By Guive Mirfendereski
May 20, 1998
The Iranian

In the week of May 10, 1998, India detonated five nuclear "bombs" and joined formally the declared nuclear powers club -- that is the U.S., Russia (and a few former soviet socialist republics like Kazakhstan), France, Britain, and China. The U.S. Administration was caught once again with its pants down, blaming its lack of advance knowledge about the tests on the failure of the intelligence community. And, what could the U.S. have done had it known every detail of the tests? Nothing. The record speaks for itself. The U.S. has no leverage on India.

The absence of any meaningful U.S. leverage on India is not a recent phenomenon. India was one of the original nonaligned nations, which openly defied attempts by the U.S. and other Western countries to divide the world into white (non-communist) and red (communist) camps. Eventually, as the U.S. cut agricultural credits and supports to India, India turned to the Soviet Union, while another nonaligned country, Egypt turned to also to the USSR to finance the Aswan Dam, which the U.S. decided not to support. Indonesia, another nonaligned country became the client of the West, for which Mr. Suharto will be swept from power like Mr. Marcos of the Philippines and the Shah of Iran. Would his fate too be blamed on want of advance intelligence?

In the midst of the Cold War, which the arrogance of Washington viewed as a U.S. and USSR matter, the U.S. did precious nothing to stop the Peoples Republic of China from developing nuclear arms. Several Sino-Indian skirmishes, and Indo-Pakistani wars later, by 1973, it was clear that the U.S. favored relations with Pakistan over India, and China as a counterweight to the USSR. Meanwhile, China quite deftly wiggled out of the Vietnam quagmire leaving the Soviets to hold the bag against the U.S.

Despite many declarations and a treaty ensuring Taiwan government's security, the U.S. eventually chose Communist China over principle; it did precious nothing as the Taiwan government was forced to give up it seat at the U.N. Security Council to the Peking government. The U.S. chose to favor China, which India viewed as its primary adversary, the one who had annexed Tibet and was on the verge of turning the other buffer states in the north of India to its client principalities, had mobilized its army against India, which supported Pakistan diplomatically against India. A few years later, the U.S. abandoned South Vietnam and refused to step in and defend it against the hordes from the north, even though President Nixon had given written assurances to South Vietnam government to defend it if the north crossed into the south. As far as India may be concerned, the history of American diplomacy in Asia had been therefore one of abandoning friends and allies in order to make fast friends of former enemies.

The 1990's marked a clear deterioration in Indo-American relations. While India refused to sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and sign onto the Non- Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. openly chastised India. To make matters worse, the U.S. began to pressure the Indian government to liberalize, privatize, and globalize its economy overnight from the command economy into chaos -- to make the Indian economy safe for American capitalism. India resisted the U.S. urging in this regard and so less than two years ago President Clinton dispatched his Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, to India to meet with the Prime Minister in order to obtain India's commitment to free enterprise. The Indian officialdom shunned the American contingent.

When they inquired about the stunning unavailability of officials to receive Secretary Rubin, the Indian government remarked that the Iranian President Rafsanjani was in town and all the attention was focussed on him for the time. Mr. Rubin huffed and puffed and the Indian media had a field day with the latest manifestation of America's twin foreign policy principles -- ignorance and arrogance. In the area of arrogance of the "Ugly American," it was remarked that a Head of State ranks higher then a Secretary of State. In the area of ignorance, it was noted that the official of a country like Iran, which has had a thousand years of relations with India, is more welcomed than the frequent flyer from a country far away and traditionally contemptuous of India.

In the wake of the Indian nuclear tests, the U.S. announced that it will impose sanctions, thereby restricting or killing the opportunities that Mr. Rubin's trip was supposed to have created or fostered for American and other foreign investments in India. If that is not funny, consider the decison by the U.S. Secretary of State to grant a waiver under the Iran-Libya Snactions Act to the various oil companies participating in Iran's South Pars oil project. Some sanctions!

And what hope can Pakistan have that the U.S. would defend it against an Indian nuclear attack? Pakistan needs to move ahead with its own nuclear weapons program. The same principle of mutual-assured destruction which kept the nuclear peace in the case of the U.S. and USSR will apply here. The words and promise of an unprincipled and questionable ally like the U.S. cannot be a reliable guarantee of security and survival against The Bomb.

While, India may make use of its new instruments and persuasion to get back and settle its territorial and water disputes with Pakistan and deter China, a country like Iran should worry silly, because one cannot put it past India to demand the return of the loot which Nader Shah Afshar walked off with from India nearly three centuries ago. The countries of the Persian Gulf must also worry, because amidst all the Western efforts to deter the bad Iraqis and keep the nasty Iranians from blocking the Strait of Hormuz -- there, in a short distance, lies the coast of India, a nuclear India.

Nobody asked, just one person's opinion.

About the author

Guive Mirfendereski is a corporate and international lawyer in private practice in Newton, Massachusetts. He has held adjunct appointmnets at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplmacy and Brandeis University. He has advised foreign governments and international organizations on commercial law revision, privatization, and legal reform. He holds a JD from Boston College Law School; a PhD in inetnational law, an MA in law and diplomacy, an MA in international affairs from the Fletcher School, and a BA in government from Georgetown University.(Back to top)

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Tips on how Iran and the U.S. should start normalizing their relations. By Guive Mirfendereski & Najmedin Meshkati

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