United States–India Nuclear Relations Post-9/11: Neo-Liberal Discourses,Masculinities,and Orientalism in International Politics

Abstract

In this article I explore how the post-9/11 neo-liberal climate of globalization has served as the context within which is articulated masculinist and orientalist forms of nuclear discourses between India and the United States (US). To this extent, I draw from feminist international relations (IR), that security is a gendered phenomenon, to explore the linkages between masculinities and nuclear weapons as underpinning the nuclear security discourses between India and the US. Yet considering issues of international hierarchy and power relations between India and the US, I also draw from Edward Said’s Orientalism to explore how assumptions of orientalism are also sustained in these masculinist nuclear discourses. My contribution lies in enriching feminist IR with a post-colonial angle by suggesting that feminist IR continue to engage with post-colonial feminist perspectives to comprehend the masculinist and orientalist forms of identity politics that underpin security relations/discourses between Western and post-colonial states.

Keywords

Globalization India masculinity nuclear security orientalism Pakistan United States

Introduction

With United States (US)–Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) superpower nuclear rivalry at its peak in the 1980s, feminist international relations (IR), following the ground-breaking work of Cohn (1987), have highlighted how the gendered metaphors of defence intellectuals have legitimized American nuclear defence. These feminist scholarships along with anti-nuclear women activists scattered globally have challenged the gendered politics underpinning nuclear discourses (Enloe, 1990; Peterson, 1992; Pettman, 1996; Tickner, 1992), namely how states use ‘masculinist coded language and symbols’ to sustain their nuclear (in)security discourses (Duncanson and Eschle, 2008: 545). Yet the end of Cold War did not really witness a rollback of the nuclear proliferation agenda in the West (namely the US); rather, inaugurated fresh waves of post-Cold War nuclear insecurity discourses and nuclear weaponization following 11 September 2001 (hereafter 9/11). Nuclear weapons are thus back firmly on the US national security agenda – justified on grounds of terrorist-proliferation phobias that the US (West) faces from the non-West such as Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan. It is in this post-9/11 period involving ‘terrorist-proliferation’ types of dangers that the US/West faces from non-West that my article situates ongoing feminist analysis of nuclear weapons and security in the context of India–US nuclear relations.¹

However, before proceeding to analyse the linkages between masculinities, orientalism, and nuclear weapons, I must state that I am aware that states justify nuclear policies on grounds of realism. Likewise, states also legitimize nuclear security collaborations on grounds of neo-liberalism (as has been done explicitly by the US and India after 9/11), where neo-liberal collaborations are all about promoting economic cooperation and security in international affairs. Yet while interrogating these neo-liberal nuclear discourses between India and the US from a feminist IR angle, one notices how a notion of ‘masculinity’ underpins these discourses. Following Cohn et al. (n.d.: 3), I define ‘masculinity’ in IR as a form of ‘symbolic gender-coding’ that represents a gendered and hierarchical ‘way of structuring relations of power’ in international politics. Masculinities thus understood, as gendered and hierarchical categories, enables feminist IR scholars to explore how certain meanings of masculinities legitimize state office bearers’ preparedness of and readiness to use nuclear weapons; how masculinities dominate aspects of politics including weapons and warfare; and how masculinities are accompanied by notions of orientalist masculinities – where proliferation discourses draw from ‘distinctions between “the Self” and the (generally non-Western) “Unruly Other”’ to justify proliferation policies (Cohn et al., n.d.: 1–3, 8). Yet keeping in mind the nuanced approaches of feminist IR that caution against the seamless universal explanations of masculinist politics and emphasize their context-specific variations, I extend feminist analyses on masculinities, orientalism, and nuclear weapons from a post-colonial feminist context.²

Post-colonial feminist IR draws from Edward Said’s (1978) premise of orientalism, which considers knowledge-production of the Orient/non-West as one dominated by the epistemological lenses of the West. In this discourse of orientalism, the non-West is constructed out of a hierarchically guided ‘moral-political admonishment’ by the West and stereo-typed as different from the West to be viewed through fear and contempt (Prakash, 1995: 205–207). In contrast to Hinduism (which is thought of as defeated, distant, and not a source of constant worry to the West), Islam assumes a ‘highly tendentious’ place in this discourse of orientalism (Said, 1978: 209; Said, 1981). As noted by Said, orientalism’s ‘othering’ is also accompanied by a gendered masculinity, also referred to as an orientalist masculinity, which engenders the non-West (Grewal, 1995). India as a representative of the non-West has fallen prey to this gendered-masculinity of orientalism and in these discourses gets denigrated (despite a ‘good’ Hindu state) as a feminist entity – a much inferior substitute to the West’s masculinity and its world ordering rationality (Inden, 1990). Critically extending Said’s orientalism, recent post-colonial feminist IR scholars have exposed how the Orient’s interaction with the Occident has given rise to fractured identities of the orient that are conceptualized in interaction with and in resistance to the West; are in a process of transformation; and have initiated complex forms of identity politics within post-colonial locations (Chowdhry and Nair, 2002).³ South Asian security scholar Chaturvedi (2001) locates this process of ‘othering’ between India and Pakistan in their post-partition context; however, it is not elaborated how this process of ‘othering’ represents an ‘internal’ orientalism between these states.

It is within this framework of post-colonial feminist IR, which is attentive to the orientalist politics of gendered masculinity and othering in a hierarchical world of international relations, that I situate my research question for this article: that is, how, and to what extent, are the post-9/11 neo-liberal nuclear discourses of India and the US representative of a masculinist, orientalist and an ‘internally’ orientalist form of identity politics in US–India’s nuclear relations?

