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India-US Relations Blog, US Elections 2012

India and the US: The partnership that could define our age

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The US Presidential Election is right around the corner, and it is not surprising that the interest within India and amongst the Indian expats living in the U.S. and also right around the globe has seen a drastic upswing. This interest is expected to reach a crescendo by the time we get to the crucial final stages and everyone from school children to political bigwigs in India are following the race to the White House with doting eyes, and the curiosity and anxiety around being palpable indeed. The Indian media has given the election coverage its due space, voice, time, and ink, and has done a commendable job covering it thus far.

This heightened sense of anticipation comes as no surprise to many of the analysts who have often elucidated that the strength of this flourishing partnership between these two great countries is not just driven by political convenience and economic sense, but by popular consensus of its people, fuelled by a firm conviction that they share a common geopolitical destiny.

Many opinion-makers, along with other social and political commentators, have already christened the Indo-US partnership as one of the, if not, the partnership that will shape the world around us for years to come, with Democracy proving to be the mortar that binds it strongly together, seamlessly.

Although the result of the Presidential Election will be crucial as it will be the fulcrum around which all the policies and programs will be implemented with the result one way or the other having serious repercussions on how things will shape out for many, including us; the fact remains that be it Obama or Romney that ultimately prevail, it is not expected to dramatically impact the relation with India. The basic rationale behind this premonition is the fact that the fundamental reasoning and the practical logic behind the Indo-US friendship far outweigh the narrow sighted political concerns or compulsions that might sway things towards the negative and the deplorable.

Despite reports coming out of the U.S. relating to outsourcing and the recent statement on the investment climate and economic reforms in India, often hyped by the media covering the campaign, the grapevine in India suggests that no one is losing sleep over the issue and the popular sentiment in India is largely pragmatic as a strong America is considered best for India – and that outsourcing was always about making things efficient and ultimately better, wasn’t it? At least India still believes so, despite what the naysayers might say.

Obama is by and large still highly regarded in India and his visit to India is remembered fondly even today. However, in contrast, Mitt Romney remains a relative unknown in India, although his name has been associated with India; which unfortunately for him hasn’t been all that positive to say the least. Nevertheless, he does enjoy the backing of someone whose name many Indians might recognize – Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Indian-American governor who lambasted Obama in a tirade and labeled him the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter. Having said that, the question still remains, does that speak to the majority of the Indian-American or for those having links with India? Probably not! But the jury is still out and many in India favor Romney to topple Obama with the majority expecting a close race too close to call just yet.

No matter what rhetoric gets thrown around, which is to be expected during the peak of campaign season, the underlying prognosis still leaves room for a guarded sense of optimism and excitement for the relationship’s future. This talks volumes to the speed at which the Indo-US relationship has developed, which has naturally attracted a lot of attention from nations with their own prejudices, biases, concerns, stake or involvement in this partnership.

India and U.S are seen as natural allies and have common values and ultimate goal, and the popular analogy used to describe the two has been that of a rising elephant and a slumbering giant, with both expected to thrive in the long-term, and more importantly, seen to be better off together. Both are all set to be key architects of change, not only for their own citizens, but for million and billions the world over who are counting on their leadership.

The partnership assumes even more significance under the economic environment that we live in today – a case in point being, “Dr. Doom”, the Economist Nouriel Roubini reiterating his predication for a, ‘perfect storm,’ among many others, and the world looking to the United States, the European Union, along with prominent countries like India and China, for a way through or over the dark clouds that loom on the horizon – too menacingly for comfort.

In India the United States has a partner it can rely on through the thick and thin, and the upcoming U.S. elections will be a significant milestone in a journey that although has many travails strewn across the anvil of time, but promises destined prosperity for both countries, its people, and the world therein. Although this partnership has had a checkered time thus far, I won’t be sullied for saying that the best is yet to come from the two greatest democracies on Earth.

Indian-Americans and U.S. Politics Blog

Indian-American Youth: A Present Focus on the Future

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Guest post by Ravi Jha and Kush Desai

The 21st century is so far playing out to be a rather eventful time in human history, especially in the progression of our Modern Era. While society enjoys the fruits of past generations’ labors – from the stability of the former Marshall Plan-aid receiving Europe to the entrepreneurial zeal of the baby-boomers – society is also lamenting the former pitfalls of their parents’ generations, like the baleful re-emergence of the formerly American-outfitted Taliban and the crash of a regulation-free Wall Street. But amidst terrorist attacks, Middle-Eastern conflicts, diplomatic showdowns, crippling economic meltdowns, and ‘interesting’ political candidacies, any meaningful discussion about contemporary youth appears to have been marginalized. Policy-makers are especially apathetic to Indian-American students and youngsters; after all, why worry about a demographic often epitomized as the impeccable paragon of overachieving students?

But in modern America, issues exist which will not only affect today but also continue to drag down tomorrow, the foremost among them being education, political discontentment, and social discord. Thus the writers of this blog, a college undergrad and a high school junior, hope to reinvigorate serious debate revolving on issues related to youth affairs with a particular focus in on Indian-American youngsters.

