained nothing . There is a strong lobby that is trying to ease relations between India and Pakistan, which of course is not a bad move but should not be acceptable to Islamabad without assurance of resolution of pending issue like Jammu and Kashmir, Rann of Kutch, Siachen and the treatment of minorities in India, especially the Muslims. India, no doubt, is a growing economy and doing well in many fields. Had the irritants like Kashmir issue resolved between India and Pakistan by giving Kashmiris their right of self determination on the basis of United Nations Security Council resolutions, both countries could have expanded their businesses and live like good friends. It is high time that both Pakistan and India must give up their preconceived suspicions and mistrusts about each other and resolve their pending issues instead of involving third countries or waiting for the time to decide

Obama’s tight rope diplomacy in India

M Ashraf Mirza

US President Barack Obama had to tread the diplomatic tightrope during his visit to India in dealing with a complex political situation obtaining in south asia in the context of vital stakeholders like Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. He has tried to maintain an uneasy balance between its political and economic interests as well as military objectives in his speeches and media interactions in Mumbai and New Delhi. He opted to stay at Taj Hotel, a November 2008 target of terrorist attack, but refrained from mentioning Pakistan in his statements whom India persistently blames for the assault. While he propped up India for future international role by endorsing her ambition for a permanent slot on the UN Security Council, he reminded its leadership that with growing power comes increased responsibility. He counseled India to be a good neighbor and to bolster peace efforts with Pakistan leading to the resolution of the major irritant in the region. Throughout his three-day visit, Obama sought to balance the assiduous courting of New Delhi, which corresponds to long-term US strategic goals viz-a-viz China, with the need not to overly antagonize Islamabad. The US is heavily dependent on Pakistan for its continued support for the Afghan war.e Indian and US officials also announced several major military contracts, including the largest every Indian armaments order from the US, an agreement to purchase 10 C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft. Washington is seemingly determined to wrest large military contracts from India, to boost its major aeronautics firms and other US arms manufacturers and also to make India’s military dependent on US supplies and technology. Frankly, there is neither anything for Pakistan to rejoice nor to feel dismayed over the US President’s visit to India. It was more a ‘business’ trip than of political overtones. But beggars can’t be choosers. There is, in fact, a hell of difference between Pakistani and Indian positions relating to the United States. While Washington is aspiring to fetch about hundred billion dollars worth of sales agreements with India besides seeking its contribution to create employment opportunities in the US, Pakistan is at the receiving end. Islamabad has always been looking towards US for financial assistance since Ayub era. True that Pakistan has served the US interests during cold war, Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and US invasion of the landlocked country, but it has never been treated with sovereign equality. Pakistan is the one country that has rendered more human and material sacrifices as a result the US misadventure in Afghanistan than any other country in the world incljuding the US and NATO, yet it has to face the do more mantra every now and then. Obama has also not missed the occasion of his Indian visit to say that Pakistan is not doing as per his country’s expectations. Time has come for us to re-evaluate our foreign policy. To regain our self respect and sovereign equality, it’s pertinent to gradually dispense with our US centric foreign policy and look for other options, which are amply available. But as the saying goes that foreign policy is the extension of domestic situation, our rulers will have to mend the home front. With political polarization, public antagonism due to unprecedented price hike, unabated corruption, lack of justice, sagging economy and nepotism reigning supreme in the society, Pakistan can not expect to be at par with other nations. It’s a pity that the government is unmindful of the public outcry over the mounting cost of living. It wakes up only after the multifarious mafias achieve their desired ends and succeed in raising the prices of essential commodities. Prime Minister Gilani has woken up to the sugar crisis only after the prices have shot up to over hundred rupees per kilogram. This can hardly be appropriate to seek a dignified foreign policy. It’s, therefore, high time that the government should translate its profession of trade not aid into reality. Let there be no more begging. Pakistan has rightly objected to Obama’s shift in the US policy by openly endorsing the Indian bid for the UN Security Council seat. A Foreign Office statement has warned that the attempt to make India a permanent member would add ‘complexity to the process’ of reforming the Security Council and urged the US not to follow the ‘exigencies of power politics.’ The statement pointed to ‘India’s conduct in relations with its neighbors and its continued flagrant violations of Security Council resolutions’ on Kashmir as reasons that India should be denied greater power at the UN. It will simply be a mockery of the UN principles and international morality, if a country like India that has a track record of hostilities towards its neighbours including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal is made a member of the world body. Washington must have sought India to resolve its disputes with Pakistan and other neighbouring countries before endorsing its bid for the slot. Obama’s support for India’s bid for permanent UN Security Council membership is also being seen as a step calculated to aggravate China, against which the Obama administration has adopted an increasingly provocative stance over the past year. This is a calculated move apparently to tumble the rapidly improving economic ties between China and India. Their relations are, however, strained by a border dispute, India’s fears of China’s close relations with Pakistan, Beijing’s expanding influence throughout South Asia and Beijing’s concerns that New Delhi is being drawn into a US-led Asian-Pacific military-strategic bloc. Washington is anxious to harness India to its drive to contain and, if need be, counter a rising China. With this end in view, it has aggressively courted New Delhi for the past decade, including spearheading a successful campaign to lift a three decade-old international embargo on civilian nuclear trade with India. There is obviously nothing new in Obama’s rhetoric that ‘terrorist safe havens’ are unacceptable. He and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has even made harsher statements on the issue in the past. This is understandably part of the pressure tactic to make Pakistan act militarily against Haqqani network in North Waziristan. It’s also seemingly meant to balance his refusal to condemn Pakistan for the terrorist attacks on Mumbai and occupied Kashmi as well his advice to India to be a good neighbor and pursue a peace dialogue with Pakistan for resolution of the contentious issues. India too was not entirely satisfied with Obama’s remarks about Pak-India situation as was evident from Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh interjection at their joint interaction with media. To justify his country’s refusal to resume the composite peace dialogue with Pakistan that was suspended after the 2008 Mumbai attack, accusing Pakistan of continuing to practice ‘terror-induced coercion’, he said ‘You cannot simultaneously be talking and at the same time the terror machine is as active as before.’

