Tata chair for strategic affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ashley J Tellis, believes that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent state visit to the US was a great success. Both sides achieved their objectives, and the visit highlighted India’s importance to the US. The relationship between the two countries currently has an irreversible momentum, as long as the conditions supporting its deepening continue. Tellis also discusses the potential for a deeper economic relationship, the focus on knowledge partnership, and the challenges posed by differences in values and interests.
Washington: Ashley J Tellis, the Tata chair for strategic affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is among the foremost scholars on the India-America relationship. In the backdrop of Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington, HT interviewed Tellis, over email, about the current moment in Delhi-DC ties:
In the history of high level visits between India and United States (US), how would you assess PM Modi’s state visit to US and has the relationship hit an irreversible momentum?
What the significance of PM Modi’s recent visit will be is a question for history. Only time will tell whether its impact was significant and lasting. Transformational visits are generally few and far between — if by transformational we mean visits that meaningfully change the course of history. Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China set the benchmark on this count. In the post-Cold War period, I would say there was only such transformational encounter in US-India relations: PM Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington in 2005, with possibly Bill Clinton’s 2000 and George W. Bush’s 2006 visits to India as debatable runners-up.
If we leave history aside for a moment, however, and just review PM Modi’s recent encounter with President (Joe) Biden on its own terms, I would say this event was a great success because both sides achieved what they had sought. Biden intended to display his personal goodwill toward the PM, which he did through the amount of time he set aside for intimate meetings. More generally, Washington wanted to underscore India’s importance to the US and, between the pomp and circumstance of the visit and the substantive achievements, this message came across loud and clear as well. Modi wanted to cement US support for India’s rise, mainly through technology and other forms of collaboration, which he got abundantly. I suspect he also valued his enthusiastic official welcome at the White House and on the Hill for its political benefits inside India, for what it says about India’s stature in the world, and for the signals it sends to China when Sino-Indian relations are still troubled.
If this is not an example of a win-win, few other things could be. But does this mean US-India relations have an irreversible momentum? For now, they do — and that will remain so as long as the underlying conditions that propel their deepening subsist.
When you started advocating a deeper India-US relationship, did you ever anticipate a day when America would be transferring jet engine technology and India would be buying sophisticated drones from the US? Could GE be the model going forward as an administration official indicated to HT?
I always wanted to see the bilateral relationship advance to this point and, in some ways, I regret that we have not moved further. Don’t get me wrong. We have come far, fast, and in some dramatic ways. But we are still come distance away from the vision I laid out in my 2005 monograph, India as a New Global Power, and in other publications. There are three areas where I think we can and should make further progress. We have much work ahead in reconciling the differences we have in our worldviews both at an ideational level and in terms of their impact on specific international problems. We can do much better in terms of achieving genuine interoperability in defence, and we need bolder policy decisions, especially in India, to achieve a real symbiosis between our two economies. It is somewhat ironic that we have a deeper economic relationship with China, which is a competitor, than with India, which is a partner.
Can technology transfers function as the motor for forging such a symbiosis? I doubt it. The GE F414 engine coproduction decision is an important step forward — because the US government released more technology here to a non-ally than is customary — but even if this model were replicated widely, it would not suffice to build the kind of economic interdependency between our countries that is necessary to advance our interests.
There is a clear signal from the American state to American capital to invest in India. What’s driving this convergence of strategic and commercial interests, and what are the possibilities ahead?
I see the official US encouragement to US business to invest in India to be part of the strategy of diversifying away from China for broader grand strategic reasons. Given the economic transformations occurring in India now, this is a smart exhortation. Hopefully, American business will see India as an opportunity and make bold decisions accordingly. But it is important to recognise that the US government can only encourage this trend, not actualise it. Whether increased large-scale American investment in India is realised will depend on how American private companies view the prospects for profit-making. And that, in turn, will depend on their assessment of the economic environment in India. At the moment, I see US companies interested in India as a hedge against problems in China. It would be nice to see this interest transformed into a wholehearted embrace.
One of the striking notes in the relationship in recent years is the emphasis on the knowledge partnership. You came here from Bombay to study; 200,000 Indian students study here even now. What’s different now and what’s driving this focus?
The deepening knowledge partnership is vital to both American and Indian success going forward — and it is linked to structural imperatives on both sides. India has a huge pool of human capital that is not always productively employed at home, and the US can benefit from both enlarging that pool and absorbing it into its own economy. That is part of the larger story of what makes America great and can help sustain its future innovativeness even as its own population changes in size and structure. For all its challenges, the US still remains the global technology leader and that provides opportunities for India to benefit from deeper connectivity with the American innovation system. Indian-Americans and Indian nationals already contribute magnificently to that system. Both sides recognise that improving the circulation of knowledge-creation across the two societies yields vital societal, economic, and equally importantly, strategic benefits. The complementary character of our two societies will make this search for strategic gains even more important over the next two decades.
