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1、BurnsAmericas Strategic Opportunity With India The New U.S.-India Partnership By R. Nicholas Burns From Foreign Affairs , November/December 2007 Summary: The rise of a democratic and increasingly powerful India is a positive development for U.S. interests. Rarely has the United States shared so many
2、 interests and values with a growing power as we do today with India. By reaching out to India, we have made the bet that the future lies in pluralism, democracy, and market economics. R. NICHOLAS BURNS is U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. As we Americans consider our future role
3、in the world, the rise of a democratic and increasingly powerful India represents a singularly positive opportunity to advance our global interests. There is a tremendous strategic upside to our growing engagement with India. That is why building a close U.S.-India partnership should be one of the U
4、nited States highest priorities for the future. It is a unique opportunity with real promise for the global balance of power. We share an abundance of political, economic, and military interests with India today. Our open societies face similar threats from terrorism and organized crime. Our market-
5、based economies embrace trade and commerce as engines of prosperity. Our peoples value education and a strong work ethic. We share an attachment to democracy and individual rights founded on an instinctive mistrust of authoritarianism. And in an age of anti-Americanism, according to the most recent
6、Pew Global Attitudes survey, nearly six in ten Indians view the United States favorably. In the past decade, both President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush recognized this opportunity and acted to construct a completely new foundation for U.S. ties with India. Our relationship with India n
7、ow is our fastest-developing friendship with any major country in the world. I have visited India eight times in the last two years to help construct this partnership. I have seen firsthand the remarkable growth in trust between the leaderships of the two countries. I have also observed the correspo
8、nding explosion in private-sector ties, the greatest strength in the relationship. The progress between the United States and India has been remarkable: a new and historic agreement on civil nuclear energy, closer collaboration on scientific and technological innovation, burgeoning trade and commerc
9、ial links, common efforts to stabilize South Asia, and a growing U.S.-India campaign to promote stable, well-governed democracies around the world. And the United States is only just beginning to realize the benefits of this relationship for its interests in South and East Asia. Still, there are obs
10、tacles that the United States and India need to overcome before they can attain a true global partnership. The two countries need to work more effectively to counter terrorism, drug trafficking, and nuclear proliferation. Progress so far has shown how effectively we can work together to settle past
11、differences and meet future challenges. If it is sustained, we will have an even greater opportunity to put American and Indian principles and power together and shape a more stable, peaceful, and prosperous global community. MISSED OPPORTUNITIES The realization of this vision of a broad U.S.-India
12、friendship has long eluded U.S. presidents and Indian prime ministers. When India broke free from the British Raj 60 years ago, it was entirely reasonable to think that the United States would become one of Indias foremost friends and partners. President Franklin Roosevelt had been an ardent champio
13、n of Indias cause; many Americans saw the vision of the United States separation from the British Empire reflected in the hopes and dreams of Indian freedom fighters. But despite some successes in those early years, U.S.-India relations during the postwar period consisted largely of missed opportuni
14、ties. The two countries found a common connection as large multiethnic, multireligious democracies. The United States was Indias largest aid donor in the first decades after its independence; collaborated on Indias extraordinary green revolution, which helped end Indias famines; and rushed military
15、assistance to India during its border war with China in 1962. Yet none of this was enough to bridge the chasm of the Cold War. From the American point of view, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehrus nonalignment policy and warm relations with the Soviet Union made close political cooperation unachi
16、evable, and Nehrus mostly autarkic socialist economic policies limited trade and investment ties. President Richard Nixons tilt toward Pakistan in 1971 and Indias Smiling Buddha nuclear test in 1974 planted the United States and India squarely on opposite sides of the political and nonproliferation
17、barricades. As is so often the case with proud and great countries, this rather bitter history overwhelmed efforts to mend fences and postponed the long-desired partnership between India and the United States. Even as the Cold War came to an end, Washington focused on deepening its alliances with Eu
18、rope and Japan and engaging a rising China. India was left off the list of U.S. foreign policy priorities. But all that is history. Over the past 15 years, three significant developments have helped bring about the recent dramatic strengthening of U.S.-India ties. First, the end of the Cold War remo
19、ved the U.S.-Soviet rivalry as the principal focus of U.S. foreign relations and the rationale for Indias nonalignment policy. Second, Indias historic economic reforms of the early 1990s, led by Manmohan Singh, then finance minister and now prime minister, opened India to the global economy for the
20、first time and catalyzed the extraordinary boom in private-sector trade and investment between the United States and India that continues today. Finally, as the twenty-first century began, the global order started to undergo a tectonic shift, and Indias emergence as a global force was obvious for al
21、l to see. The arrival of globalization as a defining feature of the age caused Americans to understand that Washington needs like-minded global allies to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world. As Washington thought about how best to contend with the greatest of globalizations challenges -
22、international drug and other criminal cartels, trafficking in women and children, climate change, and especially the rise of terrorism and its potential intersection with weapons of mass destruction - it became clear to most of us in the U.S. government that we needed to combine forces with powerful
23、 emerging countries such as India (Brazil, Indonesia, and South Africa are others) to respond to these threats. In this radically changed global landscape, the basic interests of India and the United States - the worlds largest democracy and the worlds oldest - increasingly converged. That this new
24、U.S.-India partnership is supported by a bipartisan consensus in both countries considerably strengthens the prospects for its success. In India, both the ruling Indian National Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party have worked for over a decade to elevate Indias ties with the United St
25、ates. In the United States, shortly after the beginning of Indias economic liberalization, President Clinton signaled Washingtons desire to forge a new era of commerce and investment between the two countries. And after Indias May 1998 nuclear tests, then Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott eng
