Who lost India? Policy considerations for Rand Paul/Dennis Kucinich 2016

A recent report in The Diplomat, which covers the Asia-Pacific region, says initiatives of an India-Japan alliance could form a bulwark against Chinese ambitions. A partnership that would of course include the U.S., Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe “set out grand visions during his first term as PM in 2006-2007 for a strategic quadrangle consisting of Japan, India, Australia and the United States — something China perceived as tantamount to an Asian NATO, out to balance a rising China.”

The Pentagon has been pitching the same for at least a generation, probably since the moment after the phrase “Pacific Century” came into usage.

{mosads}But maybe India didn’t get the memo. In Saturday’s Financial Times: “India’s deeply fractious parties have finally found a cause to unite them — resentment of the US. From Sonia Gandhi, head of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, to Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist candidate for prime minister, New Delhi’s leaders are outbidding each other in outrage over the strip and search in New York this week of Devyani Khobragade, an Indian consular official.”

Possibly there is something more behind the outrage in the curious case of Ms. Khobragade, something which was always there, lurking, awakening now as rumors of war with China are reported.

To think that India would fall in line as a secondary partner to America, which India likely sees more correctly as “Anglo-America” after hundreds of years of brutal occupation by England, would be stunningly presumptuous.

But this is the subtle context of American dominance today. It presumes that the worlds beyond our borders deeply desire to abandon their roots, their ancient, indigenous gods and god kings and queens and aspire to be externalized, globalized versions of Coke, Cal Klein, football and “the operative faith of the American people,” which Will Herberg in his study of American religious sociology called “the American Way of Life.” As Herberg once declared America to be a “cut flower culture,” we are today intent on cutting the rest of the world’s nations, cultures and tribes from their original roots and bearings.

Arizona Sen. John McCain’s stunning naivety for a man of his age and experience is on display again, this time in Kiev. He naturally assumes that Ukraine — a historically Orthodox country like Russia — is and wants to be an extension of America and American influence; that is, an extension of himself. It is the stuff of Kafka (“In the Penal Colony” comes to mind, and the dangerous nostalgico politics of Spain’s Gen. Francisco Franco). It is the palest and most dangerous form of “Wallace and LeMay” imperialism and McCain its final avatar, decades out of sync with the age. It applies to India as well, and everywhere.

America needs new thinking, and new thinkers on the interests of Americans abroad: Rand Paul/Dennis Kucinich 2016.