THE WORLD W LEFT BEHIND:

Building a Strategic Partnership (Lisa Curtis, 3/02/09, Heritage Foundation)

The U.S.-India relationship has improved dramatically over the last decade. Relations started to improve in the early 1990s following India's economic reforms, but lingering mutual suspicion from the Cold War era, India-Pakistan tensions (which resulted in three major military crises between 1990 and 2002), and the 1998 nuclear tests stalled genuine strategic engagement. Former President Clinton's famous 2000 visit to India created mutual good feelings and was a catalyst for improved relations, but it wasn't until President George W. Bush entered office with a broader vision for the relationship that we witnessed a substantive shift in the ties between India and the United States. The centerpiece of this paradigm shift in relations was the completion of the civil nuclear deal last fall, an historic agreement that has removed a major irritant in U.S.-India relations.

During the Bush Administration, U.S. officials broke the habit of viewing India solely through the India-Pakistan lens. Washington developed a greater appreciation for the Indian democratic miracle and viewed our shared democratic principles as the bedrock for a broader strategic partnership. Washington began to view India's growth in power as a positive development for the balance of power in Asia. India is now broadening its engagement throughout Asia through closer relations and trade links with China, strengthened political and economic ties to the Southeast Asian states, and a budding security partnership with fellow democracy Japan. India's increased economic and political involvement throughout the Asian continent will help to ensure that one country does not dominate the continent, and will encourage stability in a region that accounts for a quarter of U.S. trade and investment and almost half of the world's population.

There is some uncertainty over whether the new Obama Administration will maintain the current momentum in improving U.S.-India ties. Mr. Obama's statements during last year's presidential campaign linking the resolution of the Kashmir conflict to the stabilization of Afghanistan have raised concerns in New Delhi that the new Administration might revert back to policies that view India narrowly through the South Asia prism rather than as the emerging global power it has become. Indian concerns were somewhat assuaged by the late-January announcement that Richard Holbrooke, special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, would focus on those two countries, not on India or Jammu and Kashmir.

There's more than a little irony in the fact that George W. Bush was our first president whose orientation was towards the Indian and Pacific Oceans but that his successor--of Kenyan heritage, born in Hawaii, and raised in Indonesia--is an Atlanticist.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 3, 2009 12:03 PM