Uncle Sam’s worldview
Hussain H Zaidi
Monday, August 11, 2014
From Print Edition
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The US wants to preserve the existing global order based on liberalism. The US also realises that although it is the lone superpower, it cannot control world affairs independently. It needs regional partners or allies, particularly those believing in economic and political liberalism (Japan and South Korea in East Asia, India in South Asia), to control the world.
The political expression of liberalism is democracy, while its economic expression is free market economy. Democracy is advocated mainly because it is useful for promoting American interests as autocratic regimes are more likely to breed extremism and terrorism – at present the most potent threat to the US-dominated global order – than representative ones.
By the same token, free market economy is advocated because it best suits American companies engaged in international business. Promoting the political interests of the US government and the economic interests of domestic firms is the pivot on which the American policy revolves. And given India’s political and economic credentials it finely fits into this scheme
Hence the repeated statements from the US leadership that India – the largest democracy, the world's second largest market, and a nuclear and a rising economic power – is their strategic partner and a natural ally. Washington believes that New Delhi has to play a leading role in achieving durable peace and stability in the region, which is necessary for preserving the global order.
Indo-US economic and commercial relations are growing. Merchandise trade between the two countries has gone up from $35 billion in 2009 to $63 billion in 2013 including $22 billion exports from the USA and $41 billion exports from India. This gives India a trade surplus of $19 billion – the country's largest trade surplus with any country. For India, the US is the single largest export market and the 5th largest source of imports. The US would like to push up its exports and investment in India and take a larger pie of the enormous Indian market.
Coming back to Kerry's recent visit to India, the first US cabinet level visit after the change of the guards in New Delhi, the occasion was the fifth session of the annual strategic dialogue between the two countries. The latest round itself is being seen as preparing the groundwork for Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the US next month. The joint statement issued at the end of the strategic dialogue, inter alia, reaffirmed US support to India's efforts to have a permanent seat on the UNSC; reiterated the “commitment to eliminating terrorist safe havens and infrastructure, and disrupting terrorist networks including Al-Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Taiba” and asked “Pakistan to work toward bringing the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks to justice.”
As the joint statement shows, any account of US-India relations is incomplete without mentioning Pakistan. At least on paper, the US and Pakistan are also strategic partners and encouraging phrases such as ‘enduring partnership’, ‘shared goals’ and ‘mutual interest and respect’ are employed to characterise Washington-Islamabad ties as well. Yet the two sets of relations are different in terms of both the scale and the dynamics.
New Delhi's much bigger economic muscles aside, several irritants have held back the Washington-Islamabad [Pakistan] relations. Take the war on terror. The US has long suspected that in the counterterrorism campaign, Pakistan has been hunting with the hounds and running with the hare. Although the ongoing military operation in North Waziristan, a long-standing US demand, will serve to dampen such suspicion, concerns regarding Pakistan being ‘soft’ on, if not allegedly supporting, non-state actors' involvement in cross-border terrorism is not likely to die down.
Likewise, Washington has not conceded to Islamabad's [Pakistan's] demand for transfer of nuclear technology, because it suspects Islamabad does not have a clean record in non-proliferation. The US mediation on Kashmir on Pakistan's terms is also out of the question, as India has been successful in having the world see the militancy in the disputed territory as an expression of religious extremism. It is precisely for this reason that China, also facing religious uprising in its Muslim majority province of Xinjiang, no more supports Pakistan's Kashmir stance.
Islamabad, on its part, complains that it has not been adequately compensated for the economic loss caused by the war on terror; that the US aid has too many strings attached to it and is cut off arbitrarily; that at times its sovereignty has been violated by American forces; that Americans have been oblivious to its major demands including a civil nuclear technology agreement – similar to the one with India – having UNSC resolutions on Kashmir implemented, and granting preferential market access to Pakistan exports in what is their single largest destination.
Pakistan's problem is not that it's smaller than India but that it is an unstable society governed by a fragile political system – a fatal combination. The position held by such a country in a world power's worldview is qualitatively different from that occupied by a much more stable country. Hence, whereas the US interest in Islamabad consists mainly in the war on terror and nuclear non proliferation, New Delhi has a much larger role to play in Washington's scheme of things.
EXRACTS ONLY - FULL @ SOURCE
http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-266459-Uncle-Sams-worldview
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Sounds like the US uses the same old 'partnership' spiel on everyone.
US interest in forming 'partnerships' is to maintain control on a global scale, for US political interests and US corporate interests.
US also wants stability (undisrupted trade) and some of that Indian trade surplus cash.
It appears to have a different relationship with Pakistan, due to the 'fragile political system' in Pakistan.
The US interest in Pakistan is (a) suppression of 'terror' and (b) nuclear non-proliferation.
Sore points for Pakistan are:
- Kashmir
- Insufficient compensation for economic losses (Pakistan bound up in military / 'war on terror' US directives)
- US aid - many strings attached; arbitrary.
- US military violation of Pakistan's sovereignty
- Oblivious to Pakistan demands:
- civil nuclear technology agreement
- Implementation of US Security Council resolutions - Kashmir
- the granting of preferential market access to Pakistan exports
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Found this article an interesting one.
Unfamiliar with the 'war on terror' aspects and with the issue in Kashmir, but aware from other articles/sources that much of the US aid to Pakistan is spent on military rather than economic purposes.
US isn't intrinsically interested in democracy.
US wants (a) regional stability (b) stable trade (c) free markets (d) strategic and political global control -- and this, by and large, is all about serving corporate American interests.
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Checking out Google images out of curiosity, came across some scary looking stuff going on in Pakistan.
Looks like there's bombings.
Appear to be ordinary people who have got massive guns (machine guns?).
Loads of violence.
