Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

US Elections 2012

Tulsi Gabbard: A Leader in the Making

Leave a comment

Guest Blog by Madhu Nair

History has it that women have been leaders with unbelievable authority and their leadership has been able to create an impact far better than their male counterparts. If Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto were amongst the strongest in the Asian continent, it was Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton who were the women in control from the west. To say that women lack leadership would be too timid and stupid, for today they have been up to the challenge and in many ways much ahead of men.

Modern day politics has bought some of the best women to the fore and the 31 year old Tulsi Gabbard is one among them. In the present race for the U.S. House of Representatives, Tulsi, who was trailing behind her rival by over 40 points a few months ago in the race for the Congressional seat from Honolulu has now taken a narrow lead brightening prospects for the first Hindu to be elected to the US House of Representatives. She now holds a five-point lead over Hannemann, former Honolulu mayor — 37% for Tulsi and 32% from Hannemann. This represents a huge change in the race since April where Hannemann led Tulsi by 26 points.

Although she would go on to become the first Hindu in the House, there have been some members of Indian origin with Hindu religion backgrounds in the Congress. Dalip Singh Saund became the first Indian-American and Sikh to serve in the House in the year 1957. Some other noted Hindu politicians who have made their way into U.S. politics amongst many others are Kumar Barve and Swati Dandekar. While Barve is a member of the Maryland House of Delegates and is touted as the Most Influential Maryland Legislators; Dandekar is a Member of the Iowa Senate from the 18th district and also a very prominent face in U.S. politics.

Born in Leloaloa, American Samoa to Mike Gabbard and Carol Porter Gabbard, Tulsi is the fourth of five the children. Tulsi’s father Mike Gabbard is an educator, tennis professional, business owner and the current Hawaii State Senator of 19th District while her mother Carol is also an educator and business owner. Her family moved to Hawaii in the year 1983 where Tulsi grew up and was homeschooled through high school. She graduated from the Hawaii Pacific University with a Degree in International Business.

Tulsi is currently a member of the Honolulu City Council and served as Hawaii’s youngest state representative in 2002 and is also the youngest woman in the history of USA to be elected into such a prestigious position. A Company Commander with the Hawaii Army National Guard, she has volunteered to serve on two deployments to the Middle East. Tulsi also serves as the co-founder and vice-president of the environmental non-profit organization Healthy Hawaii Coalition.

Previously elected to the Hawaii State House of Representatives at the age of 21, Tulsi earned the distinction of being the youngest legislator ever elected in Hawaii, and the youngest woman ever elected in the United States. While in office, she served on the Education, Higher Education, Tourism, and Economic Development committees. She withdrew from an easy re-election campaign when she volunteered for an 18-monthlong deployment to Iraq with the Hawaii Army National Guard in 2004; its’ first major deployment since the Vietnam War. Upon returning home, she attended the Alabama Military Academy’s Officer Candidate School, and became the first female Distinguished Honor Graduate in the academy’s 50-year history.

With the current momentum with her, let’s hope she does well, as for a leader of her stature is very rarely seen.

India-US Relations Blog

Is Nancy Powell the right choice for India?

Leave a comment

Although fluent in honeyed words, in substance, the Obama administration is proving to be a disappointment for India. None of the promises of the George Bush years has been realized: neither hi-technology cooperation nor an effort to ensure that the Indian military be given access to sufficient equipment in order to maintain parity with an expanding PLA.

Now, the choice of a career foreign service officer, Nancy Powell, as the new U.S. ambassador to India underscores the fact that President Obama has left U.S.-India relations with the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while he focuses on the far more consequential relationship between China and the U.S.

In Beijing, Gary Locke (a former Cabinet-level official known for his antipathy towards Delhi and sympathy for Beijing) has a direct channel of communication with the White House, unlike Powell, who on occasion may find it difficult even to reach Hillary Clinton, given her relatively modest status in the ranks of power players in Washington.

