It’s not Israel, actually. When it comes to third world down-and-dirty mechanics, Israel may be our closest ally, but in today’s Realpolitik, India is the most important.
If you hear anything about India right now in the national media, it is about the spike in Wuhan virus cases and deaths. The health stats from India are even more unreliable than U.S. numbers. The fear mongers are having trouble finding spikes and disasters at home. Curiously, the bad news mostly happens in blue lockdown states like Michigan. So they pepper the news with runaway virus stories from places we can’t check so easily – like India. The Indian people will deal with it. India’s significance is far greater than the scare stories designed to discredit it as one of the world’s great democratic republics.
In the 1960s, India was somewhat frustrating to the U.S. Both India and Egypt were third world developing countries that were courted heavily by, and flirted heavily with, the Soviet Union.
Neither took Kruschev’s bait. However, while Egypt has remained under a dictatorship, India followed the path of democracy. Interestingly, two of the most influential world leaders from that period were women – Indira Gandhi from India, and Golda Meir of Israel.
Until the Obama administration, Egypt was poised to become one of America’s most important allies. For all his faults, then-President Hosni Mubarak did keep Sadat’s peace with Israel and resisted the theocrats who are now busy destroying women’s rights and religious freedom and hope for democracy in that pivot point of the Middle East. Obama encouraged the mob to overthrow Mubarak. Today Egypt’s President el-Sisi is dancing a fine line between the Islamists and the secularists, both of whom have the long knives out for him.
So Egypt is weak, and Libya and Syria are still wracked by violence wrought upon them by the Obama administration’s so-called “Arab Spring” which should have been called “Ayatollah Spring.” And still we’re trying to get the heck out of Afghanistan, meaning we will also have little influence in Pakistan. And Iran is loving every minute of it.
But there, sitting quietly nearly in the middle of all this, with its one billion people, its multiracial, multi-faith society, and its democratically elected, vigorously free-enterprise government, sits India, counterbalance not only to ugly, backward China to its north, but to the hate filled Islamists to its west. With Hong Kong subjugated and China’s sights set on Taiwan, we can only thank God that India, Thailand, and Japan sit stalwartly on the Chinese Communist Party’s doorstep. India is our last best hope as a stabilizing influence in both Asia and the Middle East.
(India, by the way, has already dealt with its Islamists, ceding Pakistan and Sri Lanka to them. India had the good sense to amputate before gangrene set in.)
There are over three million American citizens in the U.S. of Indian ancestry. Bobby Jindal, former governor of Louisiana, and Nikki Haley, first female governor of South Carolina, are two famous ones that come immediately to mind. And there are hundreds of thousands more here in the U.S. today on work or education visas. Many run our hotels and convenience stores and other small businesses, inspiring examples of work ethic and the pursuit of happiness in America.
So find one and hug an Indian today. We need to appreciate them. India is our most important ally.
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