I initiate this line of analysis by arguing that 9/11 and its resultant ‘search for terror’ has facilitated a neo-liberal form of interdependence in Indo-US relations that has enabled two hierarchically located states to interact in a historically unprecedented manner on issues of nuclear technology cooperation. As I will hereafter document, these states have articulated their post-9/11 nuclear relations in terms of value-neutral rational neo-liberal discourses with the assumption that economic science, technocratic rationality, and strategic interdependence between states will provide security in international relations. Instead, this article, following post-colonial feminist lenses, suggests that these neo-liberal discourses – operating as value-neutral discourses of economic-security collaboration – are underpinned by a form of masculinity which creates and sustains complex and hybrid forms of gendered, orientalist, and ‘internally’ orientalist identity politics in India–US nuclear security relations. Through these post-colonial feminist revisions I argue and demonstrate the following inter-related propositions.

First, in terms of masculinity, I claim that the post-9/11 neo-liberal nuclear discourses of India and the US are underpinned by a ‘globalized’ masculinity which, as a bi-product of a globalized strategic interdependence, interweaves neo-liberalism with geo-strategic threats (i.e. the post-9/11 ‘terror’) to support globalized and masculinist identities of states in international relations. Globalized masculinities are found in both Western and non-Western states and share similarities to the extent that they engage in a discourse of global neo-liberal interdependence. Yet given the hierarchical locations of India and the US, their shared notions of globalized masculinities are also fraught with tensions between a Western (US) and a post-colonial (Indian) masculine self – by virtue of the latter’s post-colonial location.

Second, I argue that the post-9/11 neo-liberal nuclear discourses of the US are also symptomatic of an orientalist politics of identity-making vis-à-vis India as a part of the non-West. These orientalist assumptions of the US are peppered in its (otherwise) highly supportive nuclear collaborative discourses with India – which simultaneously caution that India is to be ‘watched’ as a non-Western state in terms of its nuclear technology advancements. This orientalism of the US vis-à-vis India is also emblematic of an orientalist masculinity of the US, wherein it infantilizes India as a post-colonial nation to be surveyed and guided, and simultaneously re-affirms India’s efforts as a legitimate state in the South Asian region to enter into nuclear collaborations with the US.

This leads to my final premise for this article. Herein, I claim that a form of regional-hegemonic masculinity underpins India’s post-9/11 nuclear discourses vis-à-vis the US which is pro-US; yet draws on India’s nuclear-apartheid perceptions vis-à-vis the US to forge its nuclear collaborations. More importantly, India’s regional-hegemonic masculinity facilitates a discursive process of ‘internal’ othering towards Pakistan as actors of a post-colonial region.⁴ Interestingly, this ‘internal’ othering of Pakistan by India after 9/11 does not overtly replicate Western orientalism. Instead, emblematic of its regional-hegemonic masculinity, India’s ‘internal’ othering of Pakistan is a more complex process given that it is formed in interaction with (and in opposition to) the US; and yet replays the Western orientalist process of othering, infantilizing, and gendering Pakistan in opposition to India’s modern democratic self.

The remainder of the article appears as follows: the second part briefly introduces the background of US–India’s nuclear relations with an eye to contextualize how the post-9/11 context offers a historically unprecedented space for nuclear-technology collaborations between India and the US. The third part problematizes these neo-liberal nuclear discourses of India and the US from a post-colonial feminist angle, exploring their shared ‘globalized’ masculinities – albeit fraught with tensions given their hierarchical locations. The fourth part analyses an ‘orientalist’ masculinity underpinning the nuclear discourse of the US and how this masculinity infantilizes India as a post-colonial state. The fifth part explores the process of ‘internal’ othering underpinning India’s nuclear discourses vis-à-vis Pakistan which, a bi-product of the US’s orientalist masculinity, is emblematic of India’s regional-hegemonic masculinist self. I conclude by offering some post-colonial feminist notes on the gendered and orientalist nature of India–US nuclear discourses and its analytical relevance for IR.

Background of India–US Nuclear Relations

An overview of India–US nuclear relations since post-World War II until the collapse of the USSR may be characterized as one of ambivalence. India and the US are the two biggest examples of working liberal democracies in the world; they are geographically distant and, in this sense, do not constitute direct threats to each other realistically. Yet the ebb and flow of US–USSR Cold War involving Pakistan as a key player in the South Asian region has necessitated certain compulsions of the US’s political, military, and nuclear-technology related involvements in the region, which has sometimes sustained a ‘congenial’ and at other times an ‘erratic’ relationship between India and the US (Kux, 1985).

To quickly review this Cold War guided India–US relation (1947–1991), one notices that India’s immediate post-independent years which marked the first phase of the Cold War (1947–1962) sparked uneasy India–US relations. This was because of Prime Minister (PM) Nehru’s refusal to join the American camp, follow a non-aligned policy, and a nationalist policy of economic development which implied stilting off foreign investment in India to a large extent. Instead, Pakistan became a willing Cold War ally of the US, which resulted in US–Pakistan military alliances through the South East Asia Treaty Organization (1954) and Central Treaty Organization (1955). Although the detente phase of the Cold War (1962–1979) saw some US military assistance to India in 1962 under President Kennedy and the signing of a 30-year India–US agreement on Atomic Energy Cooperation (1963), irritants concerning non-alignment, Korea, Vietnam, and the Indo-Pakistan wars of 1948, 1965 and 1971 (raising US involvements in supporting either) remained (Kux, 1985). Discrepancies further arose over India’s peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974, which became more controversial given India’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).⁵ To prevent further proliferation by India or any other country, the US passed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act in 1978 (requiring that all nuclear states accept complete safeguards on their nuclear facilities as a pre-condition for buying fuels used in an American built reactor), which India, following the nuclear apartheid argument, did not sign. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 inaugurated the third phase of the Cold War (1979–1985), and continued to deteriorate Indo–US relations. Pakistan appeared as a frontline state for the US and millions worth of military aid reached Pakistan under Presidents Carter and Reagan. The end of Reagan’s first term as president saw a more liberally conducive environment in Indo–US relations when India’s new PM, Rajiv Gandhi (since 1985), changed India’s economic policy from one of a centrally managed to a liberal market economy. This economic change in India which saw increasing bilateral trade flows between India and the US augured well with the wavering Cold War sentiments from 1985–1991.

