US – Friend or Foe?

A nuclear alliance with the US is a good gift from Uncle Sam and at the sometime a tool that US can use on his own to keep its interests alive in south east Asia.

To how much extend we can trust the people sitting in the US congress? This is a difficult question. Most of the law makers sitting in the congress were born in the cold war era. They were brought up and fought for the ideals in a period where India bashing was on high scale.

There is a clear cut answer for it. Though we were proclaimed ourselves as the champions of Non alliance movement, the whole world knows we were with the USSR.

Lets us come back to the US congressman. They were very well aware of that. At that period they were in love with our neighbor Pakistan. Shamelessly Pakistan did a wonderful lobbying in and out the US congress. But we were in strong romance with USSR.

Not surprisingly, the US executing bosses including their Presidents were not in fine relationship with the world’s largest democracy. When we were in wars with our neighbors, US never helped us. We didn’t fax a request for help to Washington also.

US words were not sweet when we annexed Goa by a military action and also when we proclaimed Sikkim as an integral part of India. Kashmir is a complex issue for India as well as US too.

Things started changed when Indian IT workers landed in US in 80’s. They played a major role in changing Indian image in the US. Young and smart engineers from our IITs and IIMs landed in Silicon Wally and started companies. These companies grew on a fast space and generated huge income sufficient enough to build a new and vibrant lobbying in US politics. US approach to India changes from there.

Coupled with other political factors happened around the world like growing power of China, threats from North Korea , Iran and attack of US by Taliban forced US think tanks to rewrite its India vision.

From 80’s major US multinationals were on a hunting spare for a nation where they can invest. India was the best bet. After Mr. Sing opened our economy to US the amount of investment to this country was unimaginable.

Now its 2008

1) US wants to protect its assets in India as US investments in India are growing like on an alarming rate
2) US wants to make sure India will never be a threat to it’s super power status

These are the two main hidden agendas for this nuclear deal.

US done it very cleverly after the Second World War. The two nations Germany and Japan were the super powers in the world threatening even the US. After the world war US pumped millions of dollars and investment into these two countries to recover from the War losses. But never allowed them to become a military power. NATO is another strategy. And our 123 agreement is also the same