The UPA government has finally sealed the nuclear deal with the US. For the Congress and the coalition of Unashamed Partners of America headed by it, the nuclear deal is the supreme achievement of the government. On the eve of signing the deal, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee reiterated India’s commercial commitment to the US nuclear energy industry: “We look forward to working with US companies on the commercial steps that will follow to implement this landmark Agreement.” In a second statement issued after the Agreement’s signing he also reiterated India’s commitment to implement the Agreement in good faith even though no such reciprocal assurance was made by the US to confirm New Delhi’s claim regarding the so-called US ‘guarantee’ on uninterrupted fuel supply.
On India’s part, faithful implementation of the commitments, whether declared or undeclared, has long been underway. From the vote against Iran at IAEA to the continuing prevarication and procrastination on the issue of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline proposal, India has been complying with the Hyde Act, which requires India’s foreign policy to be congruent with American priorities and objectives, in letter and spirit. And now Pranab Mukherjee’s explicit assurance reaffirms the commercial component of India’s commitment, which can only be music to American ears at a time when the US economy is passing through its worst crisis in some eighty years. The dilapidated atomic reactor industry in the US is awaiting hefty orders from India even as massive military purchases are in the pipeline.
The day Pranab Mukherjee and Condoleezza Rice inked the nuke deal, George Bush met the finance ministers and central bankers of the G7 countries – the US, Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Italy and Canada – and leading officials of the IMF in a desperate bid to check the growing financial panic that has now begun to spread beyond the American horizons to overshadow the G7 sky. The meeting of the G7 finance chiefs called for “urgent and exceptional action” and the use of “all available tools to support systematically important financial institutions and prevent their failure.” In a separate statement US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson admitted “never has it been more essential to find collective solutions to ensure stable and efficient financial markets and restore the health of the world economy.”
History is replete with examples showing what the US really means by finding “collective solutions”. It desperately tries to pass on its crisis to other countries and refuel its military-industrial complex to underwrite its economy, and in the process steps up politico-military intervention across the world. And it is precisely at this juncture that the Indian ruling classes have pushed India into a tight strategic embrace with the crisis-ridden US – a country that is hated by most nations of the world for its imperialist arrogance and aggression and whose economy is now emitting waves of financial instability and panic across the global economy. Strategic partnership with the US can only prove to be a conduit for importing the entire gamut of crises facing the US into India.
Manmohan Singh and his ilk epitomise the typical Indian comprador mindset that considers the US to be the pinnacle of capitalist success and would do everything to bask in the American sun. But the much-trumpeted great American dream is now fast turning sour. Just a couple of days before Pranab Mukherjee signed the deal, almost every newspaper in India carried the shocking story of an MBA degree-holder from India killing his entire family as well as himself as all his fortunes collapsed in the ongoing financial meltdown. The nuke deal and Indo-US strategic partnership is not a passport to US-sponsored prosperity and power, it is an invitation to greater crisis and vulnerability to US blackmailing and arm-twisting. All right-thinking Indians must reject this sordid comprador capitulation with the contempt it deserves.