The collapse of the Cold War in 1991 which reduced the strategic significance of Pakistan to the US, India’s economic liberalization, and a growing Indian–American community in the US provided a continued atmosphere for positive India–US relations. Yet the interim between 1991 and September 2001 did not bode well for their nuclear relations. Along orientalist lines, there emerged a discourse of ‘rogue doctrine’ in US security politics where, following the collapse of the Soviet danger, Third World states such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, India, and others were designated by the US as ‘rogue’ states (Klaire, 1995). To control Third World proliferation efforts, the US proposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1994, which India refused to sign on grounds of nuclear discrimination. In May 1998 India and Pakistan tested their nuclear devices. Despite short-lived US economic sanctions on nuclear India and Pakistan, India–US relations improved thereafter under President Clinton’s ‘South Asia Initiative’. This dialogue was re-enforced by President G.W. Bush’s ‘Strategic Framework’, an aspect of which was to de-emphasize non-proliferation as the sole determinant of US policy towards India and move away from the demand that India sign the CTBT. This new US attitude towards India, which was partly because of President Bush’s eagerness to maximize the economic potential of Indo–US relations given India’s emerging economic position, was reciprocated by the Indian counterpart, PM Vajpayee, from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. It is in this more relaxed and liberal framework of India–US relations that 9/11 happened.

9/11 and US–India’s Nuclear Security Developments

The 9/11 attack unfurled a US security agenda in ‘search of terror’ supposedly located in Afghanistan and brought responsible states as US allies in this hunt (G.W. Bush, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c). It stressed the ‘urgency … relating to the spread of dangerous technology to “rogue states” and their possible use by “terrorists”’ (The White House, 2002), and spelt US global security goals and strategies (National Security Strategy, 2002). However, the US national security discourses against the 9/11 ‘terror’, unlike its Cold War anti-Communist discourses that were fore-grounded in realism, have made use of a neo-liberal logic of inter-state interdependence as a way of attaining its global security mission. Emblematic in President Bush’s comment:

In this moment of opportunity [read: crisis], a common danger is erasing old rivalries. America is working … in ways we have never before to address peace and prosperity. In every region, free markets and free trade, and free societies … Together with friends and allies … we will demonstrate that the forces of terror cannot stop the momentum of freedom. (G.W. Bush, 2002: 7–8)

It is in this broader context of the US war against ‘terror’ interweaved with the neo-liberal momentum that one needs to situate US nuclear policy discourses towards India.

After 9/11 it was required that the US national security interests obtain India and Pakistan’s cooperation in its anti-terror campaign against Afghanistan and maintain positive bilateral relations with the two states (Schaffer, 2001). In response to India’s full support and Pakistan’s ‘indispensible help’ in the war on terror,⁶ President Bush on 22 September 2001 issued a final determination removing all nuclear-related sanctions against India and Pakistan and announced that the US would ‘invest time and resources [into] building strong bilateral relations with India’ (National Security Strategy, 2002: para. 8, 9). Building on this logic of ‘resource-investment’, the US emphasized ‘strategic partnerships’ between India and the US to fight ‘global terrorism, state sponsors of terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction’ (United States Department of Defence, 2003: para. 1). This collaborative sentiment found favourable expression in India mainly on grounds of geo-strategic considerations of 9/11 (Raja Mohan, 2002–2003).⁷ In contrast to its traditional anti-US national security conception, there emerged in India after 9/11 a US-centric national security agenda (National Democratic Alliance, 2005). A series of comments from the NDA government, including PM Vajpayee, expressed India’s solidarity with the US in its war against terror; conversed on building a strategic framework between India and the US; and issued joint press conferences promoting India–US cooperation (V. Bush, 2001). Thereafter, a number of collaborations followed between India and the US in counter-terrorism programmes, defence-military team works, intelligence exchanges, joint naval exercises, flying operations, and so on (Global Security, 2002). These defence collaborations were further cemented through the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) Initiative signed by India and the US in January 2004. This initiative loosened US export restrictions for some items to be exported to India’s unsafeguarded nuclear facilities (for non-reactor-related uses such as power generation) and became the foundation for subsequent Indo–US nuclear cooperation.

This neo-liberal congruence continued to dominate India–US nuclear relations under President Bush’s second term, defined specifically as trade and exchange of high technology dual purpose nuclear-technology-related items. By Bush’s second term, India was headed by the United Progressive Alliance coalition government, led by the Congress Party, under PM Manmohan Singh. According to many analysts of Indian politics, the Congress Party under PM Singh represents a stronger vision of India’s globalization than any preceding governments and, like the previous NDA government, recognized US pre-eminence in global affairs (Bajpai, 2002). In this prevailing neo-liberal environment, there followed a visit by US Secretary of State, Rice, to India (March 2005), the signing of a 10-year defence framework between the US and India (June 2005), and the issue of a Joint Statement by President Bush and PM Singh (18 July 2005) resolving to establish a global partnership between the US and India. It emphasized increased cooperation on numerous security-related issues including full civilian nuclear energy cooperation (Squassoni, 2005).⁸ Although many political analysts suggest that the US and India’s efforts to promote nuclear energy cooperation was to counterbalance China, these partnerships were justified by their official administrations in the context of a terrorist insecurity-related neo-liberal world order (Joint Press Briefing, 2005). Thereafter followed numerous conversations between their heads of states and resulted in the signing of the India–US Civilian Nuclear Cooperation in October 2008.⁹ Despite domestic political opposition to this deal,¹⁰ the deal was passed by a bipartisan of majorities in both houses of the US Congress and led to a warming of India–US nuclear relations.

