The visit to India by President George W. Bush is a good occasion to survey the changing but still confused attitudes of the Indian elite towards the United States.

An opinion poll commissioned by “/Outlook”/ magazine among lower-middle class and higher strata in nine cities, says 66 percent of respondents believe that Bush is a “friend of India”. Yet, 50 percent believe Washington is “closer to Pakistan” than to India. (Only 30 percent think the opposite to be true.) Strangely, 49 percent think that this “friend” hasn’t done “enough to help India” fight terrorism. But an even larger 55 percent still believe that “India can trust the US” when in need!

As many as 72 percent of respondents think the US is a global “bully”. Fiftynine percent think India has “compromised on its foreign policy” by getting too close to it. And yet, 46 percent “love the US”! (Only 14 percent “hate” it.)

A June 2005 survey by the Pew Research Centre in the US confirms this and highlights an India-Pakistan contrast. As many as 71 percent of urban Indians have a /favourable opinion /of the US-the highest such proportion among the 16 countries surveyed. Only 41 to 45 percent in most Western European countries have such a favourable opinion, barring the UK (55 percent). The percentage is a miserable 23 percent in Pakistan.

Other surveys show that poor people, who constitute a majority of India’s population, are far more critical of Washington, but that India’s upper crust is much more pro-US than even the middle class. This elite is now severely re-aligning India’s foreign policy in Washington’s favour-with evangelical zeal.

The enthusiastic welcome accorded to Bush offers eloquent evidence for this. Indian policy-makers seem to suffer from amnesia about the character of the US as a power in search of a global Empire, and about Washington’s role in spreading insecurity and instability in the world, including its most volatile region, West Asia-North Africa, as well as South Asia.

This assessment is not based on knee-jerk anti-Americanism or nostalgia for non-alignment. It derives from an analysis of the driving forces behind contemporary US foreign policies and actions. The US is engaged in an aggressive project to reshape the world. Various statements of this orientation are publicly available, including the “National Security Strategy of the US” and “Nuclear Posture Review” of 2002, a total of 44 National Security Presidential Directives signed by Bush, documents such as the “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations”, and various reports of the National Intelligence Council, including “Mapping the Global Future” (December 2004).

The US wants to establish “full-spectrum” dominance in all strategic areas and prevent possible emergence of a potential rival anywhere, including most importantly, Eurasia. It wants unfettered neoliberal globalisation. To achieve this, the US must control strategic resources such as oil and gas and reject any limits on its consumption. Washington is prepared, indeed eager, to beat back any challenge to its economic, political and military hegemony by waging preventive or pre-emptive wars, if necessary.

The most articulate formulation of these ambitions is contained in the Neoconservative manifesto, “The Project for a New American Century” . The Project seeks to indefinitely prolong the “unipolar moment” which arose with the Cold War’s end. The primary means by which this dominance is to be ensured shall be military. US defence spending, now $450 billion-plus, exceeds the military expenditure of the /next 14 nations put together/.

Under Bush, the Neocons have emerged as the most powerful group in command of US policy. It’s impossible to delink their influence from specific US actions-whether the terrible mess in Iraq after its occupation, or the rush to further develop mass-destruction weapons, the atrocities in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, rejection of the International Criminal Court, or pushing of an iniquitous agenda in the World Trade Organisation. It’s impossible to understand the logic of these actions without reference to Washington’s larger strategic goals.

To achieve these, the US must build a system of alliances which neutralises dissension and co-opts numerous states. Such alliances must contain or counter all possible challenges which might arise.

That’s where formerly non-aligned India comes in. The US has been trying to recruit India into a “partnership”-among other things, to counter China. India’s strategic location and her emergence as an economic power give it special advantage. That’s the rationale of the US offer last year to “help India become a great power in the 21^st century”.

India has dutifully reciprocated US overtures. Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has approvingly listed some “US-friendly” Indian actions, including enthusiastic support for Bush’s Ballistic Missile Defence (“Star Wars”) plans even before his closest strategic allies backed them; silence over the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty; offer of military bases for the war in Afghanistan after 9/11 (something India never offered to the USSR during the Cold War); endorsement of the US position on climate change, including its latest /avatar/, the “Asia-Pacific Partnership”; and of course, the September and February votes against Iran.

To these must be added the 30 India-US military exercises involving all three services, 50 high-level military conferences; $990 million worth of American arms imports; and India’s close strategic relation with Israel.

India maintained a deafening silence on the 2002-03 US campaign for war against Iraq-right until the day before the invasion, when the Opposition forced a resolution through Parliament. Worse, India came close to sending a division for Iraq’s post-war “stabilisation”.

Bush’s visit consolidates this partnership. Its /overall/ thrust is /strategic/ and comprehensive, covering nuclear cooperation, economics, agriculture, space, scientific research, energy, the Container Security Initiative (which mandates intrusive checks on shipments for supposedly “anti-terrorist” purposes), and not least, medical drug trials (using Indians as guinea-pigs).

Some of these agreements are one-sided or will undermine multilateral arrangements like the Climate Change Convention. It’s wrong to say they’re in India’s “enlightened national interest.” In a greatly asymmetrical relationship, the stronger partner always calls the shots, the weaker partner follows.

All that India will gain if the nuclear deal goes through and is ratified by the US Congress-a far-from-certain prospect-is acceptance and legitimisation for its weapons of mass destruction and second- or third-rate status as a US ally which acts as its junior policeman in escorting “high-value” US cargo to the Straits of Malacca and otherwise provide support for US strategic operations.

Indians must pause and ask if the cost involved-a complete betrayal of the Gandhi-Nehru legacy of peace and abandonment of the promise to return to the global nuclear disarmament agenda and fight for a multipolar world order-is worth the price.

Similarly, Pakistanis should ask if an unequal alliance with Washington is preferable to foreign policy independence. This is not an idle question. A pliable Pakistan is and will remain useful to Washington-independently of India. To be half-way credible, the US global alliance system needs a major Muslim-majority nation in South Asia, which can be this region’s counterpart for Saudi Arabia. Pakistan too will come under pressure to join Washington’s orbit. It must resist it.