During Powell’s stint in Islamabad, the soft-spoken envoy became very close to President Pervez Musharraf and her “See-No-Evil” reporting ensured that the Bush administration saw both Musharraf and the Pakistan military as reliable assets of the U.S. in the region. She believed that the Pakistan army could be relied on to faithfully implement the policies cooked up in the Departments of State and Defense, and raised very few red flags. So complete was her trust in the suave commando whom she clearly admired, the coup-leader who became the President of Pakistan.

It is no secret that decision-makers on the South Block (location of the Ministries of Defense and External Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office) share with the North Block (the Home Ministry) a deep distrust of the Pakistan military, especially the army. Administrations in India have not seen any improvement in the ground situation, where irregular elements continue to infiltrate the Line of Control in Kashmir, besides entering India via road from Bangladesh and Nepal. During her period in Islamabad, Powell almost totally ignored such ISI activities against India, concentrating on the situation in Afghanistan and satisfying herself (after briefings from President Musharraf) that Pakistan was fully on board as a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. Doubts about such an assessment began only long after she left her post in Pakistan’s capital. After that, she moved on to Nepal, at a time when the Maoist groups were gaining in strength, thanks to the short-sighted policy of the former monarch in clandestinely backing them against democratic forces in Nepal, whom King Gyanendra regarded as a bigger threat than the Maoists.

Although in the course of her career in the State Department, Powell has had the distinction of being ambassador to both Ghana and Uganda. Her preferred region of interest has remained South Asia, where she evolved a distinctly Pakistan army-centric view of the overall situation. Not surprisingly, her appointment as envoy to India has been welcomed by U.S. experts such as Steven Cohen, Michael Krepon, and Teresita Schaffer. All three of them have vigorously praised the Pakistan army in the past, including the military’s quest for a resolution of the Kashmir issue on lines favorable to itself. In an op-ed in a newspaper in India, Shaffer has called Hillary Clinton’s choice “admirable”. No doubt President Musharraf too would agree, given his close personal friendship with the diplomat. Certainly, he will be ready to proffer her advice on how she should go about her task, something that he is known to do whenever he visits Washington.

Although some within the strategic community in India have delusions of grandeur about the role played by Delhi in the Obama calculus; the Powell appointment has once again shown up the differential treatment between approaches towards China and India. While the first country is a personal priority of President Obama, such that he closely monitors policy to that emerging superpower, in the case of India, Obama confines himself to mere words. The actual policy is left to Hillary Clinton who seems to regard Europe (and in particular the U.K. and now France) as not merely experts on India, but as useful interlocutors. While the expertise of the Secretary of State is most pronounced in the matter of specialty restaurants at the Maurya Sheraton hotel in Delhi (her favored haunt while visiting the country), she has very definite views on India’s role. It is that Delhi needs to behave in the manner that the U.S. and the EU decide is proper for it and forget about seeking parity with China. In that sense, the Powell appointment illustrates the much lower position of India in the strategic calculus of the Obama administration, as compared to China which has always had high-powered envoys, beginning with George H W Bush.

Nancy Powell knows the Pakistan military well and she has kept up her contacts with top generals in India’s western neighbor. However, she has cultivated far fewer links with the Indian establishment, except at the formal level. While key elements of the strategic community in India would like the Obama administration to give up its Euro-centric view of India (as a country that needs to be guided and led by the hand, in the manner of a frisky adolescent), such a development seems remote under Powell’s watch. She has been steeped in the State-Defense culture of seeing India near-exclusively from the prism of India-Pakistan relations and can be expected to follow Hillary Clinton’s instincts and insert herself into the subject almost from the day she assumes office in Delhi from Peter Burleigh, the acting envoy, who too shares with Nancy Powell close ties with the U.S. intelligence community and is a distinguished professor at the University of Miami, which has one of the best International Relations programs in the U.S.

It is no secret that the road map of the Indian-strategic community in Afghanistan and Kashmir is very different from that of the Pakistan army. Seeking to bridge this gap has been a task that Powell’s admirers in the U.S. academic community have been trying for decades to accomplish. In the final year of his present term in office, President Obama’s most urgent priority seems to be an orderly retreat from Afghanistan. Powell is among those who have long regarded it possible to enlist the Pakistan army in such a mission, if only India were to make enough concessions. Her task in Delhi may be to follow the example of another Clintonite envoy, Frank Wisner, who spent much of his tenure seeking to persuade India to make concessions on Kashmir.

