India-US Relations Blog

Obama’s visit: India’s red lines

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Guest post by Raja Karthikeya

The briefing books are ready. The red carpet has been laid out. Indian leaders have made up their mind on the talking points with Obama. However, for what promises to be a historic occasion, U.S. President Obama’s visit has been hailed with surprisingly down-to-earth expectations. But understanding India’s concerns on one element that concerns the U.S. equally – terrorism – may still change the outcome of this visit and this factor goes far beyond David Headley.

Veteran South Asia analyst Ashley Tellis recently wrote that it is ironic that the key issues that pre-occupy policymakers in the U.S. and India alike – Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China have become irritants in bilateral relations. Indeed, there are yet things that Obama can do to converge U.S. and Indian strategy, particularly on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama can start by addressing the red lines that India has vis-à-vis specific non-state actors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Red lines, in diplomatic parlance, are points that are non-negotiable. But they can also represent the bare minimum demands that a negotiating side expects to have fulfilled, in order to call the discussion a success.

On Afghanistan, India has its reservations on the pace and potential outcome of the Karzai government’s negotiations with the Taliban. Irrespective of how much distance the U.S. puts between itself and the negotiations, Indians continue to believe that the talks could not happen without an implicit U.S. nod. While India closely watches the talks, it has one red line that it expects the U.S. to respect: no negotiation with the Haqqani network. This group, which has most notably been behind the 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, represents everything that worries India about the future of the region. And India’s sentiments towards the Haqqani network are not very different from what the U.S. feels about Hezbollah for the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon or Al Qaeda for the attacks on embassies in East Africa.

When it comes to non-state actors based in Pakistan, the red lines are clear as well. The U.S. should push Pakistan to act against one group’s leadership more than anything else: Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is no surprise that in the latest Pew opinion poll, Indians cited Lashkar-e-Taiba as the greatest threat to their country. And it is hardly reassuring when despite Pakistan’s claims of crackdown on the group, as cited in Bob Woodward’s Obama Wars, the U.S. National Security Advisor finds Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi directing the group’s operations from inside a Pakistani prison.

Obama is likely to ask what would inspire trust in India that Pakistan’s establishment is serious about acting against terrorism. Some very tangible measures by Islamabad would help: 1. Disallow police permission to any public gatherings or rallies by the Jamat-ud-Dawa, an organization proscribed by the UN, particularly in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi. 2. List Jamat-ud-Dawa as a banned organization under the Anti-Terrorism Acts. The absence of this measure led to Hafiz Saeed being released by the courts after arrest more than once 3. Put Hafiz Saeed away for good. His speeches themselves have led to murder and mayhem. And the fingerprints of the organization he leads, Jamat-ud-Dawa, and of LeT’s alumni have been found on several major international terrorist plots from the Mumbai attacks to the 7/7 London bombings to the 2006 transatlantic airliner “liquid bomb” plot. Again, putting a man in prison is not enough if prison turns into a mere retreat from where one can tele-commute. Take the case of Omar Sheikh, the man released in the 1999 Indian airliner hijacking who was later imprisoned in Pakistan for the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. Just after the Mumbai attacks, safe in the confines of his prison, Omar Sheikh called Pakistani President Zardari pretending to be the Indian foreign minister and raised tempers enough for Pakistan to scramble its jets and for the two nations to almost go to war. To avoid the repetition of such events, the red line on Hafiz Saeed would be that his imprisonment should imply he would not be heard from anymore.

There are those on Obama’s team who believe that the key to peace between India and Pakistan lies in resolution of differences over Kashmir. But if the Zardari government seeks to pick up the thread of the back-channel process that was aborted in 2007, a good start would be to disallow meetings of the “United Jihad Council” – the consortium of violent terrorist groups that strike in Jammu & Kashmir. This consortium holds its annual meetings in Muzaffarabad in full media spotlight where its members, carrying arms, call for violent attacks in India.

If President Obama can assure India of using his influence and sees that these red lines are addressed and that these tangible concerns are met, then this visit would not just be a success – it would be the beginning of a whole new era of trust in India-US relations.

(Raja Karthikeya is a foreign policy researcher.)