Obama in India

Song-and-dance partners

Nov 8th 2010, 5:28 by A.R. | DELHI

TRUE friends are welcome to pop around, even when they have little of substance to talk about. So good is the India-America relationship these days that Barack Obama has been warmly welcomed even when he comes with precious little to say.
The opening part of his four-country Asia trip, in India, may turn out to be a great success (at least compared with the Indonesian part of it, which risks being blown off course by a troublesome volcano). But the first two days delivered little for anyone to get excited about. A few business deals for American companies were brushed together into a package worth some $15 billion, announced in a speech in Mumbai—which supposedly will create 50,000 jobs in America. Disgruntled voters back home are unlikely to pay much heed.
A visit by Mr Obama and the first lady to the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai—scene of a gruesome terrorist attack two years ago—was touching, but as India-America intelligence-sharing is already pretty good, there was nothing much to say about improving matters there.
During an eloquent speech to the combined houses of parliament, in Delhi, Mr Obama did raise a cheer by talking of welcoming India, “in the years ahead”, as a permanent member of a reformed UN Security Council. That is certainly a signal of the warm ties between the two countries, but it is most unlikely that it will lead to any practical changes in the near future. Note that Mr Obama did not say explicitly that America would push for India to get a permanent seat soon, nor is there much sign that America anyway wishes to get UN reform efforts under way.
Inevitably the Indians hoped that Mr Obama would be as rude as possible about Pakistan. The British prime minister, David Cameron, had obliged during a trip in July, saying bluntly that Pakistan exports terrorism over its borders. Confirming as much in London last month, Pakistan’s ex-president, Pervez Musharraf, said he knew militant groups were being allowed across Pakistan’s border in an effort to bring India to the table for talk about Kashmir. Mr Obama talked mostly about encouraging dialogue between the two tetchy neighbours, but was quite explicit in saying that he would “continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders…that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice.
Beyond that has left little more than beautiful photo opportunities and a light-footed display by Michelle Obama, who danced along with schoolchildren to a Bollywood number on Saturday and then again on Sunday to a Konkani song. The president gamely joined in, with slightly less aplomb. He is likely to be more at ease discussing economic policy with India’s cerebral prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
India and America could potentially become very close friends indeed. The similarities are many: each has a large territory and population, a federal system, a fondness for democracy, a deeply religious society, a middle class keen on indulging in great material consumption, a history of throwing off British rule, and so on. More important, each country has an uneasy eye on the rising economic, military and diplomatic power of China, in Asia and beyond, and looks to the other to serve as some sort of counterweight.

Thus, more so than the monetary value of various military procurement deals announced during Mr Obama’s trip, closer defence co-operation between India and America is what really matters. Already America conducts more joint military exercises with India than it does with any other single country, notably in the Indian Ocean. Now American firms are keen to tap into some $45 billion that India is expected to spend in the next few years on re-equipping its armed forces.

