INDIAN CONDEMNATION OF IRAQ WAR

. . .This came a little late in the day, so you may have missed it. Buried in a New York Times piece on India, Kashmir and Pakistan yesterday is the following paragraph:

Few experts here think India will make a pre-emptive strike based on the American precedent. India has been increasingly critical of the United States action in Iraq, which would make it difficult to then turn around and emulate it. [India's Parliament passed a resolution on Tuesday deploring the allied attack against Iraq. "Change of regime through military action is unacceptable," the resolution said, and it called for the quick withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq.]

An article in the Indian Express by TVR Shenoy discusses the tendency of India to end up on the wrong side of history in its foreign policy pronouncements: in this condemnation, in their support for the Ottoman Caliphate two years before the Turks abolished the title, and in their support for Hussein in the first Gulf War which resulted in expulsions of Indians from the Gulf.

U.S. relations with India have been on the upswing in recent years; let's hope that the Bush administration does not decide to engage in any sort of retaliatory gestures. There are at least two reasons why such action would be a bad idea: 1) as a country with good relations with both nuclear powers on the subcontinent, the U.S. needs to play an important mediating role between India and Pakistan, and 2) as the world's largest democracy, India has a natural kinship with the U.S. that policymakers and diplomats should attempt to strengthen over the long term. So far, I haven't seen any evidence of a Bush administration desire to retaliate (the French seem to be running interference for everyone here).