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What The Carnegie Report Says The United States must align with India because...
The estimates are in, the assessments are being made as policymakers around the world adjust to the new balance of power in Asia. The rise of India on the global stage is no longer a question but the answer. At issue: how should the world's lone superpower engage an India in full flight to join the big league? The answer: if the United States indeed wants to stay the preeminent player in Asia, it must stop treating India as part of the problem. It must shed old inhibitions, adopt new attitudes and forge ahead with India because it is in America's interest to do so. Half-hearted favours and treats won't do. Current US policy declares India a friend but its practice thwarts New Delhi's aspirations. A bold, new report by noted defence and nuclear expert Ashley J. Tellis provides a detailed roadmap. Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a prestigious and independent think-tank, looks at India with open eyes, without condescension, and dares to call for radical changes—on the American side. India as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States breaks the mould of the predictable, the comfortable, the merely tinkering-with-policy attitude that managed to obscure President George Bush's ideas for India in the first term. Outlook obtained an exclusive copy of the Carnegie report to be released next week, with former US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, leading the discussion. During Bush's first term, Blackwill forced many positive changes in US policy despite stiff resistance, with Tellis as his advisor in New Delhi. Why should the US bother? Well, all current analysis says India is likely to be among the five major economies in the first half of this century and will overtake Japan, Germany, Britain and France at some point in the next 25 to 50 years. "The record thus far amply substantiates the claim that India will be one of Asia's two major ascending powers. It is expected that the Indian economy could grow at a rate of 7-8 per cent for the next two decades. If these expectations are borne out, there is little doubt that India will overtake current giants," Tellis testified in the House of Representatives last month. In the Carnegie report, Tellis quotes an internal CIA assessment where countries are ranked for national power—weighted combinations of GDP, defence spending, population and technology growth. By 2015, India will have the fourth most "capable concentration of power", after the US, EU and China. The CIA analysis also calls India the most important "swing state" in the international system—a country that could tilt the balance between war and peace, between chaos and order. The National Intelligence Council, CIA's brain trust, compared the emergence of India and China to the rise of Germany in the 19th century and the US in the 20th century in Mapping the Global Future, a public report. Besides, India is "a potential hedge against a rising China", says Tellis in the report, tying up the threads of worry running through Washington. |
| US leaders are concerned about the growth of the Chinese military, its monetary policy, its vicious attacks on Japan and its increasing power projection capabilities. Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have sharply articulated their doubts on these grounds. An unbridled China is not in the US interest and by bolstering India, the US can arrest the "growth of Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean rimlands and Chinese penetration of Myanmar", says the report. Another big reason: the need to preserve order in South Asia. Look at the map and it becomes clear that India is "an island of democratic values and political stability in a region convulsed by religious fanaticism, illiberal governments, state sponsors of terrorism and economic stasis. |
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| supporting the jihadi groups warring against India remains intact, and continues to enjoy comprehensive state support despite Pakistan's prominence in the global war on terrorism." Bangladesh could be the "next major case of political implosion" while Myanmar remains in the iron grip of the military junta. If India joined its neighbours "in succumbing to state failure or was threatened by its neighbours' pathologies", it would be "catastrophic" for US interests. A troubled India could unleash the disaffected into the world on a scale that would make "contemporary challenges look small in comparison. |
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Bush and former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee, both trying to break the old habit, announced a strategic partnership, thanks to some ideas people, including Tellis. But the much-heralded Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) was a "precarious" breakthrough, the report says. Bush's second term can make a real difference by demonstrating a true change of the American heart to the people of India. It shouldn't be a teeth-pulling exercise where New Delhi must repeatedly prove its credentials to gain anything. Such an attitude is downright "astrategic". It creates a dangerous situation where the US ends up strengthening China by default purely by denying India the technology it wants. Washington can begin the new era with some simple gestures. It can stop the "gratuitous public statements" demanding India sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as "a non-nuclear weapon state," a formulation that defies logic. It can call off the prosecutors who routinely condemn India's missile research. It can allow other countries to support India's strategic programmes.That's just for starters. The report is a thunderbolt of ideas, a shock wave of innovative solutions. |
It is backed by meticulous research so those married to the status quo can't yawn or dismiss it. Bush gets it. But to realise the goal, Bush should "enshrine his intention to advance the growth of Indian power in a formal National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) that provides authoritative guidance for the entire government". In other words, nothing less than a fatwa would push the American babus to move. From the earliest days, US presidents, exercising executive power like that of a monarch, have issued directives establishing new policy. |