India-America trade is not huge yet—it may reach $50 billion this year, still somewhat less than the value of either country’s trade with China, for example—but it has the potential to grow. Mr Obama, as he was widely expected to do, did announce some easing of export controls on hi-tech goods to India, which will help in the defence and space industries, but it will not transform the trade relationship. More important would be resolving a spat over the liability that foreign investors will face when getting involved in India’s civil-nuclear programme. That, sadly, does not seem to be on the cards

U.S. is One of the 'Central Pillars' of Indian Foreign Policy

April 29, 2008
Bruce Riedel, a South Asia expert who has served in the Central Intelligence Agency and in the Clinton White House, sees the improvement in U.S.-India relations as a major accomplishment of the Bush administration, which carried forward progress made during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. Riedel says the U.S.-India nuclear agreement, which has been held up by opposition in India’s parliament, is likely to be approved next year, and that both major Indian political parties now see the United States as one of “the central pillars of India’s foreign policy.”
In looking at President Bush’s foreign policies, people have criticized him for not building on the past. On the question of dealing with India, President Bush’s administration seems to have built on [President Bill] Clinton’s work in getting a relationship going with the Indians. Would you agree with that?
Very much so. When it came in, the Bush team recognized that India was going to be one of the key powers of the twenty-first century, an emerging potential power, certainly a regional power, but perhaps a global power as well. I worked for President Clinton and for President Bush in his transition. His team very much understood that they wanted to build on what the Clinton people had done and to take it further. The Bush people have taken it further with the India-U.S. civilian nuclear deal, which offers the opportunity to remove one of the main stumbling blocks to U.S.-Indian rapprochement—the nuclear nonproliferation issue.
That agreement caused a certain amount of controversy in the United States when it was signed in 2007, but eventually it got general approval in Congress. Why is India delaying approving it?
The delay in India is entirely due to politics in the governing coalition. The Congress Party, a strong supporter, negotiated the deal and it wants to conclude it. But their junior partner in the coalition, the Communists, opposes the deal for a very simple reason. They recognize that the deal is the pathway by which U.S.-Indian relations are going to get much stronger. The Communists are basically opposed to a strong U.S.-Indian strategic partnership and they want to try to scuttle the deal. When I was in India a few weeks ago, the government made it very clear that they are determined to push this deal forward and to get the various bits and pieces of it put together to go to the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] to finish the negotiations with them and then take it to the Nuclear Suppliers Group [multinational nuclear safeguards group]. Sooner or later they will force a showdown with the Communists but probably closer to the next scheduled Indian election in May 2009. This agreement is probably one that is going to slip over into the next administration.
Is there any chance that a new president in the United States would want to scuttle this?
I certainly hope that wouldn’t happen. This deal is the basis for strong U.S.-Indian relationship and I support it. There is certainly a possibility that a new administration may try to strengthen the nonproliferation parts of it, and might, particularly if the Democrats are elected, try to revive the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty [CTBT]. But the first step there of course would be for the United States to ratify the CTBT. I don’t think we could go to the Indians and ask them to do something that we haven’t done so far.
When was the CTBT last pushed in Washington?
It died when the Senate turned it down in 1999.
In the United States, India is discussed in a slightly negative way—companies farming out work to India and that sort of thing. Is the U.S.-India trade relationship very strong right now?
The U.S.-India trade relationship is growing. U.S. trade with India has been increasing and U.S. investment in India has been growing. The Indian economy is now growing at about 9 percent [GDP growth], which by Indian standards and by any standard is really remarkable. The change in India in the last decade is one of the most revolutionary developments in the world. We see India really, at long last, beginning to have the kind of economic growth rate that people have always hoped for. There is still a great deal of poverty but there is an enormous amount of change and wealth. India will soon have the world’s largest oil refinery in Jamnagar by Reliance Industries. It’s a symbol of the country’s growing emergence as a major economic power.
It will be able to process virtually every kind of oil from around the world from heavy to light, making it really one of the most attractive refineries for oil in the world. It will not be dependent upon a certain kind of oil to come to it. It’s one example of the economic change that is going there.
That is fascinating. And the two-way trade between the United States and India, what does that show?
It’s growing. It’s certainly nothing like U.S.-Chinese trade, but after decades of being almost flatlined, it’s growing and improving. The traditional barriers to stronger U.S.-Indian economic relations, the bureaucratic jungle that India was for many years, are slowly changing in the right direction. Infrastructure in the country which has been very poor for a long time is improving. You see new big container ports in India, new airports coming into being, the beginning of a national highway system: the kinds of things to undergird real economic growth for a long time to come. All of those things are going in the right direction.
