Indo-US Relations

Steering through the Changing World Order

Shveta Dhaliwal, Shveta Dhaliwal

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000460315
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book maps Indo-US relations from the turn of the last century. Amidst the changing world order, the bilateral ties between two of the world's greatest democracies have evolved from the thorny exchanges post-nuclear testing to present day's bonhomie.

The essays in the volume include perspectives from political scientists, policymakers, and strategic studies experts which renew discussions on Indo-US collaborations and negotiations on a variety of traditional foreign policies issues, such as security, intervention, arms and terrorism, as well as cover new and emerging issues including climate change and environmental protection, strategic cooperation and maritime partnership and the role of Indian diaspora in the US economy.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political science and international relations. It will also be of use to foreign policy and diplomacy practitioners, career bureaucrats and government think tanks.

1
Natural allies

The growth of the Indo-American relationship since the Cold War and its implications for the Trump administration

Aparna Pande

DOI: 10.4324/9781003093466-2

Executive summary

In recent years, experts and onlookers have noted a convergence of geopolitical interests between the United States and India. Such an alignment seems natural and overdue—India has long shared striking similarities to the United States domestically, boasting a large multi-ethnic population, a democratic approach to governance, and a strong feeling of national pride.

Today, moreover, India and the United States face many of the same global threats. The rise of China challenges both American hegemony and Indian regional influence—China is not merely another superpower, but one that sits on India’s border and also has been encroaching upon India’s sphere of influence in South Asia. India fears that Chinese growth will spread illiberal practices and influence, undermining both Indian and American interests. Additionally, the United States currently shares India’s scepticism about Pakistan’s support for terrorist groups that operate inside Afghanistan and India and have a safe haven within Pakistani territory.

Over the past two and a half decades, India and the United States have worked to build a strong strategic partnership. America’s first three post-Cold War presidents learned two especially powerful lessons from their interactions with India. First, genuine diplomatic connections facilitate a much stronger response to global challenges. The second lesson that the previous three administrations have learned is the need to compromise. Unsurprisingly, India’s outlook on global affairs differs from that of the United States, and India puts its own national interests first, which means the two countries are bound to disagree on certain issues. Finally, even though the India–US relationship is much deeper and multi-dimensional today than it has ever been, there is still a gap in expectations of the other from both sides.

By examining previous administrations’ strategies for forging constructive bilateral ties, this chapter hopes to produce feasible, mutually beneficial proposals for the Trump administration to strengthen and empower the ever-crucial Indo-American partnership.

Introduction

In recent years, experts and onlookers have noted a convergence of geopolitical interests between the United States and India. Such an alignment seems natural and overdue—India has long shared striking similarities to the United States domestically, boasting a large multi-ethnic population, a democratic approach to governance and a strong feeling of national pride.

Today, moreover, India and the United States face many of the same global threats. The rise of China challenges both American hegemony and Indian regional influence—China is not merely another superpower, but one that sits on India’s border and has been encroaching upon India’s sphere of influence in South Asia. India fears that Chinese growth will spread illiberal practices and influence, undermining both Indian and American interests. Additionally, the United States currently shares India’s scepticism about Pakistan’s support for terrorist groups that operate inside Afghanistan and India and have a safe haven within Pakistani territory. After decades of hoping that Pakistan only needed more aid and assistance and a sympathetic hearing in order to reform, Washington now appears to have come around to the view that Islamabad (or more exactly Rawalpindi, where the army headquarter is located) is unwilling to reform. India and the United States also view terrorism from the Middle East and Central Asia as a serious security concern.

For two countries with such extraordinary domestic similarities and with such convergence of geopolitical interests, the United States and India have a perplexingly ordinary relationship. Bilateral trade has grown dramatically in recent years, as have defence ties and diplomatic relations, but it has continued to feel as if something is missing, For example, India still imports over four times more arms from Russia than from the United States.¹ The volume of trade between the United States and India is less than a fifth of the trade between the United States and China; it has not even surpassed the levels of exchange between the United States and South Korea.² Even though the United States has established itself as a global superpower, India continues to approach its relationship with the United States cautiously and remains unwilling to commit to a formal alliance.

In fact, the two countries, which seem like they should be strong allies on paper, continuously find domestic factors and logistical challenges getting in the way of richer ties. Over the past two and a half decades, India and the United States have worked to overcome these impediments. Through the leadership of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, the United States has grown closer to India and overcome many barriers to trust. While obstacles remained when Obama left office in 2016, the relationship was certainly on the right trajectory. The election of Donald Trump inserted an unprecedented level of unpredictability into the equation. Trump’s freewheeling approach to foreign policy, combined with his scepticism towards immigrants and his opposition to free trade, has made India anxious. Since early 2017, Trump and Modi have demonstrated that even though they share some level of ideological similarity, their views often beget disagreement on policy specifics. Thus, one of the most critical foreign policy questions for both countries is how the current administrations can evolve and improve the Indo-American strategic relationship. By examining previous administrations’ strategies for forging constructive bilateral ties, this chapter hopes to produce feasible, mutually beneficial proposals for the Trump administration to strengthen and empower the ever-crucial Indo-American partnership.

