US Prez Debate: Why nobody talked about India

Anyone from India who is so attuned to US foreign policy, and the place that India has in it, and who ventured to wake up early on Tuesday to tune in to the third US presidential debate would have been in for a huge disappointment. India’s name did not crop up even once during the 90 minutes of the debate: it didn’t come up when President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney sparred on the regional security architecture in the Af-Pak region; it didn’t come up when the subject turned to Obama’s “pivot” to Asia (of reorienting foreign policy to focus more on the economically rising continent); heck, it didn’t come even when the two gladiators sparred on American jobs lost — to China and others. What’s the point of our “stealing” so many middle-class American jobs through the outsourcing route if we can’t even find one measly mention in the US presidential debate? What price our status as a “risen power” (to quote Obama, during his visit to India in November 2010) if we cannot colonise the mindspace of even one of the two men who are vying to be the next president of the US? Even lowly Pakistan came in for mention, uncharitable though it was: both Obama and Romney were asked if it was time for the US to “divorce” Pakistan, given that it had been an unfaithful ally, milking the US for billions of dollars in aid, while simultaneously impeding the US effort to go after jihadists and Taliban elements within Pakistan. Romney said that the US could not “divorce” Pakistan, given that it had 100 nuclear weapons, which could fall into terrorists’ hands if Pakistan became a failed state. [caption id=“attachment_499508” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] To Indian viewers, it may have appeared that there was an India-sized gaping hole in America’s view of the world. AP[/caption] And on another occasion, Obama pointedly said that if Pakistan had been informed of the secret operation to get Osama bin Laden, the mission would not have succeeded. And, of course, China, our other neighbour, merited some questions all to itself during the debate, much to the relief of China watchers who fretted during the first half of the debate that the discussion had been excessively concentrated on Iran and West Asia. To Indian viewers, it may have appeared that there was an India-sized gaping hole in America’s view of the world. On  the parallel running commentary that was carried on on Twitter, it appeared that Indian viewers perceived the thunderous silence on India as illustrative of the irrelevance of India in the larger scheme of things. It is of course true that India appears in recent years to have lost the plot —  and its standing in the eyes of the world. For the past three years, in particular, India has been far too preoccupied with its own myriad problems — and god knows we have more than our fair share of that — to care excessively about our place in the world. Our economic growth, which was inarguably the single most compelling narrative that commanded respect and attention in earlier years (despite our many institutional failings in other areas), no longer inspires awe or admiration. And given the fractiousness that characterises our polity, we appear from the outside-in to be a country perennially teetering on the edge of chaos. The shrill and hectoring tone of the political discourse — and just the fact that we’ve turned the clock back on reforms and made foreign investors seem wholly unwelcome — has meant that India is no longer the preferred destination of international investors — except as a short-term destination for portfolio flows. Our government appears incapable of projecting power even within the Indian dominion, to say nothing about implanting a foot or casting a hard-power shadow overseas. And our foreign policy establishment’s excessive preoccupation with subregional politics that boxes us into a hyphenated relationship with Pakistan has meant that our worldview has shrunk abysmally. And the US, which was virtually lining up India as a “strategic ally” and a counterweight against China, has lost patience with India’s  reluctance to commit itself to a relationship, and its predilection towards indecisive hedging. So, if India was largely overlooked in the debate, there were many compelling India-specific reasons for that. But in equal measure, the Obama-Romney foreign policy debate also signalled that the frontiers of America’s worldview are beginning to shrink. On virtually every foreign policy question, both Obama and Romney sought to segue rapidly to domestic issues. Some of this is, of course, reflective of the domestic preoccupation with their constituency of voters, who retain a monomaniacal focus on jobs and economic prosperity. But it also represents a seeming fatigue among both leaders and followers in the US about what happens in far corners of the world. What was more striking was that in trading barbs on the possibility of a military strike in Iran, for instance, or on retaining the robustness of US military might, both Obama and Romney appeared oblivious to the very real economic challenge emerging from other regions of the world. Even China’s position as the giant panda that has been eating up America’s lunch for years now came in only for passing mention, and even when it did it was limited to proforma formulations. All these point to an abridgement in the American worldview: its  foreign policy horizons are shrinking, as an economically enfeebled America increasingly focuses inwards. India and the US, it has been famously said, are “estranged democracies” that ought to have gotten along a lot better than the vicissitudes of geopolitics have allowed. History, of course, comes with its own baggage, but today, as both India and the US retreat into the recesses of their minds, the capacity for India to inject itself into American foreign polity thinking stands vastly diminished.