Is India underestimating Pakistan? Is there a big shift in Foreign Policy of India towards Pakistan?
–
Philip Bowring: India starts to look beyond Pakistan
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/13/news/edbow.html
Philip Bowring International Herald Tribune Tuesday, December 14, 2004
NEW DELHI Vladimir Putin and Donald Rumsfeld have been here this month. In November, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in Vientiane, Laos, doling out goodwill to East Asian leaders, notably Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China. India is courting, and being courted.
.
India’s international engagement is gathering momentum. It is happening partly because the country is beginning to escape its preoccupation with Pakistan, which has often blinded it to wider strategic and commercial interests. **A nation that seeks to be a global player has been locked in an obsession with a much smaller country, which many here are now seeing as at worst a persistent nuisance rather than a major threat. **
.
Even if the current thaw with Islamabad is short-lived, the change in India’s own mind-set should ensure that it cultivates its relationships, particularly in Asia, with a view to interests other than Pakistan. And if the thaw lasts, India will be at the center of enhanced regional prosperity based on trade.
.
There is a newfound self-confidence here stemming from the success of economic reforms, the prestige of Indian engineers and entrepreneurs in information technology and pharmaceuticals, and a realization that Indian firms can compete on the world stage, even with China. India now wants to be engaged, and is now trying to play a tough but, for once, essentially positive role in the Doha round of trade negotiations.
.
At the same time there is growing acknowledgment that economic interaction and faster growth are bringing new demands on its international relationships at a time when China is occupying an ever increasing amount of global, and particularly Asian, space.
.
India is now as dependent as China on hydrocarbon imports, and its needs may increase even more rapidly in the future. But it is lagging in the development of relationships, and military capability, aimed at securing supply. For sure, its closer ties to the United States owe something to the U.S. role in protecting Gulf oil flows as well as to mutual concerns about Islamic fundamentalism and China’s forward posture. India needs U.S. investment and market access, and its successful migrants to the U.S. have created strong, permanent bonds between the two nations.
.