Although there will be the obligatory cheers of welcome for the Powell appointment, deeper than the manufactured headlines and the anodyne statements, there is resentment that President Obama has distanced himself from the longstanding U.S. policy of sending distinguished Thought Leaders to India, rather than career diplomats such as Frank Wisner and Nancy Powell. The omens for a true India-U.S. alliance remain bleak, given Obama’s handover of India policy to his Secretary of State and her favorites. Where is the “change” that we were promised, Mr. President?

You seem to have gone back to Bill Clinton’s policy, of seeing India only within the prism of relations with Pakistan.

India-US Relations Blog

A Marshall Plan for South Asia

Leave a comment

The war of words between the United States and Pakistan in recent weeks has put in stark relief the two core strategic conundrums Washington has vis-à-vis Islamabad, as well as the integral role India plays in both of them. The first is to encourage a more constructive Pakistani approach in Afghanistan, which Islamabad regards as a theater for its endemic rivalry with New Delhi. The second is to steer a nuclear-armed but deeply dysfunctional Pakistan away from failed state status, a harrowing prospect that many believe is all too plausible unless Islamabad is convinced that its prospering neighbor to the East actually represents an economic opportunity rather than an existential threat.

The Obama administration entered office believing that Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan was a function of addressing its acute security anxieties regarding India. Two weeks before the November 2008 election, Barack Obama declared that resolving the perennially-inflamed dispute over the Kashmir region was one of the “critical tasks” for U.S. foreign policy and worthy of “serious diplomatic resources.” It was a valid observation but the manner in which Washington pursued it guaranteed a quick failure. Moves to appoint a turbo-charged envoy (in the person of Richard Holbrooke) with the mandate of mediating the Kashmir issue– similar to U.S. efforts to broker the Middle East peace talks – met with Pakistani approval but proved too much for the sovereignty-conscious Indians to accept.

For the past three years, Washington has struggled to find a way to bring the two sides together and focus them on their common interests. Fortunately, the parties may have found one themselves. Despite the obvious displays of mutual suspicion in both capitals, a consensus is growing in the two countries – especially evident in their business communities – that the time has come for a more normalized relationship.

After a three-year hiatus caused by the 2008 terrorist strikes in Mumbai, India and Pakistan have restarted their peace dialogue. In July, Pakistan’s new foreign minister, the 34-year-old Hina Rabbani Khar, held unexpectedly warm talks in New Delhi, where she emphasized that a “mind-set change” was occurring among younger Indians and Pakistanis. Last month, for the first time in 35 years, Pakistan’s commerce minister visited New Delhi, bringing with him a notably large business delegation. The trip was especially productive. The two countries pledged to more than double their two-way trade flows – to the $6 billion annual level – by 2015. They agreed to ease visa rules for business travel and to open a new customs post at the Wagah border crossing that lies midway between Lahore and Amritsar. Islamabad also committed to extending “most favored nation” trade status to New Delhi, reciprocating the status India earlier conferred upon Pakistan. This last development promises to enliven the 2006 South Asia Free Trade Agreement which up until this point has been all but a dead letter. India’s commerce minister, Anand Sharma, captured the spirit of the meeting when he exclaimed that “only shared prosperity can bring lasting peace.”

The annals of India-Pakistan relations are filled with numerous false dawns and the current moves toward greater economic engagement could well founder upon the sharp historical animosities that regularly bedevil bilateral affairs. But things may be different this time. Reports out of Islamabad indicate that the Pakistani government realizes the country is in desperate economic straits and that closer ties with India constitute a much needed lifeline. The military establishment is also said to understand that the eastern border needs to be stabilized so resources can be focused on combating rising internal security threats.

If enhanced trade ties were to develop between South Asia’s largest economies, they would produce significant economic and (eventually) security dividends for both countries. Despite the common civilizational and historical bonds that permeate South Asia, as well as the unified market forged by the British Raj, the region today is remarkably fragmented economically. Trade flows between India and Pakistan, for instance, represent a miniscule fraction of each country’s overall trade portfolio.