When I started in foreign affairs, India was always the leader of the nonaligned countries and was in a way in line with the Soviet bloc against the United States’ interest in most places. Now of course we’re getting closer and closer. Who is responsible for this change in India’s thinking?
The end of the Cold War freed India in some ways from thinking in those terms. There is still resistance to stronger U.S.-Indian relations. The Communists are very much opposed to it. But there is a very large consensus between the Congress Party and the main opposition—the BJP—that U.S.-Indian relations will be one of the central pillars of India’s foreign policy. When the Indians look around, they look at a troubled neighborhood. To go around the circle with them: Pakistan is in the midst of a difficult transition from military dictatorship to democracy and it’s clear that that transition is going to be a troubled one and that violence is increasing. In Afghanistan, to the north, the Karzai government is having a difficult time with the Taliban, demonstrated by the attempted assassination of President Karzai yesterday. Nepal just elected a Maoist government; Maoist rebels are a big problem in much of India today so this could be another source of trouble.
There is a very large consensus between the Congress Party and the main opposition—the BJP—that U.S.-Indian relations will be one of the central pillars of India’s foreign policy.
Then there are problems in Tibet which have come up this year. India probably has the most at stake with how those troubles work themselves out, being the home of the Tibetan exile community and the Dalai Lama. Then you have Bangladesh and Burma [Myamar] on the other side, which have been experiencing great deals of domestic trouble and both are now under military government. Burma, of course, has a horrendous human-rights record. So India looks around its neighborhood and it’s got many troubled neighbors and it’s trying to look for friends that will be standing by it. The United States has demonstrated in the last decade or so, first under President Clinton, then under President Bush, that it’s a solid partner for working with India.
What about the current flap about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is due in India on April 29 to talk about a natural gas pipeline that would go through Pakistan? This has been talked about for over a decade. Is this about to come into fruition? Is the United States really that opposed to this deal?
Ahmadinejad and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf announced that they worked the Iran-Pakistan part of this deal out. I’m a little skeptical. This is a very complex deal and it’s been in the works a long time. My own suspicion is that it’s still probably years away from being operational. American relations with India should not become a hostage to Indian-Iranian relations. India does have a working relationship with Iran. India is the world’s second largest Shiite Muslim country. There are almost as many Shittes in India as there are in Iran. But India also has a very strong relationship with Israel. India is today Israel’s number one customer for military exports and India and Israel have a very close relationship in terms of space activity. India has been a launching point for Israel’s most sophisticated spy satellite, which will launch later this year, and several that are coming up. So if you compare the India-Israel relationship with the India-Iran relationship on a strategic level, India and Israel are much closer and have much more intimate relations in terms of military technology transfers and space research than India has with Iran.
India has made clear that it supports the United States and other UN Security Council members on the resolutions on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Right?
That’s right. In the critical vote in the IAEA on the Iran issue, India has been with us. Indian officials said to me when I was there a few weeks ago that the last thing they want to see is a second Muslim nuclear power on their western border. They have enough to worry about with a nuclear-armed Pakistan. They don’t want to see a nuclear-armed Iran.
When you talked about the troubled neighbors you didn’t talk about India’s relations with China.
One part of that is the Tibet issue but yes, there is a larger question in the relationship between Indian and China. The Indians do not want to become part of some kind of American strategy to encircle or contain China. They want to engage China. They obviously have some concerns about long-term Chinese policy. They are quick to point out the difference between India and China is that India is a democracy with a proven track record of democratic elections and democratic transitions whereas China remains a communist dictatorship. They are eager to have strong relations with China but they also know that the two of them are the emerging major powers in Asia and there will be areas of competition as well as cooperation. Indian strategic thinkers recognize that in the long term, getting their relationship with China right is probably the single-most important part of Indian foreign policy in the twenty-first century.
Has the United States taken advantage of this improved relationship with India to do much with military cooperation and in intelligence cooperation? Are we working together against terrorists for instance?
There has been progress in the right direction in the military and intelligence fields but more can be done. We’ve begun to strengthen the military to military relationship but we still have some ways to go. In the intelligence relationship, we’ve made some progress but there again more could be done. But India has been a frequent target of Islamic terrorist groups, many of them operating out of Pakistan. It is high on al-Qaeda’s list of targets , as is the United States. India should cooperate much more strongly on counterterrorism than they have in the past. I would say that this is one of the areas—military and intelligence cooperation—that the next administration should really try to take this relationship to an even higher level

