Indian diplomats and White House representative tell us that two leaders will discuss issues ranging from environment to accelerating the completion of a landmark civilian nuclear deal signed last year with Bush administration. It is rather interesting that Mr. Singh will be in Washington a week after President Obama in Beijing pledged to strengthen ties with China.

It is no secret that America views India as a countervailing force against rising China. America encourages India’s increasing involvement in Afghanistan, and calculates that Indian and American interests coincide in seeking to develop pipelines that would draw central Asia’s oil reserves toward the Indian Ocean.

Analysts argue that the current Indo-US relationship is good, but lacks a central defining issue, such as the civilian nuclear deal, that shaped the relationship during the presidency of George Bush.

Singh and Obama will try to regain some of the momentum back- with possibly more Indian involvement in Afghanistan.  India has been critical of the Obama administrations Afghan strategy and claims it’s focus on Pakistan comes at the expense of other regional stakeholders such as India. India and the US have been concerned with China’s engagement in Afghanistan as well.

Indian policy makers viewed the Afghan war a godsend – an opportunity to reverse Pakistan’s increased influence in Afghanistan and more importantly to advance its geopolitical interests in oil-rich central Asia. It was based on these two key fundamentals that India decided to support the US invasion of Afghanistan. India facilitated contact with  Northern Alliance and provided intelligence from ground.

Just like America had showered Pakistan with ‘blessings’, Bush administration also expanded ties with India for being it’s eyes and ears on Afghan soil. This romance developed so rapidly that the US declared its eagerness to assist India in becoming a “world power.”  For the services rendered to the ‘new masters,’ India received a unique status within the world nuclear regulatory regime – despite being a non signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But India has been sensitive to Washington’s perceived growing ties with China and Pakistan. During his presidential campaign, Obama had committed to addressing regional issues including Kashmir.

India has also complained abut Obama administrations’ stance on a United Nations Security Council resolution calling on all nations to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). India has refused to sign the CTBT on the grounds that it could imperil the development of India’s “strategic deterrent,” i.e. its nuclear weapons arsenal.

This week Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a joint statement pledging to “promote peace, stability and development” in south Asia. Indian Foreign Ministry fired back: “The Government of India is committed to resolving all outstanding issues with Pakistan through a peaceful bilateral dialogue in accordance with the Simla Agreement. A third country role cannot be envisaged.”

India has been inserting itself in Afghanistan in past years. But India is not completely behind Karzai government either- Hamid Karzai believes a negotiated solution of Afghan problem is possible. He is intent on persuading sections of the Taliban to enter into peace negotiations and ultimately incorporating them into Afghanistan’s government. Indian officials and media commentators have repeatedly declared that there is no such thing as “good Taliban.”  Indians fear that Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan will grow significantly in the event of a rapprochement with elements hitherto associated with the Taliban.

Obama is likely to assure Singh that his country’s interest will be protected in Afghanistan.

Singh needs this assurance specially because General Stanley McChrystal in a confidential report submitted to the US President Barack Obama on August 30 wrote: “Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan, including significant development efforts and financial investment. In addition, the current Afghan government is perceived by Islamabad to be pro-Indian. While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India.”

Needless to say Indians did not fancy McChrystal’s recommendation.

The Indian government has invested more than $1.2 billion since 2001. Mr. Singh will want Obama to ensure that McChrystal’s reports lands in the trash and a guarantee Obama will facilitate India’s regional hegemonic role. From what I hear in Washington DC, it seems Singh will leave happy.

Indians were busy today (Friday) on the Hill to make progress on the civilian nuclear deal. America wants guarantees from New Delhi — that it won’t pass on its nuclear know-how. In other words- India will not proliferate but India refuses to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

During her recent visit to India Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed a deal allowing two US companies, General Electric and Westingouse, to build a pair of new nuclear power reactors at a cost of $10 billion. Before any contracts are signed, the US companies are asking the Indian parliament to pass legislation which would limit the companies’ liability in case of nuclear accidents.

Before this deal goes any further, Indian law needs to be modified to set limits on the liability assessed to American companies involved with any kind of nuclear development. Even in the United States, liability is limited to about $11 billion, whereas the damage caused by accidents at nuclear power plants are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. US companies want similar liability protections, and it remains to be seen whether the Indian parliament will satisfy those requests.

Under current international law, the nuclear industry, or rather, state-owned nuclear enterprises, operate under sovereign limitation. In other words, Russian and French nuclear reactors can protected by the built-in liability insurance provided by their respective governments, since they are publicly owned. However, Westinghouse and General Electric are not accorded this same security, as they are privately owned. In an analogous circumstance, during the US-Russia negotiations over the use of Cold War plutonium, including surplus plutonium from weapons in Russian reactors, the failure to arrive at a liability agreement was the major stumbling block in the execution of the deal.

The Convention on Supplementary Compensation is a UN convention responsible for limited liability, and its aim is essentially to deny fair compensation. Basically, the US wants India to sign and ratify this convention as a precondition of their participation in the deal. This is a topic that has not been the subject of the domestic debate as of yet, because there were bigger barriers the governments of India and the US government had to cross. Now that those obstacles have all but been bulldozed, this issue of liability protection is bound to be quite politically sensitive. The text of the defense agreement has not been made public, and chances are slim that it will be made public in its full form. Nor do we know, as of now, the future locations of the specific reactor sites.

Indians argue that that it will take at least three years before Agni-V becomes operational, since it will require four or five more tests, series production, and user-trials by the armed forces. Indians also claim that the 5,000-km strike range of Agni-V is trifling when compared to China’s DongFeng 31A missile, which can hit targets 11,200 km away. An unnamed official source quoted in Indian newspapers state: “China’s missile and nuclear arsenal is leagues ahead of India, capable as it is of hitting any city in India. We can never compete. Our entire focus is on building only credible minimum deterrence against China, not active offensive capabilities.”

I agree—India can never compete with China, and I don’t understand the logic of building “deterrence” when by its own admission India recognizes it is not in the same league as China. Of course there is always more than meets the eye. Agni-V will be mobile and can be moved closer to the Chinese border on short notice, bringing even China’s northern-most city, Habin, within the missile’s strike envelope.

India is also developing Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV) warheads for the Agni missiles. An MIRV payload is basically several nuclear warheads carried on a single missile, which can be programmed to hit different targets, independent of each other. In effect, this means that even ballistic missile defense systems can be overwhelmed by MIRVs.

Indians claim this is aligned with their nuclear doctrine, which says, “Nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage.”

The gravity of this doctrine can be accurately understood when you look at other news items in Indo-Sino relations last week.

Indians have been making a commotion about the Brahmaputra dam and China’s alleged involvement in Azad Kashmir. In November 2006 India and China agreed to establish an Expert Level Mechanism to discuss trans-border river issues in an institutional way. Three meetings have been held so far. The Chinese maintain that there are no plans to build any large scale diversion projects on the Brahmaputra River.

But Indians can’t seem to trust this statement or any other promises from China. Reports from New Delhi claim that the Indian government will “ascertain whether there are recent developments that suggest any change in the position conveyed to us by the government of China.”

When Indian premier Manmohan Singh met Chinese president Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the ASEM summit in Beijing, the two men devoted most of their time discussing the Brahmaputra.

And as if clashes over Agni-V and the Brahmaputra were not enough, Indians have been clamoring about Arunachal Pradesh and Azad Kashmir. India has been critical of China’s development activities in Azad Kashmir, and Indian external affairs ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash was quoted saying, “We hope that the Chinese side will take a long term view of the India-China relations, and cease such activities in areas illegally occupied by Pakistan.”

During a meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani last week, the Chinese president outlined a major project to upgrade the Karakoram highway, which connects the two countries overland, and coordinated Chinese help in the Neelam-Jhelum hydroelectric project in Kashmir. “Howsoever, the international situation may change. The people of China and Pakistan are always joined in hearts and hands,” Hu said at that time.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) also claimed that the State of Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. The statement was issued by a Ministry spokesman shortly after China expressed “strong” dissatisfaction over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh for electioneering.

I can’t keep myself from wondering: Why is India so angst-ridden?

Surely, it cannot be because China has expressed solidarity with Pakistan; after all, Pak-Sino relations reach back through six decades of trust. What is rather interesting—and must also be disconcerting to India— is Russia’s emergent ties with China. It was not long ago that India ditched Russia to draw nearer to the U.S. Until that point, ‘Hindu- Rossi bhai bhai’ was the most popular slogan in India. But things have changed. Both Chinese and Russian media have given extensive coverage to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to China on October 12-14, speaking highly of the trip and expressing optimism over the prospects of Russian-Chinese ties.

Last week China and Russia signed 12 agreements, whose total monetary value exceeds $4 billion. The premiers of each country convened to hold their fourteenth regular meeting in Beijing, which included a framework agreement on Russia’s export of natural gas to China, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on high-speed trains, and an agreement on mutual notification of ballistic missiles and launch of carrier rockets.

The burgeoning dynamics between China-Russia and China-Pakistan are unraveling India, and the New Delhi foreign ministry appears to be in a tail spin.