The Timing of Eric Holder's Resignation

The resignation of United States Attorney General Eric Holder just before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to be a guest of the White House can be read either as a move to close the chapter on the Khobragade affair – or not, depending on his replacement.

Holder’s departure will go beyond the mere verbal expressions of regret that have emerged from Washington about the incomprehensibly severe and degrading treatment of India’s Deputy Consul General in New York last December: on a charge of exaggerating her maid’s income on an official form she was arrested in front of her child’s school, handcuffed and strip searched.

It could allow a revival of warmer relations.

However, if Holder is replaced by Preet Bharara, the US Attorney in New York who Indians perceive as primarily responsible for what happened, the resignation would take on an entirely different color. (Bharara himself has said in a speech at Harvard that the initiative came from the State Department.)

No matter what the reality, if a Bharara nomination is announced when Modi is in Washington it will be an undeniable insult and the consequences could be long term and disastrous, especially if it pushes India into a joint Russian-Chinese effort to end America’s global dominance by gutting the dollar as the international reserve currency.

A coordinated move in Eurasia to reduce holdings of the US$ -- a move often touted as desirable by people of a particular political color -- will undoubtedly cascade into an economic tsunami that will leave no country untouched.

As such a gargantuan collapse will set off a no-holds-barred global power struggle it would most probably include major terrorist attacks and the uncontrolled spread of ebola; it could be a cataclysm worse than any world war.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Khobragade: the Essential Follow-Up

There are two essential steps the Indian government must take in the wake of the entirely unnecessary crisis over the harsh treatment of Devyani Khobragade by the US Attorney in New York.

One is to make clear to United States authorities that the easiest way to normalize bilateral relations is to have Preet Bharara, the US Attorney who precipitated the crisis for entirely self-serving ends, tender a formal apology to Ms. Khobragade.

He should apologize for taking action that violated the full diplomatic immunity she had as a member of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. The US State Department acknowledged that status  ex post facto by giving her a G-1 visa without question.

Bharara also owes an apology to the court hearing the case: in a formal statement explaining why Khobragade could not be prosecuted, Bharara said she had already left the country. She was still in New York at the time.

Of course, he also has the option of having US Marshalls arrest him in public on a charge of lying to a judge, strip/cavity search him routinely, and hold him in a cell with drug addicts and common criminals. But perhaps he won't go to those extremes; after all, he's not a Dalit woman. 

The second essential follow-up measure by the Indian government must be the creation of an ancillary support service to provide household help to our diplomats serving abroad.

The service should ensure that all helpers diplomats take abroad receive salaries and have working conditions comparable to their local peers.

This should be done not merely to avoid future embarrassments but as a security measure.  

Preet Bharara's Folly

New York Attorney Preet Bharara’s political ambition is the only satisfactory explanation for why American law enforcement officials chose to publicly humiliate Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade when arresting her for alleged visa fraud on 12 December in New York.

He clearly has such ambition. The second paragraph on the Home page of his office reads:

“Throughout its history, this Office has distinguished itself as one of the nation's premier legal institutions, successfully prosecuting groundbreaking and historic cases. Those who have served in the Southern District include lawyers who have gone on to become United States Senators, Congressmen, Mayors of New York City, Governor of New York, Secretary of War, Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of State, Attorney General of the United States, United States Supreme Court Justice, Ambassadors and federal judges, as well as well-respected members of prominent private law firms.”

If India-born Bharara is to ascend to a political post, especially an elected one, he must establish solidly that his only loyalty is to the United States, that his ethnicity and national origin are immaterial.

Bharara has done that with his aggressive pursuit of Devyani for allegedly forging documents inflating the remuneration of her maid. India’s Deputy Consul-General was arrested in front of her child’s school, made to strip at a police station, “cavity searched,” and held in a cell with common criminals. 

But in achieving a personal public relations objective the ambitious New York Attorney might have shot himself in the political foot and done a major disservice to the United States.

The diplomatic incident he created will have far-reaching negative effects on Indo-American relations at a time when the two countries are forging a critically important alliance to safeguard the future of democracy in a world that could easily tip into totalitarianism.

By not moving quietly to have Devyani declared persona non grata – action specifically designed for such situations – he has unnecessarily complicated President Obama’s single most important strategic initiative in foreign affairs, the “pivot to Asia.”

The fact that he did not take into account the repercussions of humiliating an Indian diplomat so brutally when there were a range of other options highlights not Bharara’s singular loyalty to the United States but to his own ambition.