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The Sunday Times International - Opinion

India and US: A partnership of congruence
Excerpts from a speech delivered by Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on Thursday at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D. C. on "Indo-US Relations: An Agenda for the Future"
India and the United States have, in the past, been referred to as 'estranged democracies'. Today, we can declare with confidence that we are engaged democracies. How has this happened? I will not go into the familiar history of the Cold War and the various factors that prevented the emergence earlier of an enduring partnership between us despite a healthy and genuine mutual admiration. In recent years, our shared values have been strengthened by the realisation of shared interests, leading to what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described as a congruence between principle and pragmatism. This is key to an understanding of our unfolding strategic partnership. I will attempt today to share an Indian perspective of the international backdrop to this emerging congruence.

India perceives the world today as one where the global agenda is being set by a constellation of nations including the United States, the EU, Russia, China, Japan and India. The United States is, and for the foreseeable future, will remain a pre-eminent power. However, no single nation can bear global burdens alone and the current international situation is characterised by the willingness of major nations to work together on issues and challenges where they perceive strong convergence. The era when global politics was a zero-sum game is now decisively behind us. Leading nations, even when they compete, have inter-dependencies and linkages amongst themselves that they ignore at their own peril.

A second aspect of the current global polity is that power is judged by a much broader criteria that includes economic, technological, managerial and knowledge capabilities in addition to military capabilities. A third characteristic is that globalisation has thrown up challenges that are trans-national and cross-cutting in nature. They require coordinated responses. These challenges include terrorism, energy security, pandemics, natural disasters and environment degradation.

Finally, there is now a wide spread perception that non-state actors are an important factor to be reckoned with, and will have a particular relevance to many of the key challenges faced by the international community. In this framework, the degree of convergence of values and interests between the major nations becomes the driving force of their bilateral relationship. The transformation that has characterised Indo-US relations in recent years has been made possible precisely because these convergences have been expanding steadily, allowing us to now contemplate an agenda for our future.
The security convergence between two major democratic powers like the United States and India is a natural one.

Its scope has been broadened by a realisation in both nations that our cooperation can not only advance our respective interests but prove beneficial to the regional and global situation as well. Whether there is the threat of terrorism or piracy, the challenge of natural calamities like tsunamis or earthquakes, the dangers of WMD proliferation or the problems of pandemics, India and the United States have been able to work together increasingly closely because they both bring important and often complementary contributions to the table. Our cooperation on tsunami relief in Asia is a case in point.

I hope that Americans would increasingly appreciate that when an open society like India pursues its own interests, this is more likely than not to be of benefit to the United States. The most telling example we have before us is in Afghanistan, where India is engaged in a massive development and reconstruction programme to stabilise that society. The success of our efforts in bringing electricity to Kabul or empowering Afghan women or fostering entrepreneurship and building an Afghan civil service are also all critical to the achievement of your own goals.

Our new defence framework is another reflection of this vision and the expansion of our military contacts and the prospects for equipment procurement and co-production are two important signs of the future direction of our ties. As our compatibility and comfort level in working together increase, our relationship will come to be viewed as a positive force in ensuring security and peace in the broader region. It will have particular value to a continent whose energies would be focussed on rapid economic growth and improving the living standards of our peoples.

The economic convergence between us has accelerated since the opening of the Indian economy a decade and a half ago. India's integration with the global economy created greater opportunities and prospects for Indo-US trade, investment and technology transfers. A more prosperous India with a growing middle class - already estimated at 300 million plus - will inevitably make more demands of US goods, technology and services. Accumulation of foreign exchange reserves is not viewed by us as an end objective by itself. We have also allowed our exchange rates to adjust to reflect changing economic fundamentals.

Our greater purchasing power has already led India to currently become the fastest growing export market for the US, rising at an estimated 30% annually. In the civil aviation sector for example, domestic liberalisation coupled with the conclusion of an Open Skies agreement, has seen massive purchases of US aircraft. The demand for industrial machinery, that already constitutes one-third of total US exports, and of high technology, is bound to increase as the Indian economy becomes more sophisticated.

The long-term nature of our economic partnership is further strengthened by the convergence based on skills availability in India and human resource needs of the U.S. An English speaking, pluralistic society with an open economy that produces graduates by the millions and engineers, and scientists and doctors by the hundreds of thousands, will be a natural long-term partner for the United States in the era of the knowledge economy. The 2020 Report on Mapping the Global Future brought this out very graphically last year. In assessing the strength of this convergence, we have to also take into account that a pluralistic ethos and an open economy are ideal conditions for promoting the kind of creativity that is a must to sustain knowledge processes. As we look into the future and make judgements on where vital skills are best located, US security would be well served if its major partner is another democratic society like India. It goes without saying that in a competitive society like India, investments in scientific research are likely to be cost effective for US companies.

India and the US are also in the forefront of the global effort to meet the challenge of terrorism fuelled by intolerant and fundamentalist ideologies. Our very existence as plural and secular societies, poses the most effective challenge to such ideologies. Neither can we afford to make tactical compromises, pursuing the war on terror in either a selective or segmented manner. This is a long-term effort and we are bound together by the conviction that democracy is the best defence against terrorism.
In July 2005, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Washington, India and the United States agreed on a very broad range of initiatives that underlined the transformation of our ties.

The visit of President Bush to India this March witnessed the further evolution of our partnership. Several initiatives announced in July 2005 were developed into concrete policy decisions; some were actually implemented, even as new areas for cooperation were identified. We succeeded in meeting the high expectations generated by the July 2005 visit and surprised observers in both countries by our ability to make major decisions in important and difficult areas. If the President and the Prime Minister expressed satisfaction at the progress that we had made, it was more than mere diplomatic ritual.

The issue that encapsulates all these convergences today is the prospect of resumption of full civil nuclear energy cooperation between India and the United States. This is an initiative that will determine - for good reasons - the direction of our future ties. It has a strong security rationale, as it would enable India to make a fuller contribution to global non-proliferation efforts. India has already significantly strengthened its export controls and put in place measures to effectively deter leakage of sensitive technology.

This builds on an exemplary non-proliferation record of four decades and more. We have also made a commitment to refrain from transferring enrichment and reprocessing technologies to nations that do not have them, and to support international efforts to limit their spread. But India cannot be a partner and a target at the same time. If there is an expectation that we should play a greater role, particularly in combating the twin threats of WMD proliferation and terrorism, then it is only reasonable that the energy requirements of a country with such strong credentials is recognised.

The economic rationale for this initiative is very compelling. Energy scarcity is the single biggest constraint on the Indian growth rate. An acceleration in India's progress will not only have dramatic anti-poverty consequences but would significantly strengthen the global economy. Rapidly increasing the civil nuclear component of our total energy mix has a particular urgency when its emission implications are taken into account.

The technology rationale for our cooperation is also a powerful one. Indian scientists now have much to bring to the table, especially in areas where they have established technology leads. Even in fields like reactor refurbishment, we are extremely innovative and competitive, and our activities outside India can expedite the global revival of the nuclear industry. The issue of values is not an irrelevant one either as we need to ask ourselves whether the world would not be more secure if key technologies, operational experiences and skills reside in open societies like India.

I am, of course, aware that the nuclear initiative has been the subject of vigorous debate here, as it has been back home. We respect this debate, and indeed believe that our case will come out stronger after it is subjected to the rigorous scrutiny characteristic of democratic processes.

I am confident that at the end of the day, it will be recognised that India has large energy needs and that its responsible record makes it a reliable partner for the United States and the international community.

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