American pundits begin to back nuclear status for India

American pundits begin to back nuclear status for India
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

NEW DELHI, MARCH 31: After years of berating India for its atomic programme and nuclear ``adventurism,'' America's weighty punditocracy is beginning to see it all in a different light. Following President Clinton's visit to the region, some policy wonks in the United States are actually beginning to rationalise and defend New Delhi going down the nuclear path and are suggesting full nuclear status for India.

``The Clinton administration should reverse course and recognise that India is a legitimate nuclear state, like Britain and Russia, not a dangerous nuclear rogue like North Korea. It (the United States) should allow India to keep its nuclear weapons and sign the non-proliferation treaty, with all the attendant rights and obligations,'' University of Chicago political scientist John Mearshimer argued earlier this week in the first of several commentaries that appeared following the Clinton visit.

Debunking the American theory that that New Delhi acquired nuclear weapons for frivolous reasons like misplaced pride or domestic politics, Mearshimer said India, like the United States, had sound strategic reasons for wanting them.

``Nuclear weapons are an excellent deterrent against aggression, and India lives in a dangerous neighbourhood... As a start toward closer political ties, the administration could support India's membership in the UN Security Council... A more realistic policy toward India would benefit both Asia and American interests,'' he wrote in a New York Times commentary under the headline ``India Needs the Bomb.''

In a separate commentary in the right-wing Washington Times, American University's Amos Perlmutter pressed the Clinton administration to recognise New Delhi -- ``without lectures'' -- as a member of the Nuclear Club and elevate India to the ``level of Japan as a major strategic ally in the forthcoming political and diplomatic confrontations with China.''

Mearshimer too backed the idea of cultivating New Delhi to counter Beijing, saying ``it would be difficult to fashion an effective coalition of Asian countries (against China) without India as a central pillar.''

Leader writers in several papers have also begun to see a shift in US policy towards the region, something the Indian media itself is cautious about recognising.

``President Clinton's visit... accomplished little in the short run but reflects a historic, long-range shift in US national interest,'' the Boston Globe said in an editorial titled ``Tilting Towards India.''The paper, and several other analysts, also saw the end of the close ties between Washington and Islamabad.

``The President's trip was historic in the sense that it recognised the end of the Cold War in South Asia and with it the end of the special US-Pakistan relationship that was directly connected to the Cold War,'' Perlmutter said in his analysis.

``India has demonstrated stability and international responsibility. It is a true democracy, a non-expansionist state. The contrast with Pakistan is remarkable -- a military autocracy dominated by radical Islamicists dedicated to upsetting the status quo in Kashmir,'' he added.

Even western reporters from the region have picked up the refrain. ``He (President Clinton) spent five days courting India, the regions' democratic colossus and rising economic power, with the ardour of a smitten suitor -- and half a day treating Pakistan... like an old girlfriend who is part of the past,'' The New York Times New Delhi correspondent reported on Friday in an analysis of the Clinton visit to the region.

``That was then and this is now,'' the Globe said while recalling the US tilt towards Pakistan during the Cold War. ``Pakistan is no longer needed in the Cold War struggle, and its undemocratic, near dysfunctional state has become an embarrassment.''

Even Pakistani commentators have recognised the precipitous decline in ties between Washington and Islamabad. ``To many Pakistanis, President Clinton's brief stopover in Islamabad had less the trappings of a presidential tour and more the sombre tone of a visit by a Red Cross official to an over-crowded prison. He came, he saw and then afer deploring the local conditions and castigating the warders, he departed,'' one analyst wrote in the Dawn of Karachi.