26、aged Indias then foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, in 14 rounds of talks over two and a half years. Talbotts negotiations with Singh were Washingtons first truly sustained strategic engagement with the Indian leadership. When he entered office in 2001, President Bush recognized early on the power and
27、 importance of Indias large and vibrant democracy in global politics. He essentially doubled the United States strategic bet on India, pursuing an uncommonly ambitious and wide-ranging opening toward it and displaying the courage and foresight to take on the complex nonproliferation issues that had
28、separated the two countries for three decades. President Bush called for the two countries to jump-start their relationship in four strategic areas: civil nuclear energy, civilian space programs, high-tech commerce, and missile defense. NUCLEAR SPRING When Condoleezza Rice visited India in March 200
29、5, shortly after taking office as secretary of state, she set out to lay a new cornerstone for the transformed relationship. She emphasized to Prime Minister Singh that the United States would alter its long-held framework that tied and balanced its relations with India-Pakistan. We would effectivel
30、y de-hyphenate our South Asia policy by seeking highly individual relations with both India and Pakistan. That meant an entirely new and comprehensive engagement between the United States and India. Secretary Rice also told Prime Minister Singh that the United States would break with long-standing n
31、onproliferation orthodoxy and work to establish full civil nuclear cooperation with energy-starved India. At the start of President Bushs second term, we knew that the nuclear issue was the proverbial elephant in the room in the U.S. relationship with India. We also understood that resolving it woul
32、d allow us to define a more truly ambitious partnership. India had decided not to participate in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1970s, and the United States and other NPT countries had, for three decades, sanctioned India for developing a nuclear weapons program outside the NPT reg
33、ime. The result was Indias isolation from the rest of the world on all nuclear issues. Yet by 2005 it had become clear - especially to those of us who wished to see a more effective nonproliferation regime - that this state of affairs benefited no one. One of the worlds largest and most peaceful sta
34、tes with advanced nuclear technology was outside the regime, whereas countries that cheated, such as Iran and North Korea, had been inside it. Despite Indias outsider nuclear status, it had been a largely responsible steward of its nuclear material and had played by the rules of a system to which it
35、 did not belong. By bringing India into the nonproliferation regime, we would modernize and strengthen it while allowing India and the United States to forge a larger and more ambitious partnership. When Prime Minister Singh visited Washington in July 2005, President Bush made this bold proposition:
36、 after 30 years, the United States was prepared to offer India the benefits of full civil nuclear energy cooperation. We would not assist Indias nuclear weapons program, but we would help India construct new power plants and would provide it with the latest in nuclear fuel and technology to run them
37、. In New Delhi in March 2006, President Bush and Prime Minister Singh announced the realization of this vision through the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative. Nine months later, in December 2006, a strong bipartisan majority in Congress passed the Hyde Act, which approved the initiative
38、, permitting American investment in Indias civil nuclear power industry. These steps marked a huge change in U.S. and global thinking about how to work with India. They transformed India overnight from a target of the international nonproliferation regime to a stakeholder in it. Beyond those first m
39、oves, the U.S. Atomic Energy Act required a formal agreement to lay the legal basis for bilateral nuclear collaboration. We concluded the 123 agreement this July, after long and sometimes difficult negotiations. The benefits of these historic agreements are very real for the United States. For the f
40、irst time in three decades, India will submit its entire civil nuclear program to international inspection by permanently placing 14 of its 22 nuclear power plants and all of its future civil reactors under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Within a generation, nearly
41、90 percent of Indias reactors will likely be covered by the agreement. Without the arrangement, Indias nuclear power program would have remained a black box. With it, India will be brought into the international nuclear nonproliferation mainstream. Some have criticized this dramatic break from past
42、orthodoxy, especially the decision to grant India consent rights to reprocess spent fuel. But in fact, the United States has granted reprocessing consent before, to Japan and the European Atomic Energy Community. Moreover, these rights will come into effect only once India builds a state-of-the-art
43、reprocessing facility fully monitored by the IAEA and we agree on the specific arrangements and procedures for it. The agreement with India will not assist the countrys nuclear weapons program in any way. And should India decide to conduct a nuclear test in the future, then the United States would h
44、ave the right under U.S. law to seek the return of all nuclear fuel and technology shipped by U.S. firms. In short, the civil nuclear agreement serves the national security interests of the United States. It has already become the symbolic centerpiece of the new U.S.-India friendship and is wildly p
45、opular among millions of Indians who see it as a mark of U.S. respect for India. Despite the objections voiced by the Communist Party of India in August of this year, the Indian government has stood firm and is meeting its commitments under the agreement. This agreement will deepen the strategic par
46、tnership, create new opportunities for U.S. businesses in India, enhance global energy security, and reduce Indias carbon emissions. It will also send a powerful message to nuclear outlaws such as Iran: if you play by the rules, as India has, you will be rewarded; if you do not, you will face sancti
47、ons and isolation. Several further steps remain. India must conclude a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, following which the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group must change its international practice to permit free civil nuclear trade with India. Then Congress will vote a final time to permit, once
48、and for all, U.S. firms to work with India to construct nuclear power plants to meet its need for electricity. During the two years of this diplomatic marathon of negotiations, my Indian counterparts and I worked more closely and intensively than we ever had before. We were sometimes forced to dig d
49、eep into our reserves of creativity and tenacity. But the outcome demonstrates that Americans and Indians can work together to achieve important goals on the most vital international issues - something once thought impossible. SECURING SOUTH ASIA Another fundamental change in the United States relationship with India has been newfound cooperation in South Asia. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, South Asia has been viewed in Washington as a region of vital importance to ou
