Perhaps unsurprisingly, the U.S.-India partnership is losing momentum under President Barack Obama’s stewardship. Fortifying the alliance was bound to be a secondary priority for any administration faced with a recession, a flagging war effort in Afghanistan, political stalemate in Iraq, stalled Middle East peace efforts, defiant pariah regimes in Iran and North Korea, and strategic tensions with China. Still, allowing the partnership to falter appears to have come easier to a president who never quite displayed George W. Bush’s zeal for the Indian-American relationship. To be sure, problems also exist on the Indian side. New Delhi has itself fallen into a form of post-honeymoon malaise, as the phase of grand political gestures gives way to tough technical negotiations. However, rather than mitigate the downside of this difficult period, the Obama administration is pursuing an agenda that further complicates it and, in doing so, risks some of the tremendous gains made in U.S.-India relations over the past decade.
In some respects, President Obama is less guilty of undercutting the foundation of the U.S.-India partnership than he is of mishandling the optics and failing to meet expectations. To its credit, the administration has gone out of its way to stress the importance of the bilateral relationship, praising India as an “indispensable partner.” In June, Undersecretary of State Willliam Burns reaffirmed that the U.S. government was “deeply committed to supporting India’s rise and to building the strongest possible partnership between us.” The remarks came on the eve of the inaugural Strategic Dialogue between the U.S. and India, a bilateral, top-level dialogue initiated by President Obama to pull India toward diplomatic parity with China. During the same speech, Burns moved the U.S. closer than it’s ever been toward openly supporting a permanent seat at the Security Council for India. President Obama also extended Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the honor of his first State Dinner last November. However, the gesture was widely perceived as compensation for an uninspiring first year in U.S.-Indian relations.
President Obama first raised Indian eyebrows in 2006, back in his days as a junior senator from Illinois, when he introduced two amendments to the landmark U.S.-India nuclear deal tailored to restrict India’s access to nuclear fuel supplies. The move was a bid to bolster his nonproliferation credentials in Washington but earned him few friends in New Delhi. Then, as a presidential candidate, Obama earned the ire of the Indian media when he reportedly considered appointing a special envoy to oversee/arbitrate the hyper-sensitive Kashmir dispute. That mandate was eventually withheld from Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, but first impressions are hard to reverse. Skepticism about Obama’s agenda was reinforced when, as president, his initial foreign policy priorities – namely nonproliferation and global warming -- placed the U.S. and India on opposite sides of the international negotiating table.
Then there is Pakistan. Short of fundamental changes in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, America’s generous financial and military support for that country will always be a contentious point in U.S.-India relations. In this regard, President Obama hasn’t dramatically changed course for better or worse. However, his administration did push through a massive, $7.5 billion civilian aid package to complement billions of dollars in military aid that Indians fear will be diverted toward India-focused weapons programs and terrorist groups. During the legislative process, the administration, particularly the Defense Department, lobbied intensively to get tough restrictions and accountability measures on the aid removed from the congressional bills. Elsewhere, the Obama administration mishandled the arrest of David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American arrested in October 2009 for involvement in the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 173, “India’s 9/11.” Repeated Indian requests for access to Headley, a former informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency, were rebuffed for eight months; long enough to fuel frustration and conspiratorial speculation in New Delhi before India’s National Investigative Agency was granted access to Headley for one week in June.
Afghanistan is perhaps the most surprising point of contention because Washington and New Delhi have for so long been on the same page. India is one of the largest aid donors to Afghanistan and a staunch supporter of the Karzai regime, not to mention extremely popular among Afghans. Like the U.S., it seeks a stable, democratic, independent Afghanistan free of terror. However, while it has done so politely and diplomatically, New Delhi has been the most vocal opponent of Afghan and Coalition efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. The Obama administration has been inching toward supporting such a strategy and Pakistan has been positioning itself to serve as the primary interlocutor and beneficiary in any settlement. India, naturally, doesn’t want to see the Taliban or any Pakistani proxy return to power. New Delhi is already painfully familiar with Pakistan’s agenda in Afghanistan: at least one of two devastating attacks on India’s Embassy in Kabul, a July 2008 bombing killing 58, was traced to Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) by U.S. intelligence agencies. As the sole voice cautioning against Taliban reconciliation, India was sidelined when the fate of Afghanistan was being debated at the London Conference in January. And New Delhi was visibly aggrieved when then-Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal warned in 2009 that “increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures.”
