Welmer

There are a number of political factors pointing towards an emerging alliance between the incoming administration and the dominant Hindu majority in India. For one thing, the opposition to fundamentalist Islam can now be applied from a largely non-Christian vector — an alliance of New-Age liberalism, Neoconservativism and Hindu nationalism. The plurality of the Democratic party, which I outlined in my last post, fits well with India’s convoluted caste-based society. And there is a strange ideological affinity for Hinduism, despite how poorly the American elites who embrace it understand the religion. Hinduism has been grasped at by overreaching Western political and philosophical movements, from universalist mystics to National Socialists. It serves as a sort of non-Abrahamic Holy Grail, which has attracted legions of New-Age gurus, hippies, and even young Israelis to its exotic outposts. Those Westerners who oppose Christianity on a visceral level are often deeply attracted to Hinduism, despite a fundamental lack of understanding of the religion, which is the world’s largest polytheistic faith. To Muslims, of course, Hinduism is an abomination, which may explain the affinity certain Islamophobes have for it.

In the American world of international studies, there is a strong subset that focuses on India, which is at once the most hopeful and fanciful. In contrast to the no-nonsense scholars who focus on East Asia, those who gravitate toward India tend to be more susceptible to utopian ideals and improbable universal solutions. Social engineers like the place because there is so much work to be done, and every pet project takes on a significance entirely out of proportion to reality. Thus we find professors basing entire classes on India on projects to empower teenage girls in some impoverished fishing village, and concluding that the momentum generated by such endeavors will surely change the face of the earth. Much of Africa having descended into the bloody abyss of mass murder and rape, no better opportunity than India exists for the safe sort of telescopic philanthropy Dickens deplored as characteristic of certain Victorian Englishwomen.

Barack Obama – a product of liberal academia if there ever was one – will surely be receptive to efforts to draw the United States into a strategic alliance with India. The New York Times will likely begin to run more articles about the “world’s largest democracy” and declare the Indians our allies in the global war on terror. For conservative Christians this may pose certain problems. Some may actually start scratching their heads and wondering whether church-burning, Christian-killing Hindus are much better than Muslim jihadis. But contempt for Christianity – fundamentalist Protestantism in particular – is far from rare in the Obama camp, and these concerns will be quickly overridden.

The real problem with an alliance with India is that it may turn out the the Indians are getting the better part of the bargain, and they will simply play favorites to their own advantage. Traditionally, India has aligned with Russia, and there is no reason to think that this has come to an end, or that the US can offer enough to entice India to drop their close relationship with Russia. Containing China, although often raised as a priority by US policymakers, is a more pressing issue to India and Russia, both of whom share land borders with the Asian giant. Given this reality, it seems more likely that India will use the United States to contain China while maintaining a strategic relationship with Russia for the same purpose. Of course, Pakistan is the other major threat to India, and there is little doubt that India will happily sit back and keep quiet as the US grows increasingly belligerent toward its neighbor to the west.

Reducing US strategy to containing Islam and China ignores the emerging reality of a multipolar world, where our interests lie not in smashing any remaining opposition to American dominance, but rather in maintaing a balance between the emerging superpowers of Eurasia, the subcontinent and East Asia. Nixon’s radical realignment in the early 1970s was a stroke of genius, whereas fighting India’s wars for little benefit to America would be a colossal waste of effort. In fact, it is likely that a Hindu-Russian-Shiite bloc could emerge as the dominant global power as the US and China isolate each other out of mutual distrust. Avoiding this requires a revision of US and Chinese interests, and possibly the revival of the late Cold War alliance between China, the West and certain Sunni Muslim states. But to end on a pessimistic note, I’m not sure the incoming administration has the ability to think in these terms, and so I expect US foreign policy to be wasted on fruitless, counterproductive efforts that will undermine America’s global influence.