The current Obama administration stands for ‘change’ in US domestic politics. Related to its global security agenda, this concept of change nonetheless harped on the vulnerability of US national insecurity, the location of the 9/11-related ‘enemy’ in this agenda, and the need of a comprehensive strategy for the US that needs to ‘marshal international support … to defeat an enemy that heeds no borders’ (Council on Foreign Relations, 2009a: para. 11). While the Obama administration’s views are also considerate of the role of Pakistan in combating this terror (which has also led some US policy analysts such as the Research and Development Corporation (RAND) to suggest that the US should follow a Pak-Af, rather than an Af-Pak, approach in its war on terror), the strategic significance of India remained acute for the US under Obama. In fact, drawing from the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, known as India’s 9/11, President Obama emphasized the mutual ‘terrorist’ insecurities of the US and India, and the continued neo-liberal framework of strategic interdependence between the US and India (CNN, 2009). It identified Indo–US cooperation to advance global security and counter-terrorism and also emphasized non-military areas of cooperation on green partnerships, economic trade, education, health, and collaborating to politically stabilize South Asia (CNN, 2009). India, concurrently under the second term of PM Singh, continued to reciprocate to the ongoing neo-liberal framework of Indo–US cooperation (Council on Foreign Relations, 2009b). Yet the overall framework of India–US strategic cooperation seems to be somewhat tainted following President Obama’s Prague speech in April 2009 which stressed global disarmament; re-opening of CTBT negotiations at the United Nations by May 2010; and the US Nuclear Posture Review Debate (The White House, 2009a). These developments politically debated by Indian security analysts and certain political parties on grounds of nuclear-apartheid have mired political tensions in contemporary India–US nuclear dialogue (Cheodon, 2010).

In the subsequent sections, I delineate these post-9/11 nuclear discourses of India and the US. I analyse from a feminist angle how what appears un-problematically as neutral nuclear discourses of strategic partnerships between two states for purposes of common security interests are underpinned by deeper gendered tensions, and how these gendered nuclear discourses of India and the US, interacting at (and between) their Western and non-Western locations, have fixed meanings to actors’ identities and insecurities to produce globalized masculinities, orientalist and ‘internally’ orientalist forms of othering in US–India’s nuclear relations.

Globalized Masculinities in India–US Nuclear Discourses

As mentioned earlier, 9/11, which unfurled the US national security agenda in search for ‘terror’ located in Afghanistan, initiated a series of nuclear-technology collaborations between India and the US. President Bush immediately after 9/11 re-enforced his administration’s ongoing neo-liberal dialogue with India by emphasizing ‘invest[ing] time and resource [into] building strong relations with India’ (National Security Strategy, 2002). Likewise, US Ambassador to India, Blackwill, reassured this collaborative gesture in the context of this existing neo-liberal economic order (United States, Department of Defence, 2003), and US Secretary of State, Rice, used the neo-liberal logic to provide her blessings on the successful implementation of the Indo–US civilian nuclear energy cooperation. In a neo-liberal tone, she noted that, this initiative will help India meet its growing energy needs, enhance cooperation on energy security and non-proliferation, and increase economic investment opportunities (Rice, 2006). President Obama too continues to applaud India–US collaborative partnerships as ‘one of the defining partnerships in the 21st century’ (CNN, 2009: para. 4). Read from the feminist IR premise that masculinity is a ‘gendered’ phenomenon, I argue that these neo-liberal discourses of the US represent a gendered identity of the US/self which, not entirely a disjuncture from its political masculinity of the pre- 9/11 years, gets fore-grounded after 9/11 in a neo-liberal context. Articulated within a value-neutral world order this masculinity, which I term as a globalized masculinity, sustains a militant form of nuclear interdependence with the Indian state. This globalized masculinity, I argue, is evidenced in the statement by US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, Douglas Faith, in August 2003 (in a meeting with India’s then Defence Secretary, Ajay Prasad):

The strategic relationship in the world has changed dramatically in recent years. Global terrorism, state sponsors of terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are the key threats to international peace and security. The US and India are drawn together in an effort to deal with these new circumstances. As a result President Bush and Prime Minister Vajpayee have re-defined the US–India relationship: democracy, common principles, and shared interest are the foundation of our new strategic partnership. (United States Department of Defence, 2003: para. 1)

Likewise, as claimed by US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicolas Burns:

We share an abundance of political, economic, and military interests with India today. Our open societies face similar threats from terrorism … Our market-based economies embrace trade and commerce as engines of prosperity … There is a tremendous strategic upside to our growing engagement with India. (Burns, 2007: para. 2)

Following the feminist IR claim that masculinity as a gendered identity is about structuring relations of power, I argue that the meanings and characteristics associated with the US globalized masculinity is a gendered phenomenon. As a gendered phenomenon, this globalized masculinity permeates, dominates and interweaves notions of Hobbessian anarchy and neo-liberal dialogue to sustain an institutionalized, power-laden, and militant form of nuclear dialogue and responsibility in international relations. In this militaristic connection between anarchy, nuclear weapons for security, and the state of neo-liberal interdependence, the US’s globalized masculinity constitutes ‘good, rational, and responsible’ thinking that sustains the modernist logic of infusing technology to India but also reassures for itself a global policing role in South Asia (through the neo-liberal pretext of maintaining democratic goodwill and nuclear collaboration with India).

