To take one instance, the Bush Administration had appeared to envisage the emergence of a quartet of the United States, Japan, Australia and India to cooperate together in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but this idea has languished since one round of joint naval exercises was conducted. Maritime security is an obvious area for cooperation, since these four countries (together with a couple of ASEAN powers) could easily construct a credible security architecture for the Indo-Pacific region. But there is a serious asymmetry in the relations among the various countries in such a configuration: Washington enjoys long-established treaty relationships with Tokyo and Canberra, but there is nothing comparable with India, or between New Delhi and the other capitals. A serious effort would have to be made to create new linkages, but none has been forthcoming, and Washington is arguably at least as much to blame as New Delhi.
The still-lacking substantive definition of India’s place as a ‘partner’ of Washington’s — despite the realization after 26/11 that both sides have a common global adversary — impedes the creation of effective mechanisms for intelligence sharing, joint military operations and collaboration in high technology, the very things that India seeks. The commentator Nikolas K. Gvosdev has suggested some benefits that a ‘partner’ like India might be accorded: ‘full participation in a number of counterterrorism initiatives, an expedited export control process for space technology, and invitations to participate in selected research and development projects with the Department of Defense’. That is a useful list to begin with, and India will be delighted if it were to happen. But it would need to be accompanied by operational mechanisms: urgent policy reviews, working groups that met frequently and against real deadlines, and possibly organizational changes in the national security apparatuses of both countries. Thanks to the estrangement of the Cold War years, New Delhi and Washington have not built the habits of trust and confidence between their bureaucracies, and this will take both time and political will. Neither is an indefinitely stretchable commodity.
Similarly, the economic relationship between the two countries has been a source of satisfaction, but it is no longer without concern. India has thrived on US outsourcing to its IT-enabled services sector, and there has been an assumption that the recession will only drive up the demands for outsourcing by cost-conscious American corporations. Unfortunately, however, instead of greater market access in this sector, Indians have been facing signs of an American political backlash, ranging from state-level decisions not to outsource major government contracts to the imposition by the US Congress of punitive visa fees on white-collar Indian experts working for Indian technology providers. The United States has facilitated the globalized world by proselytizing for the very policies (capitalism, open markets, globalization and international institutions) that it now seems to be abandoning. You don’t have to watch Lou Dobbs on TV (though many foreigners did, until CNN International mercifully took him off-air) to conclude that the United States is acting as if it is now suspicious of the economic policies it has traditionally advocated — free markets, trade, immigration and technological change. In other words, Indians are not the only ones to fear that, just as the world is increasingly opening up, America may be closing down. The India — US relationship would suffer seriously if, beset by internal preoccupations, America turns inwards and forgets its responsibilities to the well-being of others.
As David Malone put it, ‘The entente between the two nations is not so much an alliance as a “selective partnership” based on specific shared interests in some areas and quid pro quo arrangements in others, all underscored by strong economic interdependence. As long as their interests are aligned, India and the United States will seem locked in a wider strategic embrace. But perceptions of interests can change rapidly.’ That is a sobering thought, and a wise reminder that complacency is never sensible in international relations.
Obama also spoke of a ‘global partnership’. What could this mean in practice? Both countries share a responsibility for preserving a rule-based, open and democratic world order and for the management of the global economy. Both are active in the G20 as the world’s premier institution for dealing with international economic questions. Both could work together on global development initiatives — USAID has famously deployed in Africa and elsewhere the India Mark II hand pump, devised for agriculture in India, which has revolutionized water supply in rural areas around the world. India and the United States could also act together to preserve the global commons — the environment, the high seas, human trafficking, outer space and cyberspace — all areas in which the two democracies, one the world’s richest, the other still emerging from poverty, have different but not irreconcilable approaches. Cooperation on the innovative development of green energy technologies, for instance, and on space exploration or combating cyber crime are obvious examples of issues that did not even exist before the twenty-first century dawned.
Other possibilities for cooperative action could cover joint responses to natural disasters in South and Southeast Asia, agricultural research and development, and even nuclear proliferation, now that India is no longer lumped together with the ‘bad guys’ on that issue. But the United States must rein in the fulminations of its own ‘non-proliferation ayatollahs’, who are prepared to live with a nuclear China and take for granted a nuclear Britain or France, but cannot abide the thought of Indians with nukes. Washington must lift the export controls and restrictions on sharing high technology with India that understandably are seen by many in New Delhi as an affront. Obama’s visit made a positive beginning in this area, but some restrictions remain.
Globally, India is looking for a more inclusive multilateralism, and would not accept, as some foreign observers have suggested, a G2 condominium of America and China. There is a consensus in our country that India should seek to continue to contribute to international security and prosperity, to a well-ordered and equitable world, and to democratic, sustainable development for all. This means that, in the wake of the global economic crisis, we must work to redistribute power in the international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, as well as in the political organs of global governance such as the UN Security Council. This is an area where New Delhi expects greater understanding from Washington.
But Indians must beware of seeing the US relationship in terms of a checklist of Indian expectations alone. Former US ambassador Robert Blackwill was once reported to have said: ‘India wants the US to invest, India wants the US to keep its markets more open, India wants more visas for its professionals, India wants us to be helpful on Kashmir and in dealing with Pakistan, India wants US support for membership of the UN Security Council, India wants this and India wants that. Tell me what will India give in return?’ This is not elementary transactionalism alone, since Blackwill was very much an exponent of the support-India-for-its-own-sake school of American foreign policy making. Rather, it reflected a genuine level of exasperation. The fact is that Washington has reason to feel that New Delhi has not done enough to define its own sense of its role as an emerging great power, and consequently has no settled vision of what it wants from a strategic partnership with the United States. India is gradually moving from its traditional obsession with preserving its own strategic autonomy in the face of external pressure to a broader acceptance of its own responsibilities in shaping the world in which it wants to thrive. But there is not yet a full-fledged consensus on what that entails and how far it permits the two countries to flesh out the meaning of the expression ‘natural allies’ first used by both governments in the current decade.