Global South, Great Power Dynamics, India, international affairs, US and canada, Writing

The US needs a new paradigm for India: ‘Great Power Partnership’

Samir Saran | Kaush Arha

The US-India partnership is unprecedented in its scope. It holds the promise to substantially augment both nations’ security interests and to shape the world to their mutual advantage. The coordination and collaboration between the world’s longest standing democracy and its largest democracy will have far-reaching regional and global implications. This strategic alignment requires sustained forethought and concerted action—as well as a new realist paradigm and lexicon. Prioritizing pragmatic and principled interests and values will lead to the formulation of a novel US-India strategic framework and vocabulary unshackled by past preconceptions.

The era of great power competition calls for Great Power Partnerships. Size matters. As the United States engages in competitive or adversarial relationships with Asian and Eurasian powers China and Russia, it is prudent for it to seek a Great Power Partnership. Conversely, India is engaged in localized hostilities with its neighbors China and Pakistan, and finds its one-time friend Russia reduced to being a dependent of China. Realpolitik calls for the largest American and Asian nations, as democracies, to forge a Great Power Partnership to their mutual advantage.

But the US-India partnership represents a strategic convergence between emerging allies driven by shared interests and values. Both countries realize that they are stronger together in deterring Beijing’s hegemonic designs, which are inimical to both US and Indian interests. India shares the longest disputed land border with China and confronts the hostile China-Pakistan axis along virtually its entire western, northern, and eastern land borders. Meanwhile, China’s major foreign policy goal is to displace the United States as the paramount power in the Indo-Pacific and upend the US-led rules-based international order.

The US-India convergence extends beyond deterring the Chinese Communist Party. It smooths India’s path to achieving its “rightful place” among the world’s leading nations. In turn, the United States has, in India, a partner of size to shape world affairs to their collective advantage. Traditional security assurances and treaty provisions underlie the United States’ closest alliances, including those with NATO nations, Israel, and Japan. India has strenuously shunned alliances over the last seven decades. But realism will compel the two nations to increasingly act in concordance, whether they choose to institutionalize their converging interests into a formal treaty or alliance with reciprocal commitments or not.

The two countries have rightly termed this “the most consequential relationship of the twenty-first century.” US and Indian leaders have also referred to it as a “comprehensive strategic partnership”—the same label the United States uses for Vietnam and Indonesia. India deserves a category of its own: Great Power Partnership.

Areas of collaboration

Both countries are in the midst of a consequential election year, with India’s six-week national vote beginning on April 19 and the United States voting this fall. But these essential ties run deeper than any one administration on either side, even though the continuity of Indian administrations has been critical.

Still, to make this new Great Power Partnership paradigm stick will require more than rhetoric. The two countries need to make rapid advances along four fronts.

Defense co-production. It is in both countries’ interest to help India become the premier naval force and logistics hub across the Indian Ocean, as well as the munitions factory and backstop for a free and open Indo-Pacific. US-India collaboration on co-producing jet engines and armored vehicles should expand to include autonomous weapons with the goal of making the United States and India the bulwarks of the democratic defense industrial value chain.
Space collaboration, development, and exploration. In India, the United States has an ambitious, capable, and complementary partner with technical competence coupled with a cost-effective model for space endeavors. India’s space program will gain greatly in ability and ambition from close collaboration with US public and private actors. India offers scale and affordability to amplify US space investments and share the benefits with the Global South.
Development and governance of the digital economy driven by artificial intelligence (AI). The United States and India, as the world’s preeminent digital start-up nations, share an innovator’s perspective for digital governance. In contrast, a regulator’s perspective is more prevalent in Europe. It is in both countries’ interests to coordinate on shaping international AI digital governance that fosters responsible innovation and application.
Winning the hearts and minds of the Global South. India and China offer diametrically opposing visions for the Global South. China wants to enlist emerging nations into a countervailing bloc against the existing rules-based international order. India wants to enhance Global South representation within the existing international order to better reflect demographic and economic realities. The US-India partnership advances both India’s stature among the Global South and US outreach to the region. It is essential for both US and Indian interests that the Global South embraces and strengthens the rules-based international order. India is well-positioned to lead this effort.

Deepening the partnership

As democracies, the United States and India have a common interest in bolstering and modernizing the rules-based institutions that govern world affairs. Indeed, in the twenty-first century, the United States and India may shape a new international order as the United States and Europe did in the twentieth century. The largest American and Asian countries bear the responsibility to ensure that the twenty-first century international order equitably represents the Med-Atlantic, the Indo-Pacific, and the Global South—reinforcing their shared values of liberty and dignity for all.