Wagah is the only vehicle crossing along the 1,800-mile-long international border. The two-lane road there is only open a mere eight hours a day and the cargo that passes through it must be unloaded and transferred to local trucks. Indeed, the crossing, which some refer to as the “Checkpoint Charlie of South Asia,” is better known for the Kabuki-like displays put on by the border guards than as an efficient transit point.

The pervasive barriers to bilateral economic cooperation have also spurred circuitous and highly inefficient trade patterns. A booming India requires cement for its construction sector yet is forced to import it from Africa instead of Pakistan, where the cement industry has excess capacity. Off-the-books trade – the value of which easily rivals official levels – is also conducted via third countries like Dubai, Singapore and Afghanistan. According to various studies, a more liberalized trade regime would increase bilateral exchange at least 20 times above current figures as well as boost economic prosperity in both countries.

The Obama administration would do well to reinforce the current stirrings by launching a Marshall Plan-like initiative geared toward the expansion of cross-border economic linkages between the two countries. One of the keys to the Marshall Plan’s far-reaching success was the major financial inducement it gave European countries devastated by World War II to frame their economic futures in conjunction with their neighbors. By putting an emphasis on reconstruction projects that crossed national frontiers, it was an important catalyst for the historic reconciliation between France and Germany and paved the way for the deep economic integration embodied in today’s European Union.

A similar vision should inspire a U.S. effort to bolster cross-border economic cooperation between India and Pakistan. This initiative would be aimed at helping the two countries, on a joint basis, upgrade and expand the meager transportation infrastructure presenting connecting them. It would support projects that increase road and rail linkages, as well as the number and capacity of customs posts. It would help provide resources for modernized seaport facilities that enable more two-way trade. And with each country plagued by chronic power shortages, it would help bankroll cross-border energy projects such as joint electrical grids or the proposed natural gas pipeline connecting Central and South Asia via Afghanistan.

This effort would dovetail well with the “New Silk Road” initiative that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in Chennai this past July, to foster the economic integration of Central and South Asia. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was born in what is now Pakistan, has spoken eloquently of the powerful role stronger economic linkages can play in bridging South Asia’s deep political fissures. In early 2007, he spelled out his vision for regional integration:

“I dream of a day when, while retaining our respective identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul. That was how my forefathers lived. That is how I want our grandchildren to live.”

For his part, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has even expressed the hope that India and Pakistan could one day join together in an economically-unified zone like the EU.

The original Marshall Plan entailed a staggering sum of money – well over $100 billion in today’s terms – and an austerity-minded U.S. Congress would certainly balk at any scheme with a similar price tag. But the initiative outlined here need only entail a modest level of expenditures – say, $50-75 million per year over a five-year period – and could be paid for by redirecting funding already authorized under the 2009 Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act. Better known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, the act provides $1.5 billion annually in non-military assistance to Pakistan through 2013. But due to a variety of factors, much of its economic development funds remain unspent.

To avoid potential concerns in New Delhi and Islamabad that Washington might try to extract diplomatic concessions from specific funding decisions, resources could be routed through the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank, where professional staff would assess the viability and impact of proposals submitted jointly by the two countries and make final judgments on which projects go forward. Additional countries, such as those assembled by Secretary Clinton in New York last month to discuss the New Silk Road plan, also could be invited to contribute resources.

Obviously, this initiative offers no magic bullet for transforming the singular intensity of the India-Pakistan strategic rivalry. But it would be a creative investment in nurturing promising developments already underway in both countries, which if they take root over the long term would help lead to a game-changing situation in South Asia: One in which Islamabad looks upon New Delhi more as a partner than as an outright enemy. If such a development came to pass, U.S. interests in the region would be vastly easier to safeguard than they are today.

India-US Relations Blog

India and America: common values, shared success

1 Comment

By Richard G. Lugar

As Secretary of State Clinton’s recent trip to India demonstrated, these are exciting times for India, and for the India-United States relationship. India has liberalized and opened its economy, unleashing the entrepreneurial talent of its people and using its strong technology base to establish leading positions in such fields as telecommunications, information technology and pharmaceuticals.