Who will trust America?

Azam Khalil

“Blessed are those that naught expect, For they shall not be disappointed.” - Walcot
The pattern is all too familiar and, therefore, not many people were surprised in Pakistan when the American President sort of endorsed Indian desire to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security council. In recent history everyone has seen how the US foreign policy works and fails, be it Iran, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and a host of other countries spread over the globe.
The Indians on their part also used familiar tactics by exerting enormous pressure on the Americans through their media that went for the throat of the US President and squeezed him to a point where he surrendered to almost all what New Delhi wanted from his administration. Mr Obama is set on a course where he may become the only President who suffered by a landslide in a general election, if he seeks, what is normal for an American President, a second term of office. The voters in his country have already made their voices heard by handing him an unprecedented defeat in the House of Representatives. He has also lost crucial ground in the Senate.
The Americans in their exuberance to do business with the vast Indian market have taken certain decisions, which may destabilize an entire region instead of providing it with stability, that is in the interest of not only this region but also of the United States. The Indians have earned unprecedented concessions and will now have access to high-tech American technology that was previously out of reach for them. However, at the same time they will very soon find that their new found friendship with the Americans would put some extraordinary burden on their shoulders. The most serious of it would be that the Americans would want the Indians to pursue a policy in their relations with China that suits the strategic interests of the United States. While in the short-term it would be beneficial for both India and the United States to do business with one another, but soon enough both will realize that it was not entirely a prudent policy to foster a relationship that would alienate both China and Pakistan.
The Americans should have made it clear to the Indians that to aspire for a UN Security Council seat is one thing but to translate it into reality would be another. This because the Indians can never ever pass the test of morality even if the United Nations was to be reformed because of its history in violating its several resolutions in the past. On the contrary, the endorsement by President Obama for India’s quest would add a new dimension of complexity to the entire reform programme that may never be acceptable to Europe and now more specifically to the Peoples Republic of China. The American President should have known better that the reform programme at the United Nations is already mired in serious differences between certain European capitals and, therefore, it was not very pragmatic on his part to add a new dimension to an already complex issue that will now become harder to resolve in spite what the Indians call American endorsement for them.
For many in this country, who have seen the result of US friendship for the last 60 years there will be some consolation when the Indians find that American policymakers can quickly switch off all the lights that were now burning at both the ends at the slightest indication of American interest shifting away from India. The main purpose of American interest and the subsequent tour of President Obama to Indonesia, Korea and then Japan is indicative of the what the US policymakers have on their minds when they have travelled the extra mile to please the Indians. The Americans with the passage of time knew that they were losing their competitive edge not only in modern technology but their economy had also become subservient to certain elements that were probably beyond the control of the United States. There seems to be some sort of desperation on the part of policymakers in the United States, who want to encircle and isolate China in their bid to see that the Chinese do not dominate the global economy or attain political and military power that cannot be challenged by the United States or their allies. It has probably become imperative for the Americans that they have access to markets that will allow them to progress forward; otherwise the signs for their economy are not positive and it may continue to flutter at best.
The short-sightedness of the Americans should not be lost by Pakistan and this country must now put in place a mechanism that would allow it to extract a reasonable price from its American friends if they want the support of this country in Afghanistan and some other parts of the Islamic world. The time may have come when decision makers in this country put a plan on the drawing board that allows it to pursue a more independent foreign policy and that its relations with its neighbours are no more dictated by the US or its strategic interests. Pakistan should now follow a course that will allow it to cement its relations not only with Iran and China, but also with the entire Arab world. This country can play a more vibrant role in the Islamic world that can ultimately result in the formation of a block of nations that makes America and other powers to listen to their voice more attentively.
Finally the Americans should have taken into consideration the strenuous efforts made by this country to resolve its outstanding issues with India through negotiations and that the Indians have been stonewalling these efforts because they want to continuously deceive the international community about the worst human rights violations that are being committed by the 700,000 Indian occupation army in Kashmir. One hopes that Pakistan would from now on adopt a more aggressive approach not only to highlight the plight of the Kashmiri people, but would also take practical steps that would force India to allow the people of Kashmir their basic right of self determination that has been denied to them through brute force for such a long time.