Finally, India felt not a little slighted when both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama skipped over the country on their inaugural tours through Asia. Neither missed China. At a time when tensions between the two Asian giants are on the rise, some Indians have been unsettled by what they see as the Obama administration’s “soft” approach to China. Hillary Clinton hinting early in the administration’s tenure that economic and strategic ties would take priority over human rights was one factor in that perception. Talk of building a U.S.-China “G-2” to tackle global challenges was another. Most directly troubling, however, was a joint statement at the Obama-Hu Summit in November 2009 in which the two sides agreed to “strengthen communication, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace, stability, and development in that region.” As the pre-eminent power in South Asia, Indians were offended their strategic partner, the U.S., was coordinating regional policy with an Asian competitor and rival.
Yet, ironically, China also serves as a reminder of the sound strategic logic behind the U.S.-Indian partnership. Take, for instance, the Obama administration’s 2010 National Security Strategy. The document reveals that while China often gets top diplomatic priority, America’s core geopolitical interests lie elsewhere. According to the text, the U.S. and India are “building a strategic partnership that is underpinned by our shared interests, our shared values… and close connections among our people. India’s responsible advancement serves as a positive example for developing nations… [and] we seek a broad-based relationship.” When China is mentioned, in contrast, it is in the context of “monitor[ing] China’s military modernization program,” ensuring U.S. interests “are not negatively affected,” and policies designed to “reduce mistrust.”
The difference may be even more stark in next year’s National Security Strategy, as fundamental U.S. differences with China have been exposed this summer by China’s response to the sinking of a South Korean warship by North Korea; disputes over the right of American warships to navigate and conduct military drills in the Yellow Sea; and differences over resolving sovereignty claims in the South China Sea. For India, the impact of China’s rise is even more pronounced, as friction mounts over the disputed Sino-Indian border; China’s growing influence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, including its “string of pearls” strategy; and Chinese-origin hacking attacks on Indian embassies and government agencies, to mention but a few areas of concern. Indeed, the U.S.-Indian partnership can endure diplomatic hiccups because the underlying geopolitical motivation behind the partnership is sound: America does not feel threatened by India’s rise and India does not feel threatened by America’s power in Asia. Neither can say the same about China.
China, of course, is not the only glue that binds the two countries. Despite recent troubles, in both India and America support for the partnership is unusually robust on both the Left and Right. Defense and intelligence cooperation has reached levels unthinkable just a decade ago. Cultural, social, and economic bonds grow by the year, as the American brand penetrates deeper into Indian society and the Indian-American expatriate community grows in affluence and political influence.
But the two governments must do more to sustain the relationship through periods of turbulence. First, India must take a greater share of responsibility for maintaining a healthy alliance. Much of the energy driving the rapproachement in the 2000s was generated by the American side, the byproduct of a Bush administration almost religiously committed to building an alliance. To court India, they revoked a laundry list of unilateral sanctions, ended decades of Indian isolation with a historic nuclear deal that objective experts agree was lopsided in India’s favor, put India and Pakistan on equal diplomatic footing for the first time, opened the floodgates of economic and defense cooperation, and eased rules on the transfer of advanced technology, to name but a few. Yet too many influential Indian politicians and commentators continue to treat the nuclear deal, and any basic cooperation with America, as a form of gift or concession to the U.S.
More tangibly, India can pass a nuclear liability law necessary for U.S. nuclear energy companies to do business there. The long-anticipated bill was introduced earlier this year but been stalled in a parliamentary committee for months. Without it, America – which made India’s forthcoming nuclear boom possible -- will be the only major nuclear power left out of India’s lucrative market. India also has tremendous work to do in opening up its markets. Restrictions on foreign investment frustrate economic cooperation and deny the Indian economy critical access to capital and expertise. Finally, India should move on three pending security-cooperation agreements sought by Washington to deepen defense cooperation, the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), the Communication Interoperability and Security Agreement (CISMOA), and the Basic Change and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial Cooperation (BECA).
On the U.S. side, President Obama can remove India’s major defense and research institutions from an export control list. The outdated sanctions have restricted the companies from trade in U.S. advanced technology since India’s 1998 nuclear test. In Afghanistan, America should take India’s concerns about Pakistani and Taliban influence into close consideration and respect its informed advice in the debate over strategy there. There are indications that the new military commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, is moving in this direction. During his confirmation hearing June 29th, Petraeus said “India has a legitimate interest in this region without question,” a welcome contrast to the assessment of his predecessor.
In Pakistan, the administration must do a better job ensuring the vast military and financial assistance it showers on that country is not channeled against India (or America’s own troops, for that matter). It also can provide that India-focused jihadist groups receive the same attention and scrutiny as Pakistani-based terrorist groups that target the U.S. and Afghanistan. Further, the U.S. can avoid coordinating its South Asia policy with Beijing, and support New Delhi when tensions with China flare at the border or when the pair clash at international forums, as happened at the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Asian Development Bank. These modest steps, combined with a bit of prudent statecraft from both sides, should be just the prescription to put a promising alliance back on track.
Jeff M. Smith is the Kraemer Strategy Fellow at the American Foreign Policy