About two weeks ago, President Obama made his visit to India. To the American public he claimed he would be opening up new job markets and to the India he threw his support behind adding the largest democracy in the world to the Security Council. However, by taking a look at the perspectives below, it seems like neither of these promises will be fulfilled easily or anytime soon.
So why all the fuss? Well, why else would the President of the United States be making a big show of strengthening ties with India? China. As depicted in the articles below, it is now questionable whether China is still pursuing a "peaceful rise." China has expanded naval interests in the South China Sea and beyond, placed an embargo on Japan, cornered the rare earths market and continues to manipulate it's currency in such a way that hurts the global economy. The U.S. is obviously trying to reach out to like-minded democratic countries which will hopefully balance against China and bandwagon with the U.S. in the up-coming bipolar world.
Of course there are caveats to this. If you subscribe to Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, you will know that Hindu and Chinese spheres of civilization are most likely to clash and that Chinese and Western spheres of civilization are likely to clash but Western and Hindu civilizations will have a little more to agree on and Chinese and Islamic spheres of civilizations are most likely to pair up while the West and the Islamic world are most likely to have conflict. India is more likely to side with the U.S. over China.
While many criticize Huntington's work for being biased or self-fulfilling it is true that China and India have border disputes and that despite a past era of colonialism and many differences in culture, India and the West feel closer to each other due to shared democracy, many Indians enrolled in Western institutions of higher education, many Indians employed in Western information technology and call centers outside the West and Western health aid efforts to fight malaria, AIDS and TB in India. It is also true that Hinduism and Islam clash within India, India and Pakistan clash and China has no qualms about trading with Islamic "rogue states" such as Iran. The West and the Islamic worlds clash over mostly terrorism, WMDs and other issues in Iran, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
However, Huntington's influence can only stretch so far. Indian nationalism may push India to "break away" from the West in the same way Chinese nationalism pushes China to break away from the status quo and its peaceful rise. In one of the articles below, China is also seeking to make nice with India and if you want to go back to Huntington, India and China share similarities by way of a shared Asian culture. In the bipolar world of the Cold War, India was neutral and flourished by playing off of offers from both U.S. and Soviet sides. The U.S. should still try to woo India, but in the current era of possible future friction between China and where the U.S. still depends heavily on Pakistan for success in Iraq and Afghanistan, India could go either way and if possible, already bats for both teams.
"AFTER his “shellacking,” President Obama had to do something. But who had the bright idea of scheduling his visit to India for right after this election? The Democrats’ failure to create jobs was at the heart of the shellacking. Nothing says “outsourcing” to the American public more succinctly than India. But the White House didn’t figure this out until the eve of Obama’s Friday departure, when it hastily rebranded his trip as a jobs mission. Perhaps the president should visit one of the Indian call centers policing Americans’ credit-card debts to feel our pain."
"My concern is somewhat different. As the United States works to shore up existing alliances in Asia and to strengthen or forge some new ones, it will have to do a fair bit of hard bargaining. Even if there are strong geopolitical forces pushing states like India and the United States together, there are also lingering differences over specific policy issues (such as Afghanistan and Kashmir). Moreover, even close alliance partners will want to get others to do most of the heavy lifting, which usually means some tough negotiating."
"My fear, therefore, is that a weakened president with a weak economy will be too eager to make deals while he's on the road. Despite our current woes, Obama should not be so desperate for symbolic foreign policy "achievements" that he ends up looking or sounding like a supplicant. Our Asian partners still need us more than we need them, and the United States hardly needs to be begging them to cooperate with us.So the only real objection to Obama's endorsement is that it might annoy these countries (and Pakistan, of course, which has already expressed its opposition to the idea). My caveat, therefore, is to wonder whether the good will won in India is outweighed by irritation in other quarters. I'd bet not, if only because SC reform is not exactly a burning issue on anybody's agenda.The other issue that is becoming clearer, however, is the fundamental strategic contradiction in America's South Asia policy. On the one hand, because we are deeply mired in a war in Afghanistan, and because the Taliban and other extremist groups operate in and out of Pakistan, we have to try to work with the Pakistani government despite its many problems and our growing unpopularity in that country. At the same time, there are larger strategic imperatives pushing the United States to move closer to India. Indeed, Obama even referred to U.S.-Indian strategic partnership as an "indispensable" feature of the 21st century. But a deeper U.S. partnership with India drives Pakistan crazy, encourages some parts of the Pakistani government to hedge bets by backing the Taliban, complicating the U.S. effort to make progress in Afghanistan. One can even imagine some Pakistanis wanting to prolong the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, precisely because our military presence there makes us more dependent on them and thus gives Islamabad some degree of influence and leverage over us."