An unsavoury attempt

While Asma Jehangir may feel that her recent election as President of the Supreme Court Bar Association may entitle her to say anything she likes about the Founding Fathers of the country, she should keep in mind that her victory does not allow her to twist the facts. Speaking at an Iqbal Day function, she is reported as having said that, “It is good that Iqbal got freedom from the Pakistan ideology school of thought which claimed all rights over Iqbal under the patronage of a media group, which held Iqbal hostage in the name of ideology of Pakistan.”
The first thing to be noted is that Ms Jehangir obviously does not have any real knowledge of Iqbal. Iqbal was an active politician, a lawyer of standing and much more, but first and foremost he was a poet. It was as a poet that he inspired the Muslims of India to a separate homeland. True, his poetry was informed by his deep studies in philosophy, which was the subject in which he obtained his doctorate, but his poetry is the medium through which he propagated his philosophical ideas. No media group can claim, nor has any media group ever claimed, to have done more than understand Iqbal’s message, expressed both through his poetry and through his prose writings, like his Allahabad Address or his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. The question of any media group attempting to ‘hold Iqbal hostage’ does not arise.
It is not just shameful but dangerous that someone who heads the Supreme Court Bar Association should be so ignorant as to assume that there is any difference between the thoughts of Iqbal, and the ideology of Pakistan, even though it was he, in the Allahabad Address just mentioned, which was actually his presidential address to the All India Muslim League Convention at Allahabad in 1930, who first gave the concept of a Muslim homeland, and provided the ideological moorings on which the Quaid-e-Azam, another of the Founding Fathers, was to unite the Muslims of the Subcontinent in the struggle for the creation of Pakistan. This does not just amount to belittling the role of the Allama, but denying it altogether.
There is no question of liberating Iqbal’s thought because it needs no liberation. There is an intrinsic link between Iqbal’s thought and the Pakistan Movement and to deny that link is only ignorance. That is to be charitable, because the thinking behind it is an Indian interpretation of Iqbal, which has been made necessary by its desire to explain why it has stuck with the poet of the immortal ‘Saarey jahan sey achha Hindustan hamara’. This view of Iqbal tries to ignore his politics, and the thrust of his poetry, and focuses on a narrow period through which every Muslim passed, in which the departure of the British is wished, with the cost of Hindu domination. It was in fact Iqbal who made the Muslims aware that they could avoid both British and Hindu domination if they had a separate homeland of their own. And that is the basis of the ideology of Pakistan. That ideology is something which Indians deeply wish Pakistanis to detach themselves. One way of denigrating that ideology is to stop Pakistanis from looking up to their Founding Fathers. One way is to ‘prove’ that they are not Founding Fathers, and are not related to the country’s founding ideology.
One of the main things resented by Indians is that Pakistan’s Founding Fathers, the Quaid-e-Azam and Allama Iqbal, not only match theirs, M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, but surpass them by far. While the Quaid is equated to Nehru, Iqbal is paralleled by Gandhi. Gandhi was not a poet by far, and it is by a stretch of the imagination that he is made into an ideologue for India. On the other hand, Iqbal was an accomplished poet with a reputation that went beyond the bounds of all India, which was the reason why he was given the honour of a knighthood by the British, despite his participation in the freedom movement. Thus to present Allama Iqbal bereft of ideological content is to present an Indian line, which is contrary to facts.
It is particularly ironic that this line should be taken by the Indian establishment at a time when its occupation forces are engaged in violently suppressing the movement for self-determination in Kashmir, from which the Allama’s ancestors originally hailed. The small regard in which the Indians hold the Allama in actuality is shown by this. The attempt to denigrate the Allama would be wrong, because untrue, at any juncture, but at this particular juncture, it would be particularly painful.
If Ms Jehangir was trying to hurt the feelings of myriads of fans of the Allama, she was unsuccessful. The Allama spoke through his writings, both prose and poetry, and it is an acquaintance with this that will prevent any misunderstanding of his message, and of his relationship to the creation of Pakistan. Indeed, any misinterpretation of his work, poetic or in prose, is only possible if the person making the interpretation is either motivated or perverse, or even both. Ms Jehangir cannot be imputed either motivation or perversion by virtue of her office, which probably precludes both but she stands exposed before her voters, who cannot surely be so ignorant of the Allama. As she will probably not stand for re-election at the expiry of her term next year, her voters are not in a position to punish this ignorance.
It is also worth noting that Iqbal does not belong to anyone. As has been said about Shakespeare, he belongs to the ages. One difficulty of being a literary giant is that one is always subject to having bits and pieces torn out of context, and being ascribed an ideology that the poet did not originally subscribe to. Particularly painful, yet inevitable, is the fate that poets of the Allama’s status suffer, which is that of having an ideology ascribed to them without benefit of quotation. This is particularly painful when the poet has used his verse to project a particular ideology.
One reason for the continued attention paid to the Allama has been the fact that his verse contains the rationale for Pakistan. Therefore, it is not just the generation which created Pakistan, or at the very least witnessed its creation, which the Allama appeals to, but the succeeding generations, which turn to Iqbal to find out why the country came into being, and what are its ideological roots. Since Pakistan is an ideological state, in the sense that its creation was the result of an idea, and the sense of nation-hood on the basis of which independence was obtained, was based on an idea, it was lucky to have a great poet as one of its Founding Fathers. Attempts like Ms Jehangir’s, to denigrate him, serve only those who attempt to deprive Pakistan of its ideological moorings.
Email:maniazi@nation.com.pk

Globalization Increasingly Blurs Line
Between Domestic, Foreign Affairs

by Rachael Bade

“We don’t do foreigners,” said a man behind the Republican Party headquarters counter issuing rally tickets in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Christoph Eichhorn crestfallenly put his diplomatic credentials away. Looking to escape “the Washington Beltway’s political bubble,” he would later explain, Eichhorn, then the congressional affairs counselor at the German Embassy, wanted a sneak peak of “everyday” America on the 2002 midterm-election campaign trail.


President George W. Bush’s “Get Out the Vote” rally — scheduled the week before the elections in Sioux Falls that year — seemed the perfect opportunity to gauge American attitudes about the upcoming November congressional races.

There was just one problem: a ticket was required and the man at the counter — apparently — didn’t believe non-Republican foreigners merited an invitation.


Amused and baffled by the campaigner’s choice of words — “we don’t do foreigners” — Eichhorn fished through his pockets for the old press badge he’d formerly donned during his decade-long job as an anchor and reporter for German Public Radio. “How about German media for the Bush event?” But his second attempt also failed because “only South Dakota and Washington press are invited,” the man said.

Bummer.