Globalized masculinities, as mentioned earlier, given their existence in a neo-liberal context are found in both Western and non-Western locations. Accordingly, I contend that, in the post-9/11 discourses of the Indian state, one finds a reflection of a globalized masculinity of the Indian/self. Much like the US, this globalized masculinity of the Indian/self is also projected via neo-liberal assumptions of strategic interdependence between India and the US in the context of common security interests. Accordingly, PM Vajpayee re-asserted the ‘synergies and complementarities’ of defence collaborations between India and the US (V. Bush, 2001); S. B. Mukherjee (India’s Minister of State in the Department of Space), described India–US technology collaborations as mutually beneficial cooperation in the area of nuclear power (Saran, 2005; Shahin, 2003); and India’s External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, described the Indo–US civilian nuclear deal (2008) as ‘vital to sustain our [India’s] growth rate, [and that] nuclear power will directly boost India’s growth rate’ (Embassy of India, 2008: para. 15). Likewise, PM Singh, in an exclusive interview with Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) correspondent Charlie Rose, hailed the Indo–US nuclear collaboration with a neo-liberal mind-set. As he claimed, this ‘partnership’ represents ‘[a] new India which realizes its destiny in the framework of an open society … one billion people [are] trying to seek their social and economic salvation in the framework of a democracy, in the framework of an open economy’ (Singh, 2006: para. 15).

This masculinity of the Indian state, albeit influenced owing to its own domestic norms of economic liberalization since 1989, is explicitly globalized after 9/11, in the sense that the Indian state strives explicitly and tenuously to become a ‘new’, assertive, and global India in cooperation with the US (Singh, 2006). In this context, I must mention that India’s masculinist efforts to catch up in its nuclear relations with the West are perhaps not anything new in Indian politics. Yet the fact that India’s rise to modernity was situated with an anti-US sentiment becomes unique in the post-9/11 context in enabling India’s version of nuclear modernity to become more globalized like the US. Noting ‘changes in the global economic and political structures and the growing interdependence among nations’, PM Singh claimed that this change ‘offer[s] us [India and US] a unique opportunity to … establish a strategic partnership of global dimension’ (Council on Foreign Relations, 2009b: para. 34). Furthermore, this globalized masculinity of India like the US is also militant, albeit in a regional sense, given that it engages with the US to fight a ‘terrorist’ danger lurking in the South Asian region. PM Singh thus continues to stress the ‘terror-oriented’ significance of Indo–US nuclear cooperation:

There is a growing convergence in our national interests, both within the bilateral framework and on regional and global issues … If we are to effectively tackle the multiple [terrorist] challenges that confront the world, India and the United States … must work together. … The Indo–US partnership can contribute to an orderly transition to the new order and be an important factor for global peace and stability. (Council on Foreign Relations, 2009b: para. 34, 25, 39)

Yet given the hierarchical locations of India and the US, their shared notions of globalized masculinities are also fraught with tensions between a US/Western and an Indian/post-colonial self. In the Indian context, this tension is expressed in a more ‘hybrid’ form of globalized masculinity of the Indian state: this hybrid form of India’s globalized masculinity is enthusiastically engaged in a dialogue with the US. Yet its post-colonial location and power relation to the US is suspect of such neo-liberal nuclear engagements. This hybrid form of India’s globalized masculinity is evidenced in certain sectors of Indian politics, whereby influential members of Indian politics such as Yashwant Sinha (NDA’s Finance Affairs Minister), have expressed reservations about the bourgeoning Indo–US alliance. They have claimed that ‘The US interest in our relationship is like the interest of a friend. … That is where it stops. There is no other role for any [thing more]’ (Sinha, 2003). In the next section, I explore how the globalized masculinities of India and the US sustain a discursive orientalism in their nuclear relations.

Orientalist Masculinities in Indo–US Nuclear Discourses

Following Said’s (1978) claim that knowledge production in international politics is a form of ‘power-knowledge’ nexus where the non-West is projected through the epistemologically guided moral-political admonishments of the West, this section explores how these neo-liberal nuclear discourses of the US, as epistemologically guided discursive products of the US, as a Western state, draw on the concept of liberal democracy to sustain an orientalist politics of othering in India–US nuclear relations after 9/11.

A post-colonial feminist scrutiny of US neo-liberal discourses after 9/11 reveal that these discourses incorporate the notion of cooperation among liberal democratic states in justifying Indo–US nuclear collaborations. In these discourses, which refer to the notion of ‘enlightened democracies’ as keepers of global peace (Department of State, 2002), India is often referenced as a ‘democratic’ partner of the US in its war on terror. This connection between India and the US as democracies, their mutual anti-terrorist insecurities, and their need of strategic interdependence is echoed in a plethora of US discourses. Immediately after 9/11, US Ambassador to India, Blackwill promoting the necessity of Indo–US nuclear collaborations, draws on the logic of democracy to sustain nuclear technology collaborations between India and US. As he notes:

Both India and the United States share a common vital national interest in restraining the further proliferation of weapons of mass and their means of delivery … [b]oth countries face a significant risk … confronting either terrorists or rogue states armed with such WMD capabilities … Thus strong US–India relations are rooted not simply in a crucial commonality of democratic governance … but also the fundamental congruence of US and Indian vital national [security] interests. (Department of State, 2002: para. 9)

Likewise, Rice (2006: para. 4) supported Indo–US full civilian nuclear energy cooperation by claiming that this represents ‘shared vision[s] [of] the world’s oldest and largest democracies [to] accomplish great things in the new century’. Burns (2007: para. 1) claims that:

As we Americans consider our future role in the world, the rise of a democratic and increasingly powerful India represents a singularly positive opportunity to advance our global interests … There is a tremendous strategic upside to our growing engagement with India.

Similarly, President Obama claims that India and the US, with a ‘shared belief in democracy, liberty, pluralism, and religious tolerance’, can work to ‘build a future of security and prosperity for all nations … Both can help to prevent nuclear proliferation, fight terror’ (CNN, 2009: para. 3).

