What are the origins of the transformation of U.S.-Indian relations?
No bilateral relationship in George W. Bush's first term improved as much as that between the United States and India. The president has noted, "After years of estrangement, India and the United States together surrendered to reality. They recognized an unavoidable fact-they are destined to have a qualitatively different and better relationship than in the past." Some attribute the expansion in relations to the impact of 9/11. But this is not the case. Five days before the terrorist attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, I delivered in Mumbai my first major address on the bilateral relationship in my capacity as the American ambassador to India. I told my audience:
"President Bush does not intend only to accelerate cooperation with India on purely bilateral matters, although that will be important. He does not want his administration to engage more actively with the Indian government and people here solely in the context of the challenges of Asia, although that too will be consequential. Rather, he is seeking to intensify collaboration with India on the whole range of issues that currently confront the international community writ large. In short, President Bush has a global approach to U.S.-Indian relations, consistent with the rise of India as a world power."
These radical propositions represented a striking departure in American foreign policy. From the beginning, the president saw India as an answer to some of our major geopolitical problems, rather than, as did his immediate predecessor, as a persistent non-proliferation problem that required an American-imposed solution. Thus, the president and his then-national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, perceived India as a strategic opportunity for the United States and not a constantly irritating recalcitrant. Right from the start, beginning with the transition, the White House developed a strategy to invigorate U.S.-Indian ties and decided to stop hectoring India about its nuclear weapons. We began to speak about transforming the U.S.-India relationship.
Why did this transformation not proceed faster and further in Bush's first term?
For most of the president's first four years, this strategic objective produced a constant struggle with two entrenched forces in the bureaucracy of the U.S. government. The first were the non-proliferation "ayatollahs", as the Indians call them, who despite the fact that the White House was intent on redefining the relationship, sought to maintain without essential change all of the non-proliferation approaches toward India that had been pursued in the Clinton Administration. It was as if they had not digested the fact that George W. Bush was now president. During the first year of the Bush presidency, I vividly recall receiving routine instructions in New Delhi from the State Department that contained all the counterproductive language from the Clinton Administration's approach to India's nuclear weapons program. These nagging nannies were alive and well in that State Department labyrinth. I, of course, did not implement those instructions. It took me months and many calls to the White House to finally cut off the head of this snake back home.
The second is related to what I term the "hyphenators", those within the U.S. government who view India only through a Pakistan-India perspective. With respect to their public statements during these years, if one does a Lexis-Nexis search using the word "India", one will invariably find that the word "Pakistan" appears in the same sentence or the following sentences, or both.
In policymaking, the White House can say what it wishes conceptually, but this must be translated into specific policies. Implementation is the orphan of public policy inquiry. As Harry Truman noted as he was preparing to hand over the presidency to Dwight Eisenhower: "He'll sit there all day saying do this, do that, and nothing will happen. Poor Ike, it won't be a bit like the military. He'll find it very frustrating." While the intellectual basis for transforming the U.S.-Indian relationship was firmly in place in the first term, the implementation was sometimes halting because of constant bureaucratic combat.
What has now changed?
The visit of Secretary of State Rice to New Delhi in March demonstrated that the U.S.-Indian relationship is now being rapidly accelerated. Several issues were significantly advanced that were perfectly consistent with the transformation concept expressed by President Bush but had not been accomplished during his first term because of bureaucratic resistance, the administration's rightful focus on Iraq, and the president's re-election campaign at home.
First, the United States is now prepared to assist India in generating civil nuclear power. This is a major breakthrough because the non-proliferation fraternity had been dead-set against this throughout the first term. In my view, the United States should now integrate India into the evolving global non-proliferation regime as a friendly nuclear weapons state. We should end constraints on assistance to and cooperation with India's civil nuclear industry and high-tech trade, changing laws and policy when necessary. We should sell civil nuclear reactors to India, both to reduce its demand for Persian Gulf energy and to ease the environmental impact of India's vibrant economic growth.