As Eichhorn turned to go, another man with a curious gaze pulled up beside him in a pickup truck. The stranger, an American veteran, had served in Germany 20 years previously and identified Eichhorn’s German accent. Pulling him aside, he told the German man he was trying to track down an old German friend, his former dentist, with whom he sought to reconnect after decades of lost contact.

“Could you help me find my old dentist?” the man asked the German diplomat.


Within minutes, in a gas station adjacent to the Republican headquarters, Eichhorn found the man’s dentist on the German equivalent of the White Pages. The two men shared coffee and a brief conversation, and as it turned out, the veteran was a friend of South Dakota’s Republican governor at the time, William Janklow.

“Would you happen to have or know how to get a ticket to the Get Out the Vote event?” Eichhorn asked.
Three hours later, Eichhorn found a ticket awaiting him at his hotel’s reception desk — compliments of his new friend.

Reflecting on the experience eight years ago — a favorite story he’s shared with many since then — Eichhorn told The Washington Diplomat that it was not his diplomatic title or press credentials that secured him admission to the campaign rally. It was his unexpected bond with a South Dakotan stranger-turned-friend who happened to have a positive life experience in Germany years ago.

Eichhorn’s own experience is a reflection of the ever-changing dynamics in diplomacy at a time when so many international and national interests overlap and sometimes collide — a fact not lost on the many congressional attachés working in the city’s foreign embassies, especially as U.S. voters gear up for another congressional midterm election this month.

As people increasingly move from country to country and continent to continent, Eichhorn has noticed how globalization has made even disparate parts of the world more tightly knit. And the increasing interconnectedness of people from island nations to landlocked countries in Europe or Africa has catalyzed a change in Eichhorn’s job.

It’s a trend he’s noticed over his 24 years working on political negotiations, trade agreements and security treaties as a diplomat: Globalization has made the connections between diplomats and the United States (or people of any country for that matter) extend far beyond tradition foreign policy matters. International relations today permeate domestic politics and affect assembly-line workers in North Carolina, ranchers in Wyoming, lawyers in Chicago and, so it seems, even a Dakotan looking to track down an old dentist buddy.

“There is something that is fascinating in the 21st century: The distinction between the traditional foreign policy matters and things which sound domestic is nil and increasingly blurred,” Eichhorn said.

As minister and head of the Political Department at the German Embassy, Eichhorn follows the U.S. Congress and almost all the same domestic matters that Americans might track on a daily basis. He heads a two-person Capitol Hill team that visits members to discuss upcoming U.S. legislation in areas of interest to both Germany and the United States.

“Traditionally people on the Hill would think about foreign countries and their diplomats in terms of traditional foreign policy questions: How do we keep the country safe? How do we keep NATO safe? The exchange between diplomats and Congress was more centered on security and stability,” Eichhorn said. “Now, it makes much more sense to talk about international relations in broader terms because international relations in the day and age of the Internet and globalization is everything.”

The blurred boundaries of international and domestic politics make Eichmann’s job and “to-do” list rather lengthy. The congressional attaché and his fellow diplomats follow a bevy of subjects, a list that continuously balloons over time as Germany, the European Union, the United States and NATO tackle ever-growing global challenges. They talk with American lawmakers about domestic issues such as the health care debate, pharmaceutical laws, climate change and German businesses creating American jobs, in addition to the latest security threats to NATO allied forces.

Eichmann often finds himself on the road to visit members of Congress in their districts or home states, or to set up business meetings between American and German entrepreneurs or university faculty and students.

Given its close proximity and interdependent trading system with the United States, the Canadian Embassy also closely tracks the domestic agenda — namely issues related to immigration, security and trade, which can have a huge impact on America’s northern neighbor.

Ian Burchett, Canadian minister-counselor for congressional and legal affairs, engages House and Senate members as well as their senior staffers to discuss domestic legislation that is of particular interest to Canada. He and other congressional attachés study upcoming legislation, brainstorm about the effects of bills, and listen in on hearings (which conveniently take place right down the road from the Canadian Embassy on Pennsylvania Avene).

Like Eichhorn, Burchett’s agenda with Congress goes far beyond mere border and security issues, though such items are certainly on his list of talking points.

“Given our bilateral trade agreements, a lot of [our discussions with Congress] have to deal with the integrated nature of our economies,” said Burchett, who’s served in the Canadian Foreign Service for more than 21 years. “We’re constantly working with Capitol Hill to discuss our trade relationship. The way in which our
two countries work together is very critical and central to economic recovery.”


The relationship binds the countries to one another, he added, and requires the U.S. Congress and Canadian Parliament to integrate their policies and ensure they’re on the same page.

“We make things together,” Burchett said. “A Canadian product sometimes crosses the border many times before finally being finished and exported to other countries. Trade is an economic benefit for both of our countries. [Our team] must ensure that U.S. legislation helps facilitate this trade. We’d want nothing to inhibit the longstanding free flow of products to and from our economies.”