India-US Relations Blog

It’s not transactional, stupid!

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Obama’s visit to India is a sign of the symbolism that characterizes a strategic relationship.

People are missing the point.

It doesn’t require the U.S. president to come all the way to India to sell military equipment, make a case for reforming the UN security council, remove hurdles for high-technology co-operation, or indeed, as White House officials tried to project last week, encourage Indian companies to create jobs in the United States.

Such issues are negotiated by the minions, need bureaucratic and political consensus on both sides and are settled at their own pace. Official visits and summits between heads of state at best impose artificial deadlines and can be used to inject urgency into the negotiating machines. We saw it a few years ago when the India-US nuclear deal was pushed through in time for a Bush-Manmohan Singh summit.

Those who measure the significance and success of Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to India through the prism of deals signed and statements made miss the fact that the India-US relationship is strategic, not transactional. Ironically, the strategic nature of the relationship was sealed by a transaction—the nuclear deal—leading many to expect more of the same. Now, there are good reasons for the Indian government to purchase U.S. military aircraft, but not doing so isn’t about to wreck the bilateral relationship. Similarly, there are good reasons for Mr Obama to declare support for India’s place in a reformed UN Security Council, but other than disappointing his hosts, he won’t do much damage if he skips this topic.

For the first time in more than 50 years, the interests of the United States and India are converging geopolitically, geo-economically and, to coin a phrase, geo-democratically. As K Subrahmanyam points out succinctly, the United States needs India to counter China’s rising power. Likewise, India needs a strong United States, not to ally with, but for its own reasons of swing. This is as true from the economic perspective as it is from a political one. [Also see this CNAS report] Most importantly, India and the United States are mutually popular—the bottom-up factor is a powerful driver of closer bilateral relations.

It’s very hard to measure the extent of strategic relationships. Signing of business or arms deals are poor proxies. That’s where symbolism comes in. Obama has no real business to do in India. Yet he is coming. Sure, he’ll do some business when he’s here, but none that absolutely requires his presence. It’s symbolic and it counts.

For that reason Barack Obama will have a very successful trip to India next week. He just has to turn up.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

The Pamir Knot* peace deal

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Reports have been emerging about U.S. involvement in Kashmir, and Pakistan’s repeated attempts to bring the Kashmir issue on President Barack Obama’s agenda when he visits Delhi in first week of November. Also, the matter of India’s seat at the UN Security Council now seems to be only a matter of time, and the Presidential visit is expected to be a step in that direction.

However, none of President Obama’s objectives of protecting the physical and economic security of the U.S. from major harm in the 21st century by the terror emerging from the vast lawless lands of Afghanistan and Pakistan shall be met unless China vacates Kashmir.

A historic Pamir Knot peace deal for the region requires that China must be involved in the security of this region – and irrespective of whichever framework or formula emerges about Kashmir, China must first vacate the lands of Kashmir that it occupies. The regions of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), and China-occupied Kashmir (CoK) must be merged to create a “Naya Kashmir”* independent of occupation. With democracy and right-to-self determination in the merged areas of PoK and CoK, the “Naya Kashmir”, the people of the region would have peace and prosperity, and not be cesspools of ignorant hatred and poverty, with access to even nuclear and others weapons and methods of mass disaster.

While India officially says that it shall brook no interference by any third party, the U.S. administration is understood to believe that a solution to the Kashmir issue will substantially improve peace and security in the region, greatly reduce danger to the domestic and global interests of the United States, and help it resolve the Afghanistan imbroglio. President Obama is under intense pressure to bring troops home from Afghanistan, and unless he succeeds there is great danger to not only the U.S., but entire Western nations and Pakistan itself.

I understand that this recommendation may be controversial initially – but we all now need to re-imagine the world for our next generations. Otherwise, the U.S., this region, and the world will face greater and greater threats in years to come. It is time for the U.S., China, and India to make a grand deal and bring peace and security to Pakistan and Afghanistan. It must also be impressed upon President Obama that in return for obtaining peace and security in Asia to safeguard American national interests, China must commit in perpetuity that it shall cease and desist from any machinations on India’s eastern borders.