But why?

Consider South Korea. In the aftermath of the devastating Korean War, South Korea was devastated; there was no economy to speak of, and social and governmental institutions outside of an American-fitted army were non-existent. It was a Stakhanovite work ethic and an almost absurdly stressed education system that transformed the nation into the modern high-tech hub that politicians, businessmen, and economists gawk at. In essence, continual public awareness and attention to the state of Korean youth, particularly on anything concerning education, quintessentially transformed South Korea within a span of a few decades.

The quintessential importance of the youth flows out of the classroom and workplace and into political, social, and economic realms as well. Frustrated youngsters in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco were able to induce entire national uprisings to create what we now call the Arab Spring. Household Cold War autocrats like Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Qaddafi were swept out of office, despite hiding behind violent police and military forces. The main point: while Korea’s paragon of education allowed its children to develop their nation, politically frustrated youth in the Middle East were forced to coerce their governments radically, demonstrative of the need for a politically contented youth. Public policy for social change, on the other hand, is no worse.

Public education and awareness programs that target racism at elementary schools across the United States have been omnipresent ever since the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. In this case, public attention and action over children has translated into a more socially cohesive society. Institutions like the Ku Klux Klan no longer scare African-American children to sleep; an African-American has been able to capture the support of an entire nation in a landmark presidential election. Indeed, many negative aspects of American culture and society were bettered not just by de jure legislation, but by teaching about the past in order to pass on the lessons of yesterday.

In all of these cases, renewed focuses on youth were able to transform entire societies economically, politically, and socially, positively, might we add. Indian-American youth, a demographic quickly filling the shoes of American (and global) business, government, and scientific leaders, will undoubtedly play an important role in the coming decades of global integration. What we feel, know, do not know, and face is imperative to the very future; it is time that youth affairs from education to social cohesion get a center role in the arena of public policy debate. We hope to jump-start this message of a renewed youth focus by routinely informing about and taking sides on issues and events relevant to us.

India-US Relations Blog

Is Nancy Powell the right choice for India?

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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

Blowing hot and cold

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As many news reports noted, the past week was significant just for the numbers of Indian ministers in the United States at a given point in time. However, the more did not necessarily make the merrier.

cdn.wn.comNo less than nine members of the Indian Council of Ministers were in the US, including the primus inter pares, PM Manmohan Singh. The PM was in the  U.S. to address a session of the UN General Assembly and  his speech was notable, as one commentator put it, for its reference to “old ideological positions and  old constitutencies,” meant to signal his “disappointment with the West.” The PM seemed to emphasise the point by having a bilateral meeting with an old foe of the West, Iranian President Ahmedinajad, an event described by another commentator as a virtual affront to the United States. What India has to be disappointed about is unclear, and whether the disappointment will be followed up with distancing remains to be seen. Whether that is the most appropriate strategy is also moot in the rapidly changing global scenario.

Many of the Ministers, from Commerce to Power, to Finance were in the U.S. to drum up investment for mega- infrastructure projects back home. There were the usual assortment of think tank reports and seminars that usually coincide with such ministerial visits, but increasingly, they offer only new wine in old bottles, reflecting the current stalemate, if not slump, in relations.  An address by the recently promoted Deputy Secretary William J Burns at the Brookings Institution was even titled “Is there a Future for the US-India Partnership?”

Commerce Minister Anand Sharma made a valiant effort to break the logjam on the Totalization Agreement issue but came a cropper. This issue has been attacked from various angles, having earlier being piloted by the Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs. Mr Sharma made the point to his interlocutors that there was no reason not to sign an agreement with India pleading incompatibility between social security systems since India had signed totalisation agreements with many European countries  with which the U.S. had an agreement but this argument cut no ice.  This was not surprising since Under Secretary Blake had made it clear in his last read-out on US-India relations that the U.S. was in no mood to transfer over a billion dollars to India in the current economic mess it found itself in. There was also talk of progress made on a Bilateral Investment Treaty, even though it is almost as if when one side blows hot, the other side blows cold.

The other legs of the relationship, business and the diaspora, can, at best only play a supporting role, and are to an extent affected by the buffeting winds of the strategic relationship. The India-US CEOs forum also held its annual meeting in Washington this past week, but has increasingly less to show for being such a high-powered gathering. While India has a ready-made constituency in the U.S. in the form of the Indian Diaspora, Hillary Clinton’s public diplomacy initiatives are beginning to show results at least in India, with U.S. embassies and missions making all out efforts to engage with the average Indian through all the resources available from   social media to innovative meetups titled Charcha, Chai aur Coffee. The American Center in Delhi even provides a venue for Startup Saturday, a forum for young entrepreneurs to come together to share and learn from each other.

The blow hot, blow cold phase of the relationship into which we have entered seems set to continue into the foreseeable future with, as William Burns himself admitted in his speech, both governments distracted and pulled in different direction by a combination of domestic and external issues.

India-US Relations Blog

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

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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.)