As I write I am about to visit 10 Downing St for work meetings in the morning and thereafter fly to New York, before going to India for PM May’s visit. So the UK-India-US relationship is on my mind.
First, the Americans have only belatedly understood India. This is partly because of the Cold War. It’s partly because, as I discovered when I was a US Congressional Intern for Eliot Engel in 1994, the Indian Govt was then spending $0 on lobbying the US Government - although there were outstanding herculean efforts by the likes of Navdeep Suri at the Indian Embassy in Washington.
And whenever it received aid, the US Congressmen who were anti-India (Pakistan spent millions on lobbying) such as Charles Wilson (remember the movie Charlie Wilson’s War) would make anti-India speeches for hours on end. ('Keep your peanuts' has long been a justified Indian response)
Second, the other problem was the lack of mobilisation by the Indians in the US. They hadn’t made their billions yet so hadn’t decided to co-ordinate and organise as they do so very well now.
You may think Democrats are natural friends of India, more so than Republicans. Eliot was pro-India, he lobbied the White House when I was in Congress to have Pakistan declared a terrorist state – that you may think does not make him pro-India necessarily – but it was 1994 – the terrorism he was talking about was in Kashmir. And how right Eliot was. He is still in Congress.
But don’t forget it was the Republicans who signed the Nuclear Treaty with India, although it was the Democrats and Kennedy who told China to stop trampling freely through an ill-prepared India.
How will the new US President engage with India?
Well he or she will sign bigger arms deals than Britain does. This is partly because the US makes a broader range of defence equipment than the UK. But the new US President will face the same problem as the UK in trying to get closer to post-Cold War India. Which is India evaluates words by how a country sits on the Pakistan-India security issue. India does not trust China because China funds Pakistan. India will not trust the new US President, regardless of what he or she says because they have foot dragged on Pakistan being openly declared a terrorist base.
India may say it supports US funding of anti-terror efforts in Pakistan, but India knows, as when the US did it in 1979 against the Afghans via Pakistan, that the US jumped in with money and the ISI kept 90% and sent 10% to the Mujahidin.
Obama has already made clear the US believes it cannot secure Afghanistan without Pakistan, and so it has to live with the consequences.
All this works out well for Britain, because when Cameron was in India, he made clear Britain is not on the fence anymore between India and Pakistan, and he did not backtrack in front of Mr 10% who landed in Britain asking for money a week later whilst his country drowned – I refer to the Pakistani PM.
PM May has to repeat what Cameron did in 2010 “We can not tolerate in any sense the idea that [Pakistan] is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world.”
So what for India. Well, things would be better for India if the US was even closer an ally. And it will be vital for PM May to repeat the sentiment Cameron did.