(Provisional transcript as delivered)
Ambassador Robert D Blackwill
President, BGR International; Former US Ambassador to India, US
Thank you very much Mr Chairman, I am delighted to be here. Perhaps unsurprisingly I am going to talk about the US-India relationship. I want to begin by saying that in my own judgement the alignment between India and the US that has happened in the last seven and a half years, is now an enduring part of the international landscape of the 21st Century.
In my view the vital national interests of the two countries are now so congruent, and their democratic values so powerfully shared, that relationships between Washington and New Delhi will be on a trend line that will make them more and more intimate in the decades ahead. This does not mean that the US and India will agree on every issue. It also does not mean that the US will not lecture India. The US, perhaps like the EU, increasingly lectures everybody on everything, but the Indians are perfectly capable of dealing with that. I will talk about some of the structural challenges to the relationship, and they exist, as well as policy matters, but one thing I am delighted to say is that this relationship will not be negatively affected by the changes in government that will happen in the period ahead.
The transformation of the US-India relationship began with the BJP Party in power, leading a coalition
government, and it has been strongly continued by the Congress Party, which grasped the baton and has carried it forward. In the US there is very strong bipartisan support for the US-India relationship, and therefore whoever is the next president will pursue that relationship with energy and conviction, and it will happen in the context of the strategic identity of interest between the two countries.
It might be useful to stop for a moment and think how far this relationship has come since January 2001. The US over these years has stopped urging India to rid itself of its nuclear weapons, it has stopped lecturing India on membership in the non-proliferation treaty, it has stopped urging, even demanding, that India sign the comprehensive test ban treaty, and all US sanctions against India connected to its nuclear programme have been removed. When I arrived here in August of 2001, there were dozens of Indian high tech entities that were forbidden high tech interaction with their American counterparts. The US has stopped protesting Indian missile tests. It was an historical oddity, that for many years preceding 2001 the US had publicly protested virtually every Indian missile test, while being silent on Chinese missile tests. The last two Prime Ministers in India, and the current American President, have contributed and led this transformed relationship.
There are some pending issues. First of all, to address it briefly, the Civil Nuclear Agreement between the US and India has been complicated by Indian domestic politics. I would say, but perhaps you would not agree, that coming from a democracy myself that furiously debates such agreements, and in which its own domestic politics are deeply engaged, I do not criticise India and its great democracy for struggling with the domestic political implications of that agreement. In my judgement, if it were not to happen in 2008, it would not produce a large bump in the US-India bilateral relationship. If I may be characteristically blunt, the next American President will not have the same sunk costs in the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement that this President and the top of the administration has. If it does not happen I do not think it will slow the continued evolution of the strategic identities between the two countries. However, if it does not happen, although the US will pay no price whatever, India will pay a substantial price in its future energy policy, and its lack of civil nuclear assistance from the outside world. So I continue to hope that it will be completed, and I know that is the view of both the US and Indian governments.
If I look to 2009, I devoutly hope that the next American President does not return to the pattern before 2001, of lecturing India on its nuclear weapons. I do not believe that the Indians now, after seven and a half years of the Bush administration, have any tolerance whatsoever to such lecturing about their nuclear weapons. They did not have much tolerance before, and they have none now. That would be a substantial irritant in the relationship if it were to occur. The same thing is true of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which conceivably could be a high priority for the next American President, depending on how our election turns out. Again, I hope very much that the administration to come does not wear out its welcome in New Delhi with urgings regarding the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
There has been extraordinary progress in the last seven years. That is based, and I will say this epigrammatically if you will allow me, on what I said before, which is congruent vital national interests. I can only in this setting, and with limited time, name them. They are, of course, dealing with international terrorism, trying to slow the proliferation of weapons of mess destruction, coping with the rise of Chinese power, trying to secure reliable energy from the Gulf, managing the global economy, and promoting democratic values.
If I think of 2009 and forward, I hope we will be entering a cooperative period between the new American President and another Indian government after the next Indian election. Regarding US-India defence cooperation, Denny Blair has stressed that this has come a long way, much of it happens below the radar, but it is making substantial progress. I would say that perhaps in the next five years nothing would have such a beneficial and long-term impact on the bilateral relationship as India’s purchase of an American combat aircraft, when it makes that decision in a few years time. I know Pierre may have a different view of which aircraft the Indians ought to buy, and that is fine, but I think that would have a major positive impact.
Pakistan; as Carl Bildt said, we all welcome the return of democracy to Pakistan, and we have all been encouraged by the recent election and the formation of the new Pakistan government. I hope this is not provocative, but I do not think anybody knows what is going to happen to Pakistan in the period ahead, nobody does. That does not stop pundits in the US from expressing their views, and in my view, since Pakistan’s future is so highly uncertain, and since it will have a very great impact on both the US and India, I hope that the two governments can talk in a very private way about that subject. It is very sensitive, but it seems to me necessary.
Afghanistan has been mentioned.
NATO is not winning the long war in Afghanistan, and Washington has been systemically very cautious in supporting India’s role in Afghanistan, which nevertheless, as my friend N K Narayanan has said, is quite substantial on the economic and aid side. I hope the next administration will have a somewhat more expansive view of what India can do to try to stabilise Afghanistan and promote peace. I have to say that I do not believe that the Taliban can be defeated in Afghanistan as long as it has a growing sanctuary in Pakistan, which will have to be dealt with.
Returning to an exchange that came from Carl Bildt’s terrific presentation and response to questions, which is that I would hope the US would welcome a much bigger EU role in the future of Pakistan. As Carl said delicately, but I will say less delicately, the EU certainly has a better record of nation building than the US. I would hope that the EU would make a major commitment in that regard.
Iran has gone away in 2008 from a hot issue in the US-India relationship, but it will be back, unless the Iranians can be persuaded through diplomacy to stop their enrichment. It will be back in the second half of 2009 and this is, of course, potentially a divisive issue between the US and India and, indeed, between the US and many other countries in the world. If I can be blunt, it is my impression that although India very much wants Iran not to acquire nuclear weapons, if it faces a binary choice of either that or an American military attack on Iran, it would choose to try to deal with a nuclear Iran, without the attack. That view is probably shared by 100 other countries in the world, maybe more, but it is not the view that is now dominant in Washington. I do not know what the next American President will do about Iran, except I hope talk directly and bilaterally to it, but this is an issue that will continue to be on the agenda.
The greater Middle East is another issue that we should talk a lot more about than we do. The National Security Advisor mentioned the 4 million Indians who live in the Middle East and, of course, India is increasing its power projection capabilities naturally, because of its vital interests there. We do not yet have a serious dialogue on the greater Middle East between the two governments, but we need one. This is all directly related to Islamic extremism and terrorism, and in my judgement it is hard to think of two countries that will be more affected over the longer-term by the direction of that Islamic terrorism, and it is obviously a subject that Washington and New Delhi could concentrate on.
That brings me to China, which is a difficult subject to talk about in a way that Beijing feels comfortable to hear, but let me try. Of course discussion between India and the US about China cannot be about containment. As my Indian friends here know, nothing will clear a New Delhi drawing room faster than an enthusiastic American talking about containing China. If the US tried to do this, no one would join the US in seeking to contain China in the current circumstances. That is quite separate from trying to shape the future of China’s external policies. If I may say as a sometimes professional diplomat, and with our Chinese colleague here, how much I admire the quality of Chinese diplomacy in recent years in trying to shape the American policies in Asia. That is the most natural thing in the world for the Chinese to try to do. By the same token, I see no problem with the US and India seeking to shape Chinese policies, as long as it is not done in an aggressive way.
India and Japan have been mentioned, and I want to say that there is, in terms of vital national interest, very close objectives held in Tokyo, New Delhi and Washington. I hope those relationships continue to flower. Southeast Asia, which the National Security Advisor mentioned in a couple of respects, seems to me to be a place where I would like to see a lot more Indian and American diplomacy in the period ahead.
I am afraid I am very pessimistic about the WTO and the Doha Round - and we heard this from Kamal Nath on Friday – we are in an election year in the US and our next Congress is likely to be more protectionist than this one. I fear I am pretty pessimistic, and we may not even get close enough that it will be a serious bilateral problem between the US and India.
As I conclude, what stands in the way of this further flowering of the relationship? First of all, there is no history of the kind of intimacy in the relationship that I am calling for. We are making some progress, but it is pretty slow. To make this banal point, India was the only democracy on earth during the Cold War with which the US did not have good relations, and those patterns are slow to change. We know the feeling the Indian left about relations with the US; I do not need to labour that. There is the constant problem that American policymakers face, and which our friends have to deal with, that we spend so much time inside the beltway arguing with one another, that we often do not consult very well with our friends. Our European friends have dealt with that for a long time, and now India faces the same thing.
The bureaucracies of the two countries have not yet institutionalised this changed relationship. This has very much been a top down process. If I may be provocative, it is the non-proliferation ayatollahs in Washington against the non-alignment babus in New Delhi. They are a vanishing breed, but they are not all gone yet. They ought to become historical artefacts, but they are not gone yet, and that is the reason that the continuing leadership by this Indian Prime Minister, this American President, and the next American President, is so important.
Let me conclude with this thought, which is visionary, and I recognise it as such; Gordon Brown was just in Washington in the last few days, and it reflected this special relationship between the US and Britain. That has become a clichéd term, but it does represent an extraordinary historical phenomenon. If I look forward 20 to 25 years, and look at Asia, the only country in Asia that has the promise, in bilateral relationships with the US, to move toward that kind of bilateral intimacy is India, because of its democratic principles, this overlapping and largely identical vital national interests, and because of Indian Americans in the US, which are now our most accomplished ethnic group. If you push the timeline forward, we will see a special relationship – not an alliance, but an alignment – between the United States and India, which I think is all to the good for international peace and stability. Thank you.
Dr John Chipman
Thank you for those remarks. We will not necessarily wish to speculate which religious leader visiting Washington in 20 years might take the headlines away from the Indian prime minister who would be reconfirming the power of the bilateral relationship.