America and India, for too long estranged during the Cold War, have developed steadily closer ties built on a uniquely strong foundation: both countries are stable, multi-ethnic democracies with a deep tradition of religious tolerance.

With a well-educated middle class that is larger than the entire U.S. population, India can be an anchor of stability in Asia and a center of economic growth. It is already the world’s second-fastest growing major economy, and bilateral trade with the U.S. has more than tripled over the past 10 years. I have worked to build a strategic partnership between the United States and India that will benefit both sides as India plays an ever-larger role on the world stage.

I am also excited by a new opportunity to match India’s entrepreneurial zeal with America’s current need for investment and jobs through the Startup Visa Act, which I introduced earlier this year. The bill would allow an immigrant entrepreneur to receive a two-year visa if he or she can show that a qualified U.S. investor is willing to invest in the immigrant’s startup venture. Many of India’s smartest and most entrepreneurial individuals are already here studying at our universities, so helping them stay to invest in their ideas would create jobs and help all Americans.

The bill would also apply to those already in the U.S. on unexpired H-1B visas, and entrepreneurs living outside the United States who already have a market presence here. If this legislation is enacted, it will help more Indians take part in the great American tradition of immigrant business success.

Another concern of Indians abroad is Pakistan, a concern I share. I believe the U.S. should use its influence to promote stability in the region, which could lead to a Pakistan that is more likely to cooperate and trade with India. That’s one of the reasons I co-sponsored the 2009 Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act.

The bill emphasizes economic assistance over military aid, and contains incentives for Pakistan to stabilize its democracy. It requires the Secretary of State to certify every year that Pakistan is meeting specific benchmarks of conduct, namely, that it is cooperating to dismantle supplier networks of nuclear weapons-related material, that it is making “significant efforts” to combat terrorist and extremist groups and that such groups are not receiving support from Pakistan’s military or spy service, and that it is not letting terrorist groups use Pakistan’s territory to stage attacks on other countries.

On that score, the bill specifically mentions Pakistan-based terrorist groups that threaten India as well as the United States and Afghanistan, including al Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which conducted the 2008 Mumbai attack. The legislation aims to encourage Pakistan to re-orient its armed forces to a mission more focused on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency than regional conflict, and calls for a cut-off of assistance if the security forces are deemed to be “subverting the political or judicial processes of Pakistan.” In short, India has much to gain from the success of this legislation.

All this is part of a larger strategic engagement between India and America, which took a major step forward three years ago with the passage of the US-India nuclear cooperation agreement, a step that I strongly supported. The legislation lifted a three-decade American moratorium on nuclear trade with India and opened the door for trade in a wide range of other high-technology items, such as supercomputers and fiber optics.

Some critics called the deal a set-back for U.S. non-proliferation efforts, since India remains outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). I argued, however, that it actually provides incentives for the United States and India to deepen their cooperation in stopping proliferation, and confers numerous other benefits outside the nuclear realm by paving the way for broader economic and strategic collaboration.

The remarkable deepening of US-India ties over the past decade is only a start, as the relationship has still not reached its full potential. If Indians and Indian-Americans continue to contribute their ideas, their energy and their commitment, I am sure that even more exciting days lie ahead.

(Senator Richard Lugar is the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)

India-US Relations Blog

America-India – Did the Bush Administration Oversell or Did the Obama Administration Botch It?

Leave a comment

This week Michael Green and Daniel Twining wrote an opinion article in the Washington Post titled Why aren’t we working with Japan and India? It is an attempt to discuss the reasons for, what they call, the current “listlessness in our two biggest strategic partnerships in Asia.” This is a serious article but deeply flawed.

The article’s key paragraph on India begins with “India has also disappointed.”. It ends with the statement “The refrain in Washington is that the Bush Administration oversold the potential for strategic partnership with New Delhi.”

We disagree. The Bush Administration established the Strategic Partnership with India. It was the most far-reaching step taken by any American President regarding India. President Bush viewed China and India as two huge countries that would play a global role in the 21st century. In his simple yet profound way, he asked which of these two countries would be a better partner for America? The answer was simple, India.

