The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [73]
As the scholar C. Raja Mohan has pointed out, over the last decade, most of these conditions changed.7 The Cold War ended, India began booming, and relations with its neighbors—from China to Pakistan to tiny Bhutan—improved markedly. The result is that India has begun to play a much larger role in the world. It is poised to become a great power at last. And at the center of its new role is a much closer relationship with the United States of America.
The Eagle and the Cow
Most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that India is, by at least one measure, the most pro-American country in the world. The Pew Global Attitudes Survey released in June 2005 asked people in sixteen countries whether they had a favorable impression of the United States. A stunning 71 percent of Indians said yes. Only Americans had a more favorable view of America (83 percent). The numbers are somewhat lower in more recent surveys, but the basic finding remains true: Indians are extremely comfortable with and well disposed toward America.
One reason for this may be that for decades India’s government tried to force anti-Americanism down its people’s throats. (When explaining away India’s miseries in the 1970s, politicians spoke so often of the “hidden hand”—by which they meant the CIA or American interference generally—that the cartoonist R. K. Laxman took to drawing an actual hand descending to cause all kinds of havoc.) But more important is the fact that Indians understand America. It is a noisy, open society with a chaotic democratic system, like theirs. Its capitalism looks distinctly like America’s free-for-all. Many urban Indians are familiar with America, speak its language, and actually know someone who lives there, possibly even a relative.
The Indian American community has been a bridge between the two cultures. The term often used to describe Indians leaving their country is “brain drain.” But it has been more like brain gain, for both sides. Indians abroad have played a crucial role in opening up the mother country. They return to India with money, investment ideas, global standards, and, most important, a sense that Indians can achieve anything. An Indian parliamentarian once famously asked the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, “Why is it that Indians seem to succeed everywhere except in their own country?” Stories of Indians scaling the highest peaks in America have generated pride and emulation in India. Americans, for their part, have more readily embraced India because they have had a positive experience with Indians in America.
If Indians understand America, Americans understand India. They are puzzled and disturbed by impenetrable decision-making elites like the Chinese Politburo or the Iranian Council of Guardians. But a quarrelsome democracy that keeps moving backward, forward, and sideways—that they understand. During negotiations on nuclear issues, Americans watched what was going on in New Delhi—people opposed to the deal leaking negative stories from inside the government, political adversaries using the issue to score points on unrelated matters—and found it all very familiar. Similar things happen every day in Washington.
Most countries have relationships that are almost exclusively between governments. Think of the links between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which exist almost solely among a few dozen high officials. But sometimes bonds develop not merely between states but also between societies. The United States has developed relationships that are much more than just strategic in two other cases: with Britain and later with Israel. In both, the ties were broad and deep, going well beyond government officials and diplomatic negotiations. The two countries knew each other and understood each other—and, as a result,