If the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership is to advance common interests and not languish as “yet another historical curiosity embodying some vague potential,” both countries need to step up their game and take concrete steps to put the ballast back in the relationship.
This message alert comes from Ashley Tellis, one of the most perceptive experts on the India-U.S. bilateral, in a new report for the Carnegie Endowment.It is a timely reminder as President Barack Obama begins his second term and Washington is abuzz with reports of yet another peace plan for Afghanistan, this time written by Pakistan with U.S. guidance. India watches warily as Islamabad plugs in its pieces before US troops depart.
In “Opportunities Unbound,” Tellis examines the current state of Indo-U.S. relations, identifies the problems and recommends remedies. Tellis, who was the architect of the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal along with Robert Blackwill, former U.S. ambassador to India, understands well the foibles and feints of both India and the United States. He comes to the issues minus the impatience of some Washington experts. He neither bristles at nor bows to old orthodoxies but quietly demolishes the straw men erected periodically to argue that India just doesn’t cut the mustard as far as American expectations go.
Tellis reminds the critics that when Washington began looking at New Delhi anew during the first Bush Administration, highest on the twin strategic agenda was gaining a “favourable” balance of power in Asia. Cognizance of that fact must not be lost. If U.S. attention and consequently Indo-U.S. relations flag, it could have serious consequences for this “most important American objective in global politics, namely, maintaining a balance of power that favours freedom,” he writes in his report.
While the objective holds, the means of achieving it gets little thought in both capitals. While they delay, China’s assertions on sea and land disputes are multiplying, and tilting the Asian balance. The report brings the bilateral back to the basics, as it were, to the prime logic behind the transformation of Indo-U.S. ties – the rise of China and associated uncertainties. The idea was to balance the fast riser – China – not contain it, as the U.S. helped countries around China realise their “strategic potential,” without disturbing their growing economic ties with Beijing. The net effect would be “objective constraints that limit the misuse of Chinese power in Asia.”
To build this fence, India was key as the only other large country and one that was already trying to fend off the giant. India became central to US Asian policy after the 2005 nuclear deal, which sorted its “murky” status to bring it inside the global nuclear order. The agreement went a long way in quashing suspicions in Delhi about U.S.’s intentions. But it also raised expectations in the U.S. that India would return the favor with financial and policy rewards, some of which has been unmet, leading to a steady drumbeat of criticism in Washington.
Certainly relations have steadily improved and become institutionalized to a large extent. But the bilateral is not yet on autopilot and needs the oxygen of high-level attention. Both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Obama, after the initial diplomacy of state visits and handshakes at various summits, have not given the push the relationship periodically needs. The White House had no senior official familiar with India during Obama’s first term except for a brief period and prospects for getting one seem dim for right now. Obama however did give policy guidance, which defined India’s strategic importance in “clear and incontrovertible idioms” on which future initiatives can be built.
To speed the process, India must undertake and embrace extensive second-generation economic reforms and once again register higher growth rates. Only then it fulfil Tellis’ goal of being an “effective pole in the Asian geopolitical balance.”
On its part, the U.S. can help by seriously working on a free-trade agreement with India, an idea supported by Indian business but not fully by Washington. The U.S. should also rationalize its visa regime to allow for better movement of qualified professionals from India, a long-standing demand from India.
On the defence front, India gets some practical advice on how to “boost its military effectiveness without forfeiting strategic autonomy” by getting the necessary U.S. technology currently available only to Washington’s closest partners. In some much-needed plainspeak, Tellis says, “it is by now obvious that India’s strategy of attempting to develop most of its major weapon systems indigenously has failed” because its technology base is relatively poor and its military expenditures not large enough to sustain the research and development.
He also urges India to reconsider its opposition to increasing military “interoperability” with the U.S. because more participation can open doors to “a wealth of critical intelligence” on countries of interest and military technologies. India could gain in areas of space security, electronic warfare and ballistic missile defence, where it lags behind. It would seem that cooperation makes eminent sense here for a country whose cyber defences are regularly breached.
In turn, the U.S. should pursue specific initiatives and adopt a more liberal policy on weapons sales to India. It seems some bureaucrats still measure everything in terms of keeping a certain “balance” between India and Pakistan, a habit that Tellis politely calls “quixotic.” Finally, Washington should make good on its talk of building India’s defence capacity irrespective of whether New Delhi supports specific US policies.
It is a sound analysis of two difficult systems which are trying to unlock each other.
Seema Sirohi, an international journalist and analyst, is a frequent contributor to Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. Seema is also on Twitter, and her handle is @seemasirohi
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