4 January 2014

The End of the U.S.-India Honeymoon

By Sadanand Dhume
Dec. 30, 2013

This columnist appears not to know that Russian diplomats got away with major frauds on Medicare under Bharara's nose, and that this would never happen to British or German diplomat

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304137304579289771348242380

New Delhi's overwrought reaction to a diplomatic kerfuffle jeopardizes ties that had been strengthening.

With the so-called Khobragade affair, involving the arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York, stretching into its third week with little sign of resolution, it looks increasingly likely that the damage to U.S.-India ties will be long-term. Widely held assumptions in Washington and New Delhi—that both countries had found a way to forge a stable, mutually beneficial partnership—turn out to have been premature.
. . .
There's enough blame to go around. To describe the State Department's role in the showdown as clumsy would be an understatement. . . . Even expelling Ms. Khobragade would have been less inflammatory than arresting her. And if an arrest was unavoidable, it's still hard to justify treating a diplomat in a wage dispute like a Colombian drug lord.

To add insult to Indian injury, U.S. Embassy officials in New Delhi reportedly helped spirit out the former nanny's family days before Ms. Khobragade's arrest. To many Indians, both acts smacked of hostility. . . .

But while Indian anger is understandable, the government's overwrought response shows how far New Delhi remains from conducting itself like a major power. Removing security barriers in front of the U.S. Embassy little more than a year after the deadly attack in Benghazi shows a foreign office tone deaf to how the issue would play in the U.S. The withdrawal of diplomatic perks—a relatively trivial matter in itself—suggests less steely resolve and more smallness of spirit. Should a rising superpower care about where an American diplomat shops for wine and cheese?

In the weeks ahead, pundits will continue to quibble over the case. For much of the Indian media, Ms. Khobragade has emerged as a heroic figure, a young diplomat needlessly humiliated by a callous superpower. Most Indian journalists have portrayed Sangeeta Richard, the former nanny, as a scam artist who gamed the U.S. immigration system by falsely alleging mistreatment to secure visas for herself and her immediate family. Ms. Richard's supporters, of course, claim the opposite: that she, not Ms. Khobragade, is the victim of the piece.


Amid this welter of recriminations, one thing appears clear: U.S.-India relations remain a lot more fragile than was widely believed. Over the past decade and a half, the U.S. had shed its reputation in India for lacking the finesse to deal with a bewilderingly complex country in a region in flux. Ms. Khobragade's arrest has resurrected the old cliché about the Ugly American, better at upsetting people than befriending them.

At the same time, India's overwrought response to the incident reveals a country imprisoned by its past. The American assumption that a shared belief in democracy, along with a common interest in keeping Chinese hegemony and radical Islam at bay, would imbue Indian foreign policy with a more practical bent has proved premature. Ms. Khobragade's treatment may have been egregious, but many Indian officials and celebrities react to even routine airport patdowns or questioning in America as grave insults to national honor.

India's response to the incident shows how difficult it is for New Delhi to shed an old habit of seeking self-respect by reflexively railing against America. As the story broke, politicians and pundits vied with each other to attack American perfidy on air. Among their helpful suggestions: granting asylum to Edward Snowden and arresting gay partners of U.S. diplomats . . . . Anyone arguing for restraint or balance was quickly dismissed as an American lackey.

. . . the damage to relations between the countries' diplomats is real. Perhaps U.S.-India ties will bounce back from this setback as they have from others, but for now the honeymoon between the world's two largest democracies is over.

Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for WSJ.com. He is on Twitter @dhume.

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