You worked through the nuclear deal and saw the complex maze of export control regimes. With the launch of the strategic trade dialogue, the GE deal, and Indus-X, do you see a sincere, and an almost unprecedented willingness, in Washington to not let legislations and bureaucratic habits come in the way?
There is a willingness to rethink the character and the value of the extant constraints, but we are still at an early stage. The fastest way to stimulate change is not by pushing for portmanteau legislative or policy shifts to begin with. We went that route during the nuclear deal, and it proved exceedingly hard. In today’s circumstances, it may be better to try another route; develop sensible joint ventures that push the boundaries of collaborative activity, which then open the doors for legislative or policy change. The initiative on critical and emerging technologies could become an example of this approach. The strategic trade dialogue comes at this from the opposite direction—but whether it will produce the desired results remains to be seen. What India must do better is not simply to ask for more privileges from the US but rather create opportunities that yield sufficient benefits for the US to induce it to consider meaningful policy change.
From Quad to I2U2, from Artemis Accord to Indo-Pacific Ocean Initiative, from the Mineral Security Partnership to MDB reform, India and the US appear to be talking to each other on issues that go way beyond just bilateral ties. What do you make of the drivers of this deeper integration institutionally?
This is a welcome development that will only gather steam if both countries remain in sync with respect to their interests and their values. At the moment, much of this collaboration is coloured by concerns about China and the fears about the manifestations and consequences of rising Chinese power. The test will be whether this cooperation can be sustained even outside of China as a catalyst.
During the visit, with Barack Obama’s comments, the letter of 75 US legislators to Biden urging him to raise issues of democracy with Modi, and the response of Indian ministers to Obama’s comments, there was a clear contradiction in the political beliefs of the base of the Democratic Party, and the base of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But both governments haven’t allowed it to disrupt ties yet. How do you see this playing out and can it derail ties?
If the trends that India’s critics point to don’t improve, the disputes over values have the potential to constrain the ongoing transformation of ties to the disadvantage of both countries. That they have not intruded perniciously thus far is owed, as you pointed out, to governmental efforts on both sides, but especially to the Biden administration’s unwillingness to bludgeon India over human rights and religious freedoms. This aversion is rooted strongly in its estimation of India’s importance in the competition with China. But it would be a mistake to assume that the rivalry with China gives India full immunity. Already, the administration itself is divided on giving India a pass, and New Delhi’s critics on the Hill, in American civil society, and even in the diaspora are only growing—and these include Republicans as well. So it is not simply of question of the BJP versus the Democratic Left. It is disconcerting to me that values, which strongly united the US and India even during the most difficult moments of the past, now seem to be an increasing source of controversy. At a time when India’s interests are best served by remaining an object of admiration within the US, the dismaying trends within India only threaten to make it a disturbing dilemma for Washington.
Your essay in Foreign Affairs, titled America’s bad bet on India, on what US should not expect from India created a stir. HT asked both NSA Jake Sullivan and US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti about the concern that India wouldn’t line up behind US during a potential Taiwan crisis — Sullivan indicated that a relationship evolves and isn’t a snapshot in time, and Garcetti spoke about how there is 99% between US amassing troops in India and India sending ships to the Taiwan straits. So two questions: one, how would you respond to the administration’s clarification about its expectations? And two, if I can be a bit mischievous, given what appears to be an alignment of expectations at the top, do you think with the visit and the fundamentals being put in place, the US is making a good bet on India?
I do not actually disagree with either NSA Sullivan or Ambassador Garcetti’s arguments. I hope that the bilateral relationship evolves to the point where India would one day find it comfortable to participate in a US-led military coalition even outside of a United Nations Security Council mandate. And, of course, there is a world of things that both the US and India can and will do outside of the most extreme contingencies.
But being concerned about US national security, I cannot forget about the hardest problems, nor can I simply wish them away. What these remind us — and the current war in Ukraine is a good example — is that India defines its interests in ways that are not always identical to our own. This reality will become more problematic for the US as Indian power grows over time and it is unlikely to disappear no matter how close our partnership becomes. It is also worth remembering that India’s history, its self-image, its level of development, and eventually its own ambitions all set some objective limitations on how far the US-India relationship will evolve. Recognising these constraints is not an invitation to despair but a necessity to protect the partnership against frustration. This is a long-winded way of answering your mischievous question: Yes, the US bet on India is good — within limits. (The Hindu)