The partnership between the United States and Europe is buttressed by cultural affinity and institutional solidarity through shared membership in NATO, the Group of Seven (G7), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and other groupings. The US-India partnership does not yet boast either cultural affinity or institutional solidarity at comparable levels, despite the rising force of the Indian diaspora in US society. In time, it can and should develop both.

India is projected to become the world’s third-largest economy by the end of the decade. The United States should lead the effort of inviting India to become a member of the G7 and the OECD. For their economic security, the United States and India should prioritize binding the Indo-Pacific nations to their collective economies more than that of China.

The United States and India have made great strides in coordination through multilateral institutional arrangements. These include the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, the 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (better known as the Quad). The frequency and scope of joint military exercises and intelligence sharing are also on the rise. US-India strategic dialogues on defense and economic coordination need to expand in depth and breadth to regularly engage functionaries in each respective administrative structure to facilitate greater interoperability and knowledge sharing.

The United States and India should also devote singular attention to advancing stronger institutional solidarity and people-to-people connections. Enhanced engagement between middle America and middle India holds the key. The United States is reinvigorating its domestic manufacturing across digital and industrial sectors while confronting a shortage of skilled technicians. India boasts a surfeit of graduates with technical skills looking for better employment. A US-India science and technology mobility agreement with prescreened skilled individuals from both nations would facilitate greater knowledge sharing and co-development between the two digital economies.

The US-India Great Power Partnership enjoys strong tailwinds, but its success is not inevitable. The relationship requires a considered understanding of the cultural, demographic, and political drivers at work in the two complex democracies. All too often, US-India discourse in bureaucratic circles and media outlets is prone to reflexive skepticism and mistrust. Both sides need a more reflective discernment of each other’s society and political system. In this area, the US and Indian business communities are leading the way with a strong sense of cooperation and comprehension. Overcoming what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described as “hesitations of history,” a constructive Great Power Partnership could advance core US-India interests and values going forward.

This article originally appeared in Atlantic Council.

India, international affairs, Russia and Eurasia, US and canada, Writing

Partnerships Matter: That City on the Hill; A Ship Adrift; A Lighthouse in the Tempest

India is the breakout partner for the US, defying what may once have seemed an improbable relationship.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first state visit to the United States (US) came at a pivotal moment for global politics. It took place as communities across continents grappled with extreme economic volatility, polarised and sometimes violent public, and a breakdown of an unwritten yet impactful consensus on the benefits and utility of globalisation and global integration.

As Air India One touched down in New York for the first leg of Mr Modi’s visit, the Russian special military operation (invasion) in Ukraine was entering a new round of bloodletting. The European Union was just one incident away from further mayhem. The US was witnessing its most vicious conflict of recent time, the Battle of Pronouns. The liberal order, so assiduously crafted over the past seven decades by the transatlantic alliance, was neither liberal nor an order; it was simply adrift.

Once a proud people whose every whim became a global fad, it was now a country divided by identity, perverse politics, and an enduring uncertainty about the future beyond 2024.

Pax Americana was now just a nostalgic musing. The country that was identified by South Block’s brains trust as India’s most consequential partner in this century, was unrecognisable. Once a proud people whose every whim became a global fad, it was now a country divided by identity, perverse politics, and an enduring uncertainty about the future beyond 2024. Elections that are celebrations of pluralism elsewhere were now viewed with trepidation and anxiety.

In the last decades of the Roman Empire, life may not have been too different. A bloated sense of virtuosity and entitlement, obsession with gender and sexuality, and condescension towards those different to you were some among the common attributes. Add to that the always present dark underbelly of American society—racism. This was now all pervasive and normalised across the political spectrum, either as nationalist fervour or ‘woke’ swag.

And American media was taking it to the industrial scale through its partisan and uninformed reportage on its own people and on others. Orientalism was justifiable as freedom of expression was somehow a divine endowment that fed its preferred echo chambers. Cancel culture was popular culture. Newspapers once again became pamphlets, and gun culture was the manifestation of a society determined to shoot itself in the foot. The Supreme Court of the United States was indicted in its collaboration to disenfranchise half its population and become part of the political circus.

The Supreme Court of the United States was indicted in its collaboration to disenfranchise half its population and become part of the political circus.

Maybe it was time for another democracy and plural society to step in. It was the right moment for the US to hear PM Modi’s assertion that “India has proved that democracies can deliver […] regardless of class, creed, religion and gender” and “there is absolutely no space for discrimination”. This assertion has weight. It comes from a man leading a nation with more diverse communities, cultures, and customs than any other on the planet. The man who is committed to carry the largest democracy forward and cognisant of the challenge of defending pluralism in a world where disorder is the favoured operating system.

The state must serve the streets, not surrender to it was the Modi proposition.

