Study: U.S.-India relations face continued challenges

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. can’t afford to “muddle through” the relationship between New Delhi and Washington, D.C., according to Nirupama Rao, co-chair of the Center for American Progress Task Force on U.S. India Relations. Acknowledging that there’s no denying the relationship between the two democracies is “indispensable,” she said the U.S. “cannot afford to let it be overtaken by the transactional.” She said the U.S. must keep the larger picture in mind, “especially given the shifting geopolitical sands around us in our region of the Indian Ocean and Asia.”

Rao, former Indian Ambassador to the U.S who also served as India’s Ambassador to China, said it is important to get a clear-cut definition of what Asia is today.

“Is it an interrupted Asia? Is in an Asia that is only marked by the rise of China, or is it an Asia that speaks loudly and clearly about a liberal world order, a democratic world order that is symbolized by the close relationship between India and the United States?” she said. “There are sections in both countries that kept us not as close as we should be because there are leftovers from history. Prime Minister Modi spoke of hesitations of history, of leaving them behind us.”

She said some of the “the hesitations of history” still impact the nations’ relationship, whether it is Washington’s views on India’s foreign policy stance in the past or its relationship with Pakistan. She said the U.S. has been “relatively obsessed” with the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and the billions the U.S. has invested in military and economic largesse to Islamabad.

“We have to address many of these stereotypes, many of these perceptions, and we have to create a pathway to overcome these stereotypes and prejudices, because if we have to build this relationship and build on all these aspects we defined in this report, think of the future of work, think of the strategic advantage, we need to create for India with help from the United States.”

Rao said priorities should include building a joint defense implementation agreement, accelerating and improving the effectiveness of humanitarian and disaster relief efforts and promoting ties between the student and educational communities in both countries. “The sky is really the limit,” she said, calling it “enormously important at this time and at this turn in world affairs.”

Rich Verma, former U.S. ambassador to India, and the other co-chair of the task force, noted that one of the most distinct advantages the U.S.-India relationship enjoys is its totally non-partisan nature.

“It’s a most non-partisan kind of agreement that transcends party and person and that’s where we’ve seen the relationship come over decades and so, the comment by Prime Minister Modi of overcoming the hesitations of history is really important,” said Verma. Now vice-chairman of the Asia Group, Verma said it is important to appreciate how difficult the relationship was in the not-too-distant past.

“It was a painful process to hear what we didn’t want to hear about each other, but it was an important exercise,” he said. “We don’t want to go through this roller-coaster in the relationship again in 2020 or 2040. We don’t want to be in one of those valleys again in the relationship. We know we are not going to always hit home runs, we don’t necessarily need to have a civil nuclear agreement every three or four years. We want to keep hitting singles, we want to keep kind of dancing in the relationship and that’s the kind of things we focused on in the report.”

Verma noted the “incredible success” in the area of defense in recent years. “In this report, we talk about taking it to the next level and actually giving India a strategic advantage in the Asia-Pacific—making India the linchpin of our future security. It means that India is treated as our closest ally and partner for purposes of technology transfer—ensuring that India has the capabilities to actually prevail in contested domains.”

He said, however, that because governments are inherently limited in their abilities to bring countries together, it is ultimately up to the people of each nation themselves. “It is ultimately the people and these incredible success stories at every level that are doing amazing things in both countries, and we want to see more of that and spark more of that. And, that is where there are some creative ideas here on doing more on education and cultural exchanges—doing more on civil society, doing more to really get people excited about this relationship.”


Rao called that dimension the core of the relationship “and the ties between whom need to strengthen if we are to really promote that wider understanding of this relationship.”

Michael Fuchs, task force director and senior fellow at CAP said, this new report stood out from others’ studies because “first, we had half of the group from India and half of the group from the United States, and we brought them together and so the debates and the discussions to put this report together were some of the most interesting ones I’ve been involved in.”

Secondly, he said, task force membership comprised not just foreign policy experts but “some who’ve never touched this India-U.S. relationship before.” That, he said, allowed for a crucial melding of different perspectives.