Yet analysed from a post-colonial feminist lens, these neo-liberal nuclear discourses of the US with a ‘democratic’ India are simultaneously tarnished by a fear of irresponsibility that originates from India as a post-colonial actor. Accordingly, several members of the Bush administration have cautioned that ‘the US … [ought] to balance’ its cooperation and trade with India ‘in its sensitive technology with concern about proliferation and security’ (Powell, 2003: para. 3). As for instance Graham (2003) has identified India (along with Israel and Pakistan) as ‘existing axis of proliferation’, who are forging ahead in their own rights in building new generations of nuclear proliferation. Additionally, Ed Markey (Democratic Congressmen) and Strobe Talbott (Ex-Deputy Secretary of State under the Clinton administration) have cautioned that ‘there remains profound and persistent concerns’ about Indo–US global partnership. Talbott claims:

the consequence of the deal will be to weaken the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] which is already under strain. It will do so because it essentially grants India an exception under the NPT, and there are going to be other countries that will want similar exceptions. (Talbott, 2006: para. 1, 2)

While expressing concerns about these post-colonial nations including India, muted in these US discourses is the fact that the original intent of the NPT – that is, ‘the five nuclear weapons states, would, overtime, reduce – perhaps even someday eliminate – their own nuclear arsenal’ – was not respected by the P-5 states. In fact, by the end of the Bush administration, US politics expressed concern that ‘the world is entering into “new nuclear era” more dangerous than before, with nuclear know-how proliferation and non-state terrorist groups seeking to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction’ (Inderfurth, 2008: 261). Former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger and other prominent politicians spoke of the emergence of nuclear terrorism among ‘rogue’ states given that ‘the spread of technology – especially peaceful nuclear energy [among states] … has multiplied the[ir] feasibility of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability’(Kissinger, 2009: para. 7). This coincided with President Obama’s Prague speech (April 2009) which identified the global nuclear disarmament agenda as a high priority of his administration (The White House, 2009a).

Seen through my post-colonial feminist lens, these sceptical discourses of the US vis-à-vis India, albeit occurring in the context of the recent Indo–US civilian nuclear cooperation, might well be interpreted as sustaining US orientalist insecurities via-à-vis India. I contend that these cautious discourses of the US vis-à-vis India as a ‘good’, but not a very good/reliable actor represent US nuclear orientalism in Indo–US nuclear relations after 9/11. However, in contrast to its more explicit nuclear orientalism vis-à-vis India before 9/11 (Das, 1999), US discourses of nuclear orientalism after 9/11 are more nuanced given that they are peppered amongst otherwise highly-supported discourses of Indo–US collaborations. In these more nuanced projections of the US’s nuclear orientalism, the US constitutes a hegemonic Western player that hedges around the implications of democracy, responsibility, and trustworthiness to establish commonalities with India, and yet infantalizes India. To this extent, I argue that the US’s nuclear orientalism is also representative of an orientalist-gendered phenomenon; that is, an orientalist-masculinity (Prakash, 1995), which entails forceful police-like comments to oversee Indo–US collaborations. Referring to the Indo–US global partnership agreements of 2005, Nicholas Burns (a supporter of Indo–US nuclear collaborations) claims that ‘this agreement … can be verified and will be verified’, to ensure that India will not divert US provided peaceful nuclear technology for nuclear weapons uses (Burns, 2005: para. 2). Likewise, asserting its orientalist masculinity in seeking to promote and supervise Indo–US nuclear technology collaborations, US official discourses claims that the US will ‘work cooperatively to ensure that every state with nuclear weapons or weapons-usable materials – even those that remain outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty like India and Pakistan’ become a part of this global non-proliferation agenda (Council on Foreign Relations, 2009a). Viewed from my post-colonial feminist IR angle, I contend that these US nuclear discourses constitute hegemonic, orientalist, masculinist efforts by the US to follow a two-pronged policy in terms of Indo–US nuclear interdependence: first, to sustain its self-servicing policing missions of combating terrorism and proliferation insecurities; and, second, using, controlling, and infantilizing India as a post-colonial nation in sustaining its policing mission in the South Asian region. I argue that these dynamics of US orientalist masculinity have reaffirmed India’s strive to a newer form of regional-hegemonic masculinity manifested after 9/11 – which I document in the final section of this article.

Regional-Hegemonic Masculinity and ‘Internal’ Orientalism in India’s Nuclear Discourses

Following Said’s (1978) Orientalism, a critical reading of India’s post-9/11 neo-liberal nuclear discourses show how these discourses of the Indian state have tenuously drawn on the notions of democratic/undemocratic identity formations vis-à-vis Pakistan to sustain India’s nuclear discourses. The underlying pillar of these discourses is a ‘we’ focus on India and the US as liberal democratic states that need to engage through neo-liberal nuclear-technology collaborations to fight a terrorist insecurity lurking in the South Asian region. Indeed, democracy has been an important commonality between Indo–US political relations (Kux, 1985). Yet this stress on democracy becomes acute in the post-9/11 period with a ‘we’ focus on democratic India and the US. This focus is evidenced in a plethora of discourses of Indian politicians to maintain mutual security-related missions of India and the US: PM Vajpayee immediately after 9/11, stressing democracy as a common political factor between India and the US, claimed, ‘I assured President Bush of India’s complete support in this [i.e. war on terror]. As multi-religious, pluralist democracies, we should clearly spread the message … against terrorism’ (V. Bush, 2001: para. 5). To this extent, he continued:

We [India and the US] as democratic states have forwarded our dialogue architecture … of defence collaborations. … The joint working group on counterterrorism has made progress. And we have agreed to launch a joint cyber-terrorism initiative … Both of us agree that synergies and complementarities between our two countries should be more fully exploited. (V. Bush, 2001: para. 4).