*The Pamir is a high mountainous plateau that is sometimes described as a “knot” because it lies at the intersection of several of Asia’s great mountain ranges: the Himalaya, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, and the Tian Shan.

*Naya Kashmir, the word “naya” means “new” in Hindi language.

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(The post originally appeared on the Imagindia Insititue website on October 22, 2010.)

(Image source: www.centraasiatravel.com)


India-US Relations Blog

Musings on a Presidential Visit

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As the President’s visit draws nearer, the delicate dance being played out by both sides is fascinating to watch. While the American side would prefer the Tango, the hosts have decided that a carefully choreographed (with emphasis on choreographed) ballet is the way to go.  The managers of the visit seemed to have decided to err on the side of caution when drawing up the Presidential itinerary, major considerations being his way with words, what he symbolizes in his persona, and the volatility of the inter-governmental relationships in the region. So, out went the President’s visit to Chabad House on security grounds. Out also went the President’s visit to Wagah border where he would presumably have made a speech on the lines of Ronald Reagan’s 1997 entreaty to President Gorbachov at the Brandenberg Gate which brought the Berlin Wall crashing down.  Whether a speech would have had any result other than further burnish his Nobel Peace prize can only now exist in the realms of speculation.

As is the norm during such State visits, both sides draw up wish lists and there then ensues some hard bargaining with lots of give and take.  This worked when such visits were few and far between.  Whilst summit level diplomacy worked well in case of the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Deal (that has proved to be a flash in the pan), Prime Minister Singh’s State visit to Washington  in November last yielded very little by way of substance.  The increased frequency of these visits has meant that the list of issues that are yet to find closure for various reasons, from a totalisation agreement, to defense agreements is growing, even as new issues such as the legislation on H1-B visa and outsourcing are bringing new irritants into the relationship. The parlous state of the U.S. economy plus the fact that a Democrat administration is in power would mean that these new issues will also go into the intractable issues column on that list.

Reading between the lines, the Americans seem to have made it clear that discussion on issues that would impact American jobs is a no-go area.  The American argument seems to be that when the going was good, we welcomed thousands of Indians to the United States and provided them with jobs; and now it’s your turn to help us out by buying our goods and services in a big way. This argument is of course somewhat fallacious since the United States was responding to the needs of its own economy, as it has always done, when it opened the gates for foreign workers.

If the United States is bent on improving trade relations, then on top of its agenda should be the removal of the constraints on trade and collaboration in high-technology items. That however, does not seem to be the case, with the U.S. still stopping short of completely removing these impediments. The nuclear deal notwithstanding, this is still a transactional relationship with strategic considerations very much playing second fiddle. As the Prime Minister’s successful visit to Japan amply testifies, a strategic relationship finds traction only when there is a clear and overwhelming desire on both sides to take that relationship forward. Of course, one advantage with the India-Japan Strategic Partnership is the absence of domestic spoilers. The Japanese Prime Minister has no need to turn Bangalore into a bogeyman for domestic audiences nor do sections of India polity look on Japan with suspicion.

Administration officials have been tom-tomming the fact that this is one of only two visits by an American President to India in the first two years of his first term in office. Well, the earlier one was by President Jimmy Carter, and we all know how that went. For those too young to recollect, it began with “the biggest crowds [Carter] had addressed as President” assembling at the Ram Lila grounds in Delhi on New Year’s Day of 1978 and ended with Carter (caught off mike) telling his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance that “after we return, we must write a letter, very cold and blunt” to Prime Minister Morarji Desai. (This was in the context of Desai refusing to Carter’s request to open Indian nuclear facilities to international inspection.) The Indian authorities are no doubt hoping that the similarities between the two visits are confined to the positive.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

U.S. and India need a grand Thorium Partnership

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This memo is proposed for urgent consideration by President Barrack Obama on the course ahead in U.S.-India relations. Today, when machineries of both governments are whirring to engineer a big bang from the upcoming Obama-Singh summit in Delhi in November, it is recommended that top class horsepower must immediately be allocated to the cold calculus and implementation of a Thorium Partnership between the United States and India.