"George Bauk, the managing director of Northern Uranium of Australia, said that after his company announced last winter that it had located a rare earth deposit in Australia, a Chinese state-owned company made an offer in August to buy 51 percent of Northern Uranium. The Australian company declined the offer as its share prices rose, but a Chinese mining magnate then bought 13.5 percent of its stock on the open market in September, Mr. Bauk said.The same Chinese state-owned company, East China Exploration, did buy 25 percent of Arafura, another Australian rare earths company, in a deal last year. Another Chinese state-owned company reached a deal last year to buy nearly 52 percent of Lynas Corporation, which plans to open a large rare earths mine in central Australia next year, but the Australian government blocked that deal on national security grounds.Chinese state-owned companies have also made three unsuccessful approaches in the past five years to acquire the Mountain Pass mine in California. By contrast, the Chinese government does not allow any foreign purchases of minority or majority stakes in its rare earth mining sector."
These other articles debating the rare earths issues from NYT are helpful in understanding the issue fully and can all be found here.
Sizes up relations between India and China, particularly how China seems to underestimate India.
"From India’s point of view, the more leverage the United States are able to exert over Pakistan, the more India can assert itself in the Asia Pacific region and compete actively with China’s rise. If America gets itself away from Afghanistan without clearing much air on Pakistan, it signals that India’s strategic circle will be much occupied with controlling Pakistan and not China which, in the long run, will affect India’s growing clout. China would like precisely that to contain India in South Asia and be able to compete itself more actively with the United States, not just in the Pacific but in Africa, Latin America and even Europe as well. This is a great game indeed and Obama’s India visit has only started it."
"Incidents and statements like these only intensify the level of Sinophobia exhibited in military and policymaking circles in Washington DC where the anything but imminent end of American ascendancy has politicians worried already. Sino-Indian rivalry is also heating up while just last month, Beijing managed to bully and coerce the Japanese into circumventing legal process after a Chinese fishing trawler rammed a Japanese vessel in disputed waters. Even if Tokyo appeared willing to submit to its neighbor’s demands, China canceled diplomatic meetings, cut off the export of rare earth materials upon which Japanese industry depend and demanded a formal apology from the Japanese Government."
Of course he can say this. He is a billionaire who makes some portion of his wealth investing foreign markets situated for the most part in China. He is not an ordinary American who will lose his job as jobs move overseas or feel the pinch of high gas prices as China gains a stranglehold on the market for rare earths that can be used for new green technologies and for creating new green jobs and markets. As for China suddenly "going green" at a faster rate than the U.S., China is forced to go green, because while environmental laws have prevented Americans from stripping our land for coal and rare earths and releasing toxic fumes and smog into the air, the Chinese have had no such qualms. The American way of doing things isn't perfect, but I found his comments uncalled for, overly informal and rude. American lawmakers will lay off the Chinese when they stop manipulating their currency and making it harder for the rest of the world to climb out of this recession and lower unemployment rates.
Sounds scary, but when you look at the facts the United States GFP is $14 trillion and China's GDP is $8.8 trillion. I don't see that gap closing anytime soon. As for the recession, China's economy is not immune and cannot function without access to Western markets, debt and currency. However much the recession hurts the U.S. will hurt the Chinese as well.
This is more realistic.
-Ryu
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