This linkage between a ‘terror’ lurking in South Asia and neo-liberal nuclear collaborations between ‘democracies’ to fight this terror is also reiterated by India’s Ambassador to the US, R. Sen. In his words:

I see this [i.e. Indo–US cooperation] not only in a bilateral context, but in the context of the world. How do we make the world a safe and a better place? … We have taken an India–US initiative on democracy, which is to help build capacity in countries in transition to democracy … It is not only that democracies do not go to war with each other … [but] also democracy is the ultimate anti-dote to terrorism. (Sen, 2005: 5)

Following the feminist IR claim that masculinity as a gendered phenomenon is about structuring gendered and hierarchical relations of power, I claim that these pro-democratic/pro-US sentiments underpinning India’s nuclear discourses are emblematic of a form of Indian masculinity, which I term as India’s regional-hegemonic masculinity, that is felt acutely in India’s post-9/11 nuclear security discourses. In this context, however, I must mention that this regional-hegemonic masculinity of the Indian state is perhaps not something entirely new: this is because a political masculinity and militancy has traditionally underpinned the Indian state (that India’s political analysts see as an expression of India’s regional hegemony) and has adversely affected India’s political relations with its neighbours – namely Pakistan. To this extent, a significant political/cultural othering of Pakistan has also existed in India’s nuclear security discourses. Yet the uniqueness of India’s post-9/11 regional-hegemonic masculinity lies in the manner in which the Indian state’s masculinity through its nuclear discourses explicitly befriends the US to articulate India’s identity as a post-colonial democratic responsible state. Following Connell’s (1995) claim that hegemonic masculinity produces multiple configurations of gender practices which controls a hierarchy of masculinities at Western/local levels, I suggest that India’s regional-hegemonic masculinity is a bi-product of the US’s nuclear orientalism and orientalist masculinity vis-à-vis the Indian state: this is evidenced in the constant references of the Indian state of a growing ‘democratic’ nexus and ‘national convergence’ between India–US national interests, where ‘to effectively tackle the multiple challenges that confront the world, India and the United States … must work together’ (Council on Foreign Relations, 2009b: para. 35). In this sense, I suggest that India’s regional hegemonic masculinity as a subordinate masculinity not only represents the tensions of hierarchical gendered ordering of states in international relations; but, in an historically unprecedented manner, tries to model its post-colonial identity by collaborating with the hierarchically situated US. Thus in some ways India’s regional masculinity is also related to India’s globalized masculinity (as discussed earlier) in so far as both support India’s neo-liberal interdependence with the US. I further argue that India’s regional-hegemonic masculinity contains ‘internally’ orientalist implications vis-à-vis the Pakistani state.

Following Said’s (1978) Orientalism, one finds that the post-9/11 regional-hegemonic masculinist discourses of the Indian state make ‘explicit’ references to India’s democracy, multi-religious polity, and pluralism as commonalities between India and the US, and its lack thereof in other(s) – that is, Pakistan – to sustain India–US nuclear collaborations (V. Bush, 2001; Council on Foreign Relations, 2009b). India’s Ambassador to the US, Sen, explicitly brings Pakistan in this equation locating it vis-à-vis the democratic nexus of India and the US. He states:

It is not only that democracies do not go to war with each other … [but] also democracy is the ultimate anti-dote to terrorism … All these [i.e. terrorism] are disapproved in India. [The] fact that … we don’t have one Indian, not one Indian, in any international terrorist movement … speaks for itself. In fact, by our very existence, as an incredibly diverse country in terms of religions, languages, ethnicity etc. … we have shown that democracy and development not only go hand in hand but in fact are inextricably inter-linked. (Sen, 2005: 5)

In fact, Sen in the rest of his speech mentions how Indo–US joint efforts at non-proliferation, in which ‘the two are now partners’, are in fact related to ‘the world’s biggest [sources] of proliferation … [which] are in our [India’s] immediate neighbourhood’, and is also linked to ‘international terrorism’. In his words:

International terrorism. Here again we [India and the US] have a vital stake, and some interests very much in common. And of course the worst case scenario which both our countries are worried about intensely … is, the danger of linkage between weapons of mass destruction and terrorist groups. (Sen, 2005: 5–6)

From a national security perspective, I do not belittle India’s concerns from terrorism and non-proliferation, particularly in recent years. In fact, India’s insecurities from Pakistan after 9/11 have aggravated given that India became the target of potential terrorist attacks by Pakistan-backed terrorist groups such as Laskar-e-Taiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) in Srinagar (11 October 2001), at the Parliament House at New Delhi (13 December 2001), and on an army camp at Jammu and Kashmir (12 May 2002). Yet from a post-colonial feminist perspective that is attentive to the dynamics of orientalism in nuclear security issues, it becomes interesting to see how India (like the US) also takes recourse to certain orientalist epistemological claims and assumptions about the self (India), its other (Pakistan), and its ‘others’’ identities, political beliefs, and practices – to justify through its nuclear discourses an ‘internally’ orientalist politics of identity-making of Pakistan. In these discourses, India’s democratic identity and quest for global peace stereotypes Pakistan (which is an antinomy to India’s democracy, pluralism, and secularism). In this effort, PM Singh addresses India’s zero tolerance policy on the rising terrorism in South Asia with special mention of Pakistan (BBC, 2006). He asks the US, as well as the international community, to ‘isolate and condemn terrorism, wherever they attack, whatever their cause, and which ever country or group provides them sustenance and support’ (Singh, 2006: para. 25). Likewise, India’s External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, carefully interweaves globalization and India’s strategic insecurity concerns from its ‘neighbourhood’. He claims:

Globalization today provides opportunities to countries that are willing to draw benefits from it … India’s primary concern today is maintaining the tempo of economic growth and bringing its benefits directly to its people … It is, therefore, natural that we should seek to diffuse crises in our immediate neighbourhood … Many of the countries in our region, including Afghanistan, Pakistan … are going through a difficult period of transition [and] it is in our national interest that these countries return to the path of democracy. (Embassy of India, 2008: para. 16)

I argue that such remarks carry ‘internally’ orientalist assumptions that India as a regional democratic player must ‘teach’ the non-democrats (such as Pakistan) the political way to live. This ‘teaching lesson’ for non-democratic others became evidenced in PM Singh’s comment that ‘I do believe that the future of civilization belongs to those who would lay emphasis on … multiculturalism, respect for diversity … if we succeed in doing all this in the framework of a democratic polity, I believe a large part of humanity will draw appropriate lessons from it’ (Singh, 2006: para. 22). Such ‘internally’ orientalist assumptions of the Indian state vis-à-vis Pakistan ignore the vibrant movements within Pakistan – where progressives and liberals have for long continued to demand a democratic Pakistan.