But trade legislation is just one example of how American domestic laws touch Canada. Burchett noted that Canadian diplomats also work closely with Congress on energy and environmental issues. Canada, he pointed out, continues to be the largest supplier of oil, gas and uranium to the United States, and the two countries share key water resources, including the Great Lakes and many rivers. Thus, laws on American imports of gas and oil or the cleanliness of the shared freshwater bodies affect Canada as well, he said.

The list of domestically linked international issues certainly doesn’t stop there: How can national economies prosper without hindering global trade? What about immigration? How can nations ensure cyber security and protect their databases from hackers? Is cap and trade the best way to tackle climate change? What should developed nations make of a rising China? What will happen when gas and oil supplies are finally depleted? What about nuclear concerns? How can we defeat HIV? How can lasting peace be achieved between Indians and Pakistanis, Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Turks, North and South Korea — the list is virtually endless.

“Governments, administrations, the parliaments and congresses have to work on common solutions together,” Eichhorn said. “The percentage of things they can no longer legislate on their own is increasing on a daily basis. The Germans can’t solve these questions on their own, and the Americans can’t either. Issues may look domestic, but they are domestic no longer.”

Perhaps that’s why Germany and Canada are hardly the only nations that assign congressional attachés to follow U.S. domestic politics. Embassies all over the world are noticing a similar blurring between foreign and domestic issues, and most therefore assign groups of diplomats to specifically follow legislatures.

Another natural part of these diplomats’ mandate is to follow congressional elections and prepare for a change in power, which means American voters are not the only ones reading up on candidate positions and their potential policy implications.

Eichhorn and Burchett told The Diplomat that their embassies have to re-evaluate their approaches after any given shift in power. The congressional attachés, for example, may often find Democrats more agreeable on cap-and-trade legislation, whereas some Republicans reject the idea that climate change is even an issue; strong backers of the START treaty with Russia also seem to be predominately liberal. Yet, when it comes to trade issues, Republicans are often more agreeable to diminishing tariffs and reducing barriers to free trade.

“Obviously there are differences depending on who’s in power,” Eichhorn said. “It affects how realistic it is that a piece of particular legislation we support will be ratified.”

Both men, however, diplomatically stressed that their countries do not prefer the power of one party over the other.
“I’ve found that it’s relatively easy to engage with either party’s contacts on the Hill and get information from them and share information,” Burchett said. “They’ve both been welcoming.”

Burchett said the Canadian Embassy has been researching upcoming candidates’ interests and positions on noteworthy issues. The Germans take a different approach in prepping for the election: They try to keep open lines of communication with the minority party.

“During the eight years of the Bush administration, we talked with Republicans on the Hill but also the Democrats on the Hill and those who had been rotated out into lobbying or think thanks after the Clinton administration,” Eichhorn explained. “We talked to the minority knowing they might come back, and when Democrats came back with Obama, we knew a lot of them. Now, we’ve been talking to Republicans who had rotated out after Bush knowing some day — perhaps in November — they might return.”

For Congress-focused diplomats like Eichhorn and Burchett, discerning and taking part in another country’s domestic affairs makes sense given the long list of problems looming over any international agenda. But Eichhorn doesn’t think all Americans appreciate their close work with Congress. He believes most voters outside the Beltway wonder why their members “waste their time” on diplomats who have “nothing to do with bringing home the bacon.”

Perhaps that was the sentiment of the South Dakota Republican committee worker who said event organizers “don’t do foreigners.”

“We try to be very practical when approaching congressmen,” Eichhorn said after acknowledging the challenge. “If we know one district or state is interested in, say, climate change, we don’t talk in abstract terms about climate change. Instead we’re specific. We’d say, for example, ‘We know of this university or the following 10 companies focusing on renewable energy and wind turbines. Let’s collaborate.


What can we do to work together?’ Suddenly members are interested in bringing together professionals, businesses, students and universities, and the whole cascade starts.”

When explained in such a way, Americans (or people of any nation) who are wary of globalization may better understand the benefits of such exchanges. And even the common fears — fear of job loss, fear of cultural clashes, fear of the unknown and unfamiliar — are diminishing given the increasing and inevitable interconnectedness of societies.

Burchett, for example, cited the fact that 8 million American jobs depend on Canadian businesses and 34 U.S. states count Canada as their most frequented export market. And who’s to say that any country wouldn’t rejoice in cleaner oceans, the discovery of cheap, renewable energy sources, an end to terrorism, or a cure for AIDS and cancer?

“Having your diplomats involved in domestic politics and, vice versa, having congressional members involving diplomats in their work is no longer a waste of time,” Eichhorn said.

“These connections are invaluable,” Burchett agreed. “For the great breadth and depth that we cover on all these topics, we must have this ongoing dialogue between our two countries for everyone’s benefit.”