For India, despite the recent developments, America was still the best bet. A superpower in decline was easier to negotiate with and seek bargains from. A people most like its own were easier to disagree with and yet, collaborate to build a basis for the broadly similar future we would share. Of course, as it did this it would need to develop a thick skin and rebuff the commentariat from the Beltway and challenge SoCal’s technology platforms that would promote hate, cancel speech, supress dissent, and amplify irrationality depending on the politics that mattered to them.

India’s cultural and constitutional realities would need to be protected even if it meant throwing the harsh end of the rule book at some technology behemoths and meddlesome institutions cloaking themselves under thew garb of virtuosity. The challenge for India was to do both even as it set about expanding the strategic content of its partnership with the Biden team. And it had to do this while seeking to preserve its geopolitical space in a world where choosing sides was an obsession.

Assertiveness and confidence defined PM Modi’s body language as he strode down the steps of Air India One. A day earlier, he had announced India’s position on Moscow: “We are not neutral. We are on the side of peace”—a message to both Russia and to the ‘neocons’, who had grabbed the media space and headlines recently. He also expressed confidence about bolstering India-US cooperation at forums like the G20, the Quad, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. On American soil, he looked every inch the global leader who had put the idea of strategic alignment with the oldest democracy on steroids. This commitment was what he brought to the White House and raised the partnership five notches higher in tandem with President Biden who, despite domestic noise, turned up with his own resolutions.

First, India and the US have elevated their technology partnership to new heights. Both leaders hailed the launch of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies in January 2023, recommitting their countries to the creation of an open, accessible, and secure technology ecosystem. Defence cooperation received a major boost with a landmark agreement for the joint production of fighter jet engines in India. In the domain of civil space exploration, NASA and ISRO will undertake a joint mission to the International Space Station in 2024. And a Semiconductor Supply Chain and Innovation Partnership has been launched to galvanise both countries’ semiconductor programmes. In each case, India is the breakout partner for the US, defying what may once have seemed an improbable relationship.

Second, the wide-ranging defence deals—that also included the joint adoption of a Defence Industrial Cooperation Roadmap and the launch of the US-India Defence Acceleration Ecosystem—are not merely commercial transactions but indicative of a definite strategic direction. The co-production of jet engines; exercises in collaborative research, testing, and prototyping; and joint def-tech innovation all have implications beyond the deals themselves. They provide international stability and fortify India’s position as a strong, progressive nation. For the US, they act as investments in the Indo-Pacific construct and in a country that is now a geopolitically robust actor.

India is the breakout partner for the US, defying what may once have seemed an improbable relationship.

In a sense, the transfer of GE F414 jet engine technology and the sale of General Atomic predator drones in a government-to-government deal constitutes strengthening the frontline of democracy in the emerging geopolitical contest against authoritarianism. These platforms will be deployed where it counts; in contrast, constructs such as AUKUS are contingency planning.

Third, the rousing reception of PM Modi’s speech at the US Congress—and the 15 odd ovations he received for his celebration of the values of democracy, the unity of cultures, women’s empowerment, sustainable development, and technological advancement—more than drowned out the axis of drivel represented by the half-dozen members of Congress who chose to boycott his address. These were ad hominem voices that revel in false reason and pandering to perverse vote-banks. Their naysaying cannot undermine the stature of an Indian Prime Minister. The applause that reverberated through Congress was a vindication of Indian leadership, and of the PM’s belief that the “[India-US] relationship is prime for a momentous future, and that future is today”.

Fourth, the massive crowds of the Indian diaspora who gathered outside the White House to welcome PM Modi represented an evolution of the human bridge between the two countries. Even as they jostled for space and waved Indian and American flags, they stood for a community that sees both New Delhi and Washington, DC as its own and that will play a catalytic role in nurturing the partnership. Our domestic debates and contests will layer and colour the bilateral relationship, even as our domestic resolve will add steel to the partnership.

The applause that reverberated through Congress was a vindication of Indian leadership, and of the PM’s belief that the “[India-US] relationship is prime for a momentous future, and that future is today”.

The fifth and final “notch” has to do with continuity. The ties between the world’s oldest and largest democracies are enduring. From President Bush to Biden, with Obama and Trump in between, and from PM Vajpayee to Modi, with Manmohan Singh in between, we have seen heads of government on both sides staunchly committed to this relationship. Across parties, this has resulted in an abiding vision of a bipartisan future.

But it is now essential as well to recognise this partnership’s vitality for world affairs, its global impact on inclusive growth and development, and ultimately, on peace and prosperity. As the joint statement by the US and India puts it, “No corner of human enterprise is untouched by the partnership between [these] two great countries, which spans the seas to the stars.” It is time to invest in a global blueprint of this concert.

The present is muddy, the future is shared, and the possibilities are limitless.