Yet India’s regional-hegemonic masculinity does not overtly replicate Western orientalism. Instead, Indian masculinity is fragmented, which is evidenced in the fact that the official Indian support in collaborating with the US in nuclear technology is ridden with domestic opposition. Thus while influential members of India’s defence community, such as K. Subrahmanyan, along with PM Singh, believe that increased Indo–US security ties ‘make sense’ (Inderfurth, 2008), others – namely the defence analysts of India’s think tank, Institute of Defence and Strategic Analysis (IDSA), academics at the famous Indian university, JNU, New Delhi, and political parties such as the BJP and the CPI(M) – are sceptical about India–US nuclear collaborations (Cheodon, 2010). In fact, India’s nuclear apartheid sentiments have become more acute following President Obama’s Prague speech, wherein these sentiments in India are not very sanguine about the US goal of global disarmament. This is because they allege that the US Nuclear Posture Doctrine that endorses many aspects of President Obama’s disarmament is not very enthusiastic about reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US national security. In a more nuanced way, the defence analysts of the IDSA, who otherwise agree with the Indian state officials on India–US nuclear collaborations, have, like India’s nationalist sceptics, also cautioned as to how such collaborations be played out given the re-opening of negotiations on the CTBT at the United Nations in May 2010. These myriads of opposing sentiments underpinning India’s nuclear discourses are emblematic of a hybrid nature of India’s masculinist self which, on the one hand is pro-US and, on the other, aware of its subordinate post-colonial self. Yet to maintain the post-colonial ‘catch-up’ game of Western modernity, this hybrid nature of the Indian state links issues of globalization, masculinity, and post-colonial sentiments to produce complex identities such as regional-hegemonic masculinities and ‘others’ through India’s nuclear security discourses.

Nuclear Discourses, Masculinities, and Orientalism(s): Notes for International Relations

In this article I have explored how the post-9/11 neo-liberal political climate in Indo–US relations as a value-neutral environment has served as the context within which are articulated masculinist forms of nuclear discourses in IR. To this extent, I have drawn from the broader feminist IR premises that ‘masculinity’ is a gendered phenomenon to explore the linkages between masculinities and nuclear weapons in India–US nuclear security discourses. Yet given the hierarchical location of India and the US in international relations, I have enriched the feminist IR premise with a post-colonial feminist lens by exploring how issues of masculinities, orientalisms, and ‘internal’ orientalisms have played out in context-specific ways in India–US neo-liberal nuclear discourses after 9/11.

In this effort, my article has not tried to critique neo-liberalism as a theoretical framework in IR. Rather, my post-colonial feminist line of inquiry has sought to tease out some of the deeper masculinist, orientalist, and ‘internal’ orientalist underpinnings in US-India’s nuclear discourses in the post-9/11 context. In this context, my article has made three specific but inter-related contributions: first, in terms of masculinity, I have analysed how a form of globalized masculinity underpins the neo-liberal nuclear discourses of India and the US which, as a bi-product of their globalized geo-strategic interdependence supports globalized, militant, and masculinist forms of identities in their nuclear relations. Yet I have also demonstrated how their shared notions of globalized masculinities are also fraught with tensions between the US (as a Western) and India (as a post-colonial self). Second, I have explored how the post-9/11 neo-liberal nuclear discourses of the US symbolize an orientalist discursive politics of identity-making vis-à-vis India as a non-Western state and how these orientalist discourses of the US – representative of the US’s orientalist masculinity – reaffirms India’s strive to a regional-hegemonic masculinist self. Finally, I have interrogated how India’s regional-hegemonic masculinity underpinning its post-9/11 nuclear discourses that is formed in interaction with (and in opposition to) the US’s orientalist masculinity facilitates a discursive process of ‘internal’ othering of Pakistan in India’s post-9/11 nuclear discourses.

In making these contributions, my article has sought to show how political contexts impact new feminist understandings of gendered discourses and representations of security as fluid, context-specific, and fragmented formations, rather than static universal categories. Overall, I have suggested that the compulsions of post-9/11 politics, defined politically as a neo-liberal context in international relations, needs attention as to how this context sustains gendered discourses and representations of identity-making and security in inter-state relations. In analysing these shifts in IR, I see this article as an ongoing effort with similar feminist endeavours, to draw together feminist research, analyses, and campaigns as to how gendered identity, masculinity, and orientalist identity politics is mobilized in nuclear security discourses. Particularly, keeping in mind their orientalist dynamics involving post-colonial entities, I suggest that feminist IR continue to engage with post-colonial feminist IR perspectives to comprehend the more nuanced yet inter-connected dynamics of gendered, masculinist, and orientalist forms of identity politics between Western and post-colonial states in international relations.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Runa Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Duluth. Her current research focuses on strategic culture and international relations, South Asia–US nuclear security relations, and feminist IR/peace movements. She has published articles in Third World Quarterly; International Feminist Journal of Politics; European Journal of Women’s Studies; Contemporary Politics; International Politics; Asian Journal of Political Science; International Studies Review, and many others.

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