President Obama set his stamp on the US-India agenda with his declaration that our relations constitute an ‘indispensible partnership’ for the 21st century. The President’s accomplishments around his visit illustrate how we are taking the US relationship with India into new and uncharted territory: Headlines went to our endorsement of a reformed UNSC that includes India as a permanent member.
But there was also significant progress on defence sales and our security partnership, including:
- Finalising the $4.1-billion sale of 10 C-17 Globemaster heavy lift aircraft, a transaction that builds on the 2008 purchase of six C-130J transport aircraft by the Indian Air Force, with future potential for large-scale cooperation in this area. The first C-130J just arrived in India last week. Both acquisitions demonstrate India’s resolve to build a military capacity that meets its expanding strategic horizons
- The recent weeks have also seen intense discussion of India’s tender for a new Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft: Two American companies are competing for this $11-billion tender to provide 126 aircraft to the Indian Air Force
- Secretary Locke is in India this week at Aero India and has underscored the importance of high technology trade to our knowledge-based economic partnership
- In the area of non-proliferation, we concluded an important MoU on global nuclear security issues, under the auspices of India’s Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership
- US support for India’s full membership in the four multilateral export control regimes (Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, Australia Group, and Wassenaar Arrangement)
- Reflecting our confidence in India’s non-proliferation credentials, we removed India’s space agency (ISRO) and its major Defense Research Organization (DRDO) from the Commerce Entities List, with positive implications for space and defence cooperation
- Completed the governmental understandings required for implementation of the US-India civil-nuclear cooperation agreement and welcomed India’s intention to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation this year.
We also advanced several other joint initiatives that illustrate how our partnership is advancing in almost every area of government endeavour:
- Launched US-India Open Government Dialogue
- Clean energy: robust private sector synergies, along with govt-to-govt collaboration like the bilateral Partnership to Advance Clean Energy or PACE and a new MOU on shale gas.
- Agreed to convene a higher education summit in June
- Human security: work together to develop, test, and replicate transformative technologies – ‘an Evergreen Revolution.’
- New trilateral cooperation to advance economic development in regions of shared interests such as Afghanistan and Africa. Reflects both India’s rise as a more much consequential actor in international politics and the ways in which that development helps to advance US interests.
So what does a global strategic partnership between the United States and India mean for Singapore, Southeast Asia, and the Asian continent writ large?
One area of US-India cooperation in which we see great potential is furthering India’s engagement with East Asia. We’ve moved from a transatlantic century to a transpacific century, in which the rise of Asia has already started to define the 21st century. As the fulcrum of geopolitics moves to Asia, India plays a critical role in US strategy.
We welcome the fact that other large Asia-Pacific democracies — Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and South Korea — are also engaging more closely with New Delhi and cooperating more systematically on security issues. Likewise, it is no coincidence that the President began his trip to four Asian democracies with a three-day stay in India.
We strongly welcome this recent progress in the East Asian and Southeast Asian bilateral relations with India, and hope New Delhi will further build on these steps, adopting a ‘Be East’ policy that seeks to expand its market and security integration across the region and enhance its role in Asian multilateral fora.
Excerpts from a speech by Geoffrey Pyatt, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs at US-India-Singapore Policy Forum, Singapore, on February 10