So President Bush in his direct, decisive manner made India a Strategic Partner of the USA. The Bush Administration threw away the old, failed strategy of trying to balance India with Pakistan and looked at India as a key ally, an emerging power on par with China and the only counterweight of size to China.

This is exactly how India perceives itself. This congruence of vision was the sound long term basis for the America-India Strategic Partnership implemented by President Bush. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, expressed the view of the Bush Administration at that time: “Within 20 years, the rise of the new U.S.-India partnership will be considered among the most important developments in U.S. foreign policy in our time.”

Then came President Obama. His framework for the world was completely different than that of President Bush. The Obama Administration spent its first year in trying to woo China. The Obama Administration was convinced that President Bush had gone too far in favoring India and they restored the old policy of maintaining a balance of power between Pakistan & India.

This was not just rhetoric. This has been the consistent policy of the Obama Administration since the inauguration. Witness the clear statement from Secretary Hillary Clinton in April 2010 that the manner in which India & Pakistan have pursued atomic weapons has “upset the balance of nuclear deterrence”. The Bush Administration had realized and accepted the fact that India was going to build a nuclear deterrence against China. The Clinton statement showed that the Obama Administration considered India only from the old Pakistan-India balance of power framework.

In short, the Obama Administration unilaterally destroyed the very foundation on which President Bush had built his America-India strategic partnership. But neither Government was willing to publicly accept this reality.  So both America and India continued to pay lip service to the concept of the America-India strategic partnership.

The sudden u-turn in America’s framework stunned the Indian Government and the entire Indian Establishment. In their naivete, they had assumed that America as a whole had finally understood India and embraced India’s vision of its role in the world. But where foreign policy is concerned, there may be only one India but there are two Americas. It took the Indian Government a year to realize that the America-India strategic partnership they had accepted was only with Bush’s America and not with Obama’s America. Then the Indian Government began hedging its bets and moving away from the Obama Administration. Since then, the relations between America and India have remained “listless”.

Another factor in the decay of India-US relations has been Washington’s definition of “partnership”. This is borne out by the Washington Post article which assumes a partner of America should not oppose American initiatives but align with them regardless of how the initiatives impact the partner:

Yet, in the first two years of the Obama Administration, the Indians have opposed the United States on climate and trade initiatives (the initiatives were in direct conflict with Indian objectives), failed to enact liability legislation needed for American companies to develop India’s nuclear industry (a political and ethical impossibility in democratic India), resisted meaningful economic reforms (true), cozied up to Burma’s junta with gas and arms deals (a strategic necessity for India just like cozying up to Saudi Arabia is a strategic necessity for America) and rejected U.S. combat aircraft in India’s biggest defense deal to date (the last generation aircraft offered by the U.S. were judged as inferior by the Indian Military).

President Bush had astounded the Indian Government by treating India as a real partner. He understood what India could and could not do. He focused on what was achievable which was plenty. India responded in return and we are convinced that every major Indian deal would have been won by the Bush Administration. In contrast, the Obama Administration kept imposing its own initiatives on India and expected India to to follow. This pressure backfired.

Today, the Obama Administration is facing the virtual collapse of its framework. They have realized that China is a major strategic competitor and perhaps an adversary. So the Obama Administration has gone from wooing China to building a network of allies to contain China. This is the main purpose of Secretary Clinton’s trip to India and Asia.

The Obama Administration’s cherished policy of making Pakistan stronger and more stable has collapsed. But the Administration’s tactical objective has not changed. The Obama Administration still considers Pakistan as their most reliable ticket to exit Afghanistan.

America’s rapid exit from Afghanistan and the Obama plan to give Pakistan all the aid necessary to facilitate this exit remains the most difficult barrier between America and India. Secretary Clinton is trying to get India to steer away from Af-Pak and to get more active against China in the Pacific. The immediate strategic objective of India is to maintain and increase its presence in Afghanistan.

When strategic objectives are in such conflict, how can a strategic partnership make sense? This is the main reason for the current “listlessness” in America-India relations.

(This post originally appeared on Macro Viewpoints and has been republished with the approval of the author.)