Thorium Partnership

A Thorium Partnership between the U.S. and India shall yield pioneering benefits and fast-track a technology path towards radical energy security of both countries, as well as for global needs. It is inflexion time in global search to get off fossil fuel dependency and to identify an alternative source that can deliver gigantic scale of energy generation. Thorium fuel is the answer.

Nuclear energy can be generated by using uranium or thorium as fuel in the reactors – however thus far it is only uranium that is being used worldwide, while the technology to exploit thorium as a fuel is many years away. Though there has been some research and development on thorium in a few countries, India is the only country which has invested major research into this technology, and today is a world leader.

Importantly, using thorium as fuel for generating nuclear energy is the only technology path that will hugely reduce the growing risk of nuclear waste management and proliferation – a renaissance of nuclear energy now looms all over the world and it will create large pools of nuclear waste with which no one knows what to do, including in security-risk prone countries. The problem of thorium based waste management will be initially about the same as it is at present.  However, when recycling and closed fuel cycle is implemented in terms of their full potential the thorium based waste will make the problem virtually disappear. This will bring a huge relief to both countries and to global community.

A Thorium Partnership with India will give the United States access to the resulting industrial grade technology, and assured supply of a benign and potent fuel (thorium) for its domestic needs for next hundreds of years from a stable, democratic country – India holds 30% of world reserves of thorium; while the partnership will help India to significantly accelerate its energy and food security. Also in the long term, world supplies of uranium are expected to last no more than 50 – 80 years by various estimates, and thereafter thorium fuel shall be the only route to generate nuclear energy.

India has a substantial technical lead in the development of thorium based nuclear power and has the only operating power plant based on thorium in the world.  However, it might still take another 15-20 years for India to reach mass implementation for power generation based on this technology. A strategic partnership with U.S. will cut this time to technology maturation in half or more and thus the benefits to India’s economic development will be immense.

While it doggedly continues on its R&D path to develop thorium based solutions, in order to fast track development of thorium based technologies India needs large scale research labs set in remote areas since the radioactivity levels in such labs are high. At present India does not have any such facilities – whereas the United States does have infrastructure where such experiments and trials can be carried out. Additionally, the U.S. has a huge problem of nuclear waste at its hands which is ticking like a time bomb – the partnership shall bring a solution to this dilemma also, since thorium based power plants will use this nuclear waste material to generate power.

Upon industrial grade readiness of thorium based reactors, the two countries can jointly export and market a complete bundled technology and fuel solution to other third countries – thereby reducing threats of nuclear proliferation, weaning global communities away from fossil fuel dependency, aiding rapid scaling of energy capacities, and alleviating dangers to climate change – and thus rendering a historic shift in global energy, geopolitics, and food security.

In long term, the scale of technology and economic benefits reaped by the U.S. and India from this partnership may rival the scope of what DARPA enabled in technology and economic benefits to the U.S. by sponsoring and fast tracking R&D of the Internet. This partnership shall help to create high technology and green energy jobs in the U.S. and India, and bring technology spillover benefits to various other sectors in domestic economies of both countries resulting from the fast track R&D initiative in a most complicated technology.

Thus, the partnership is not about money or scientific assistance to either party, but is primarily born out of recognition of core competencies, assets, and needs of each party. With an aggressive can-do attitude this partnership shall bring a true revolution for the energy, food, and geopolitical security needs of this century.
Towards such objective, it is therefore proposed that India and the United States immediately establish a partnership for research, development, commercial planning, strengthening the educational and human resource expertise and implementation of thorium based power plants and energy solutions in India and the United States, and third countries.

Various details of the partnership – the mechanism, the policy, the physics, the engineering, the IPR, and several such matters, and protection of sovereign interest will of course be fiercely negotiated and addressed by each country during discussions on this partnership, along with the scientific assessment of mutual roles. Ours is only to lob this road-map in the public sphere – and to push for an assessment of acute national, and mutual domestic and global interests.

On November 7, 8, or 9, 2010, in the Indian parliament when President Obama addresses over a billion Indians via their elected representatives, or when Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh hosts a joint press conference with President Obama, with a megaphone to the world that addresses the global six billion, both countries must announce this bold and visionary partnership.