Barack Obama has decided to isolate India!

This is the first time in the history of the Indian subcontinent that the United States of America has invited a Communist China to participate in South Asia. The proposal is part of a broad US push to enlist key allies of Pakistan in an effort to stabilize the country, the Boston Globe reported. Even more shocking is a muted response from India. Can you imagine if India was invited by America to intervene in Taiwan or North Korea? China would have thrown such a fit as the world has not seen before. Barack Obama administration seems to be oblivious of India’s security concerns. China is to India what Soviet Union was to the United States. Indians are extremely distrustful of China and its relationship with Pakistan. China is hell bent on provoking India to take some decisive action in Arunachal Pradesh that would justify its expansionist agenda. India has been too restrained as far as China or Pakistan is concerned. One more incident like 26/11 and all hell might break loose! Just THINK about it!

President Obama’s foreign policy is anything “un-Bush” and that is the essence of the above initiative. When Saudi Arabia is involved in Pakistan related affairs, India understands the history behind such involvement. Getting China involved in counterinsurgency training and supplying military equipment to Pakistan is absolutely insane. This imprudent strategy could prove disastrous for the region. Remember the Carter-Reagan Doctrine of 1980s that was responsible for the birth of Taliban? This could be even worse as the Obama Doctrine might succeed in suppressing the Taliban insurgency but embolden the Pakistani military. A re-equipped Pakistani military-ISI alliance could be the next big threat to Pakistan itself. No serious expert or analyst actually considers Pakistan ever becoming a stable democracy. There was an interesting and honest article by Fouad Ajami in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 titled, “Pakistan’s Struggle for Modernity”, that explains the dilemma.

Barack Obama’s insensitivity towards India is so glaring and un-Bush that Indian Foreign Office would be hard put to explain the attitude to the Indian Parliament. A large section of Indian opinion makers including this blogger believes that Obama is peeved with Indians for supporting Hillary Clinton in the US primaries. His personal dislike could put India at odds with the United States in the years to come. Pakistan is not the only issue in Obama’s arsenal! It started with tempering of H1-B visa restrictions, and then came the infamous “Say no to Bangalore, yes to Buffalo” and now the obvious coddling of China and Pakistan. Mr Obama is not an idiot; he is just being a populist jerk in the mold of Jimmy Carter! Unfortunately he is not dealing with the India of 1970s; he has to deal with the largest English speaking middle-class in the world. This English-speaking middle-class of India would be 300 million strong with a purchasing power greater than any other block in the whole wide world.

The next G-20 meeting should define Obama’s world-view

So far, not so good! This administration could turn out to be far more secretive than the last one. For example, under the cover of $789 billion stimulus bill, the administration has allowed totally unrelated items to be slipped into the final bill. These measures are totally political and are actually illegal in terms of global commitments. The first one is the ‘Buy American’ clause that has greatly alarmed America’s critical trading partners like Canada, China and Japan. They are bound to raise this issue in the up-coming G-20 meeting on April 2, 2009. The other provision in the bill is the removal of H1-B visa for foreign workers, especially from India and few other countries. This is contrary to the assurance given to the Indian Prime Minister by George W Bush in the last G-20 meeting. This suspension of work visa is bound to hurt the US economy more than Indian Economy. Just THINK about it!

Americans need to be educated about the non-western world rather than be mis-led by un-informed politicians and a parochial media. We were hoping for a much enlightened administration this time around because Barack Obama has spent some time overseas. Instead, what we are beginning to see is a typical new uninformed ‘American Administration’. They are willing to shoot-first and talk-later crowd, just like the initial Carter or Clinton Administrations. Both wasted their first term. Unfortunately, for President Obama there may not be a second term if he does not wise-up and wise-up soon. This is a much different world and the non-western world is not willing to sit-through the entire ‘Kabuki-dance’ of an in-coming American administration. Americans may not like to hear this but the world is slowly and reluctantly drifting towards a ‘Post American World’. They have not much choice!

President Barack Obama has an excellent opportunity to attend the next meeting of G-20 economies on April 2, 2009 in London and listen to the other world leaders for a change. He needs to talk less and listen more, THINK about it long and hard and start the difficult task of educating his fellow-Americans about the whole-wide-world. Obama likes to be compared to FDR but does not want to make the difficult decisions like him. Franklin D Roosevelt had to do so many things early on that Americans were not prepared to even think about. He made the difficult choices and not pander to the congress for the sake of winning next mid-term elections! Obama needs to develop a spine before he starts comparing himself to the legendary FDR. Roosevelt couldn’t have imagined a pork-loaded stimulus bill the kind Barack Obama is about to sign. There were plenty of bleeding-heart liberals during the time of Roosevelt.