Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh began his visit to Japan today. The meeting between his representative party and three others — from Japan, Australia and America — was, last week, one subject in an interview conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun. Of interest is Singh's opening statement, in that he wished "to use [his] forthcoming visit to Japan to gain a better understanding of Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe's idea of closer cooperation among major democracies in the region." If the free world were to be judged on its toleration of interposing dictatorships it might successfully plead that for much of the last half-century it didn't have much of a choice; although the divergence between liberality and totalism is, today, neglected as a driver might ignore turns in the road.
Singh, for example, objected to the use of his country as an antecedent for the dictatorship just to the west, as in: If India has nuclear weapons, then why not Pakistan? The world, said Singh, "must make a distinction between an open, democratic and responsible state like India, from others who have pursued clandestine programs and indulged in proliferation." Paging A.Q. Khan; Mister Khan, please. India pesters democratic nations with customer service hirelings while Pakistan indirectly threatens them with an Islamofascist export — one that the unsteady autocrat, Pervez Musharraf, should, under the theory of diplomatic fantasticism, stably contain. Singh and, too, Abe, have been asking what it takes for a free state to defend itself. Being a charter member was constituent to world affairs when the democracies were nothing but.