Top US diplomat Condoleezza Rice has invoked the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to spell out the role Washington seeks to assign to India in its vision, perspective and conduct of America-centric global strategic and foreign policy affairs. On Thursday she told her Indian audience at a meeting of the US-India Business Council that the NAM had become irrelevant and lost its meaning in the post-Cold War era. Washington would care less if a large number of the over a hundred NAM members continued their loyalty to the movement. But a country like India is an exception as it has started figuring prominently in the US strategic map for the 21st Century. A direct off-shoot of Washington’s changing priorities vis-à-vis India is the Bush Administration’s willingness to grant Delhi the status of a civil nuclear energy cooperation partner. In return, Rice, his Secretary of State, wants India to shed its inhibitions about playing an active role as America’s global strategic partner.

Rice, in reality, is not really asking Delhi to junk the non-aligned movement. Of course, questions about its relevance in the post-Cold War era have been raised and debated within the movement itself, against the backdrop of the collapse of the Cold War era bi-polar world order. The non-aligned movement was born out of the political compulsions the newly independent countries faced in the wake of the escalation of Cold War tensions between the United States and the then Soviet Union. It has been a divisive debate that has not reached any conclusion even ahead of last September’s NAM summit in Havana.

It would have been alright if Rice was just joining the debate. There is no mistaking that she expects much more from India  and, in fact, very generally spoke about it as well. The United States wants India to align with it and play a bold role in propagating the system and values of freedom and democracy. It is not as though India is required to raise the banner of democracy in all and sundry countries run by dictators of various hues. Many of them, as has always been, are staunch American allies. Washington’s democracy prescription is confined to such countries as China, Iran and Cuba. Delhi may continue to debate the relevance of NAM but the inherent ‘regime change’ that is the US goal in third countries, by way of prescribing democratic political order is an eminently avoidable course for India. This is fraught with the risks of triggering a 21st Century Cold War.