Narendra Modi’s Deng Xiaoping moment

Context:

Recently, the US National Security Adviser visited India and is expected to finalize the agreements that are to be unveiled during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington on June 22. 

• The public focus is on major deals to facilitate significant defense industrial collaboration and high-technology trade between the two nations.

New Economic Policy of the US:

• The US plans to restructure the global economy. 
• Ensuring the foreign economic policy that serves the interests of the American people. 
• The focus on “economic security” has become the keystone in Washington’s approach towards domestic manufacturing, international trade, technology coalitions, climate change, and multilateral development institutions.
• This geoeconomic agenda centered on competing vigorously with China, rebooting traditional alliances, building new partnerships, and constructing new regional and global coalitions. 

What India needs to Focus?

• Discussion: A thorough discussion on Washington’s new geoeconomics that promises not only to radically change the international order but also to create pathways to re-engineer the Indian economy and open the door for the modernisation of its technological toolkit. 
• Contribution of Business Makers: India needs its business leaders, technological entrepreneurs, and economic policymakers to weigh in a lot more on the future of bilateral relations with the US.

The story of the India-US relations: 

• Entrenched Skepticism: Over the last three decades, there was entrenched skepticism within the strategic communities.
• Historic Hesitations: India had “historic hesitations” – which Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly discarded when he last addressed the joint session of the US Congress. 
• Pakistan Factor: One hesitation related to India’s concerns about America’s relationship with Pakistan. The conventional wisdom in Delhi until recently was that the US will never abandon Pakistan, but now Pakistan is marginal to the American geopolitical calculus