The Clinton administration: the benefits of sustained negotiations with India

South Asia faced substantial instability during the Clinton years—India and Pakistan experienced some of their largest crises during the 1990s. In these formative years immediately after the end of the Cold War, Indian and Pakistani forces continued to clash in Kashmir, but their conventional rivalry morphed into a nuclear one. The Clinton Administration initially tried to avoid aligning itself with either South Asian power, but ultimately saw that American interests more thoroughly matched those of India than those of Pakistan, and that the United States should pursue a stronger partnership with India going into the twenty-first century.

Old and new disagreements between India and the United States

During its first four decades of independence, India approached the United States apprehensively. Indians disapproved of the Americans’ robust alliance with Pakistan and questioned the United States for consistently aiding an illiberal dictatorship despite all its talk of spreading global democracy. Simultaneously, American leaders despised India’s Cold War nonalignment doctrine and its cushy relationship with the Soviet Union. Additionally, domestic politics kept the two countries apart. India’s most prominent Cold War leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, were sceptical of capitalism and chose to nationalize large industries instead of courting foreign investment, a decision that depressed Indo-American trade through the end of the 1980s.

By the time Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, conditions were ripe for the US–India relationship to change from one of benign neglect to one of true partnership. As Indian security expert C. Raja Mohan explains, Indian leaders saw the end of the Cold War as an opportunity for a new Indian geopolitical doctrine, allowing India to “reinvent its foreign policy” and refocus its attention on collaboration with the United States.³ The fall of the Soviet Union also made Indian leaders rethink their domestic economic policy. One of newly elected Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s major initiatives was to liberalize India’s economy and promote trade with the United States. The Clinton Administration reciprocated, as it believed that India would play an integral role in America’s post-Cold War grand strategy. As Clinton’s National Security Advisor Anthony Lake put it, “The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement, [the] enlargement of the world’s free community of market democracies.”⁴

But American attempts to play both sides of the India–Pakistan rivalry during the early years of the Clinton presidency repressed the growth of Indo-American relations. In 1985, the US Congress passed the Pressler Amendment, which banned American military assistance to Pakistan unless the President could definitively say that Pakistan did not have, and was not developing, nuclear weapons. Congress was suspicious of Pakistan’s military dictator Zia ul-Haq and was committed to limiting the spread of nuclear weapons technology. By 1995, however, Pakistan was in the hands of the more charming and liberal Benazir Bhutto, who visited Clinton in Washington and presented a new image of Pakistan. This helped sway Congress to pass the Brown Amendment, which permitted the United States to deliver Pakistan USD 368 million worth of military equipment.⁵ The Brown Amendment left many Indians feeling betrayed.

Indian objections to President’s Clinton condemnation of counterinsurgency practices in Kashmir also stalled relations. In the early 1990s, Pakistani-backed militants maintained a fierce insurgency in the disputed territories of Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian government cracked down hard against the insurgency, killing around 5,000 militants between 1990 and 1994.⁶ The Clinton administration condemned the Indian Army for “significant human rights abuses” in Kashmir, although it did not act on the issue. This left both Pakistanis and Indians dissatisfied. Pakistanis wanted a more substantive intervention against India, while Indians wanted the United States to stop meddling in their affairs, arguing that their counterinsurgency efforts were necessary to quell a domestic uprising. Although Clinton was right not to sacrifice his values and beliefs to appease India, this disagreement drove a wedge between him and the Rao government.

The Indian government’s continued nuclear proliferation efforts deepened the wedge between Washington and Delhi. By the time Clinton came to office, India hadn’t conducted a nuclear test in nearly two decades, but it also hadn’t signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and was suspected of adding to its nuclear arsenal. As Clinton’s Press Secretary Dee De...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Natural allies: the growth of the Indo-American relationship since the Cold War and its implications for the Trump administration
• 2 Legality of economic sanctions imposed by the United States
• 3 India in the US grand strategy for the twenty-first century
• 4 Saga of Indo-US climate contestation and cooperation: a legal analysis
• 5 US–India maritime partnership and the Trump administration
• 6 America, India and military humanitarian intervention
• 7 India’s balancing act between Israel and Palestine vis-à-vis the United States
• 8 India–US defence partnership
• Index