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| require strengthening India, supporting its democratic institutions, and assisting in the growth of its national power, integrating India as a friendly nuclear weapon state into the evolving global regime, pursuing a special relationship with it even though New Delhi continues to remain formally nonaligned...." The Carnegie report says, "Absent such instruction, it will be difficult to ensure that bureaucratic debates actually advance the president's interests." There should be continuous high-level monitoring if the three dialogues—strategic, energy and economic—are to produce anything besides "lofty rhetoric, full of sound and fury signifying nothing". The dialogue leaders must find ways to treat India as a legitimate exception to the existing rules, specially in the nuclear arena. "Of the three outliers, Pakistan and Israel receive subsidies. Only India is currently outside the circle, yet it is expected to contribute just the same toward the realisation of global non-proliferation goals. Beyond a certain point, virtue cannot remain its own reward," says Tellis, articulating the generational frustration in New Delhi. The energy dialogue must focus on India's growing demand for oil, natural gas and on nuclear energy. As a sign of good faith, the US should champion India's membership in the International Energy Agency, a group of industrialised countries dealing with oil supplies. It should drop objections to the Iran-India gas pipeline specially because the US has not obstructed the G-8 from energy investments in Iran. It is an incentive for Iran to forsake its nuclear weapons ambitions and it helps the Indo-Pak peace process. Nuclear cooperation will be the toughest nut to crack because of the many US and international restrictions on India for not signing the NPT. But the report offers several options. The US could begin by inviting India to participate in international research on advanced nuclear reactors, something the energy secretary can do with a memo. It can provide useful nuclear safety equipment to safeguard Indian reactors, not the "trivial" stuff it has so far offered, and explore whether India would be willing to put more of its 14 reactors under international safeguards in exchange for "genuine access" to components. The US can also begin re-supplying uranium for the Tarapur reactor, a "contractual obligation" it reneged on. The strategic dialogue should focus on India's membership in the UN Security Council, in the Proliferation Security Initiative, defence ties, cyber security and space cooperation. There are good reasons for the US to support India's UN bid, the report says. If expansion is inevitable, the US "will have to live with" a larger body. It can either move away from the UN, in which case supporting India has no cost. Or make the effort to shape it, in which case India's presence would "likely be beneficial because there are no inherent conflicts of interest". Tellis is the first prominent US analyst to argue that the US should "not dilute the significance of this endorsement with churlish caveats" and prematurely oppose veto power for India. The support will ring in India as nothing else can and help clean the slate on which ugly words from the likes of Nixon and Kissinger still faintly show.  Tellis has big ideas for the defence sector. He proposes "a comprehensive defence partnership" which can integrate the military-to-military relations, defence trade and production, joint research and operations into a single document that defines an "ambitious vision". Given the strain on the US military, India and the US can sign an MOU on operations in the Indian Ocean given the high-value traffic and India's geographic advantages. Meanwhile, US companies should be encouraged to invest in India's defence sector, something that can help the trade imbalance. |
| If It's Strategy, Tellis Like It Is | ||
| Bombay-born Tellis is a low-key giant mind | ||
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 Some say he is frighteningly intelligent, others are simply in awe. His breadth of knowledge and level of scholarship are formidable. Ashley J. Tellis, the Bombay-born superstar of strategy, today ranks as one of America's foremost experts whose clarity of thought is like a force of fresh air. His India's Emerging Nuclear Posture is considered a seminal book. His other books include Interpreting China's Grand Strategy, Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella and Measuring National Power in the Post-Industrial Age.Meeting the low-key Tellis, you would never know he occupies an important place in Washington's policy stratosphere because he is without airs. Apart from being a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, a pre-eminent Washington think-tank, he continues as an advisor to the US government. Tellis has become a valuable bridge between India and the US because of his deep understanding of both countries. He knows the Indian aspirations because he grew up there. He knows American constraints and burdens because he became an American, having come to the US in 1985. Tellis completed his master's from the University of Bombay and his PhD from the University of Chicago. He joined the Rand Corporation, a Pentagon think-tank, as a senior policy analyst producing scholarly studies and books. His book on India's nuclear programme so impressed Robert Blackwill that he asked Tellis to come with him to India as his advisor. After a two-year tenure at the US Embassy, Tellis returned in 2003 for a brief stint at the National Security Council, becoming the highest ranking Indian American in the White House. Deeply interested in Roman history, Tellis can be just as animated by Renaissance art and classical music as by the great games he has witnessed countries play. |
| Here's How To Kill A Good Idea | ||
| The two countries would have been closer but for 'nagging nannies' in the US bureaucracy | ||
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| It is an article of faith for the Americans to criticise the Indian bureaucracy as slow and cussed. Which it often is. But now the secret is out. The US bureaucracy can be just as prickly and hidebound—and occasionally anti-India. It has the "proclivity" to pursue its own agenda irrespective of the politicians it serves. Indian interlocutors have labelled some US officials the "ayatollahs of non-proliferation" for their penchant to punish India because it wants its own nuclear weapons. Even as they winked at Chinese proliferation to Pakistan and North Korea and Pakistan's proliferation to whoever wanted the bomb. | ||||||||||||||||||
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John Bolton raised "objections" to providing certain items for India's nuclear plan.| It took me months and many calls to the White House to finally cut off the head of this snake back home." Strong words those, but the bureaucratic battles were intense. Ashley J. Tellis documents many incidents in the Carnegie report where the US bureaucracy purposefully blocked change, even cosmetic, and therefore retarded progress. When President George Bush declared he wanted India "with us," what emerged as the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership was far weaker than envisaged, thanks to the heated inter-agency debates. "On many issues, the administration did not move as far as it could," says Tellis. During internal discussions on providing certain items for India's nuclear programme under the New Steps for Strategic Partnership, the non-proliferation bureau led by John Bolton raised "strong objections", ultimately killing the idea. Even cooperation in cyber security has grown "too slowly" in part because of "bureaucratic fears in the US government about increasing Indian capacities prematurely". US officials decided that India was more interested in "expanding its capacity for information warfare or interdiction of terrorists involving Pakistan". As if stopping Pakistani terrorists were an unsavoury goal and as if those terrorists love America. "Given the scale, diversity, and sophistication of terrorist networks in India, New Delhi's interest in computer forensics, network surveillance, and the protection of supervisory control and data acquisition systems as means to defeat terrorism is not only understandable but ought to be supported as part of the US global struggle against his menace," Tellis in the report says. Then there is the "paralysing" habit of hyphenating India and Pakistan whether it is weapons sales or bilateral visits. |