Seven years ago this week when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly, little did he know that his two conversations on the sidelines, with then US President George Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, would trigger the beginning of two of his most important policy initiatives in his first term.
Both conversations were exceptionally warm and productive. President Bush kept addressing him as “sir” and exuded uncharacteristic warmth. President Musharraf and Dr Singh closed themselves in a room in a New York hotel, with then external affairs minister Natwar Singh and other officials sitting outside, for a one-on-one conversation that laid the foundation of the most productive dialogue between Indian and Pakistani heads of government in two decades.
The defining foreign policy agenda for the entire first term of the Manmohan Singh government was set in the third week of September in 2004. While the dialogue with President Bush yielded the concrete result of the agreement on co-operation in civil nuclear energy, based on an implicit recognition of India as a nuclear power, that with President Musharraf could not deliver on the promise of a “Naya Kashmir” that both leaders had defined together and offered their imprimatur.
Seven years later, however, both relationships are adrift. All three countries – India, Pakistan and the US – are focused on domestic problems. No one expects any important movement forward in either of the two bilateral relationships this week when Dr Singh returns to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. So it is not surprising that Dr Singh is not scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama and that Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani will not be present in New York. If India had not been elected to the UN Security Council, it is possible that Dr Singh too would have skipped this session, as he did for the last three sessions. That, however, is partly in the nature of things and partly a reflection of the fact that all three interlocutors are more preoccupied today with challenges at home.
Given this domestic preoccupation of US and Indian political leadership, there may not be much interest in the bilateral relationship at this stage, but it is in times like these that both India and the US must reflect on the nature of their emerging partnership in a difficult, rapidly changing and challenging world.
India’s relationship with the US, and the shadow of China and Pakistan on that relationship, is the subject of the first- ever joint India-US report on the bilateral relationship published this week and released simultaneously in Washington, DC and New Delhi.* The report of the joint study group set up by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Aspen Institute India (AII), titled “The United States and India: A Shared Strategic Future”, sums up the “core convictions” of the authors of the report as:
“(1) An ever more powerful and influential India in the international arena is deeply in the United States’ national interest. (2) A United States that maintains its power and influence in the international arena, especially in Asia, is deeply in India’s national interest. (3) The closest possible policy collaboration between India and the United States in all the dimensions of their relationship is increasingly important to both nations, helps sustain a favourable balance of power in Asia and beyond, and promotes international peace and stability beginning in Asia writ large.”
The authors of the report are realistic enough to recognise that there are issues on which the two countries would differ — for example, India’s relations with Iran and the US role in West Asia. The more important point the report drives home is the growing convergence in thinking in both countries about China and Pakistan, about nuclear proliferation and terrorism, about dealing with global economic slowdown and climate change.
The importance of the CFR-AII report is that it takes the India-US relationship away from a “transactional” framework – “what’s in it for me versus what’s in it for you” – and places it firmly within a wider strategic perspective. A rising India and a declining US can work together to ensure the former’s rise and arrest the latter’s decline! In doing so, the two can fight the threat of terrorism together more effectively and ensure stability within a rapidly-changing Asia.
At this point in time, the leadership in both countries would find an observation of the group particularly relevant: “Both states are transitioning to new roles in the international system. For India, great power status means that it will have greater responsibilities in managing global problems. On controversial subjects, avoiding taking positions is inappropriate for such a potentially major contributor to the international system. For the United States, which became accustomed to often leading alone, it means encouraging a more prominent role for a state like India, even though India’s more prominent voice may periodically disagree on matters of policy.” The relationship will have to be based on such honourable, if onerous, principles.
If the politically beleaguered President Obama and Prime Minister Singh are able to find time to read the CFR-AII report and think of the future, rather than being preoccupied with the problems of the present that both understandably face, they may be able to breathe new life into what was at one time viewed in both countries as the “defining bilateral relationship” of the 21st century.
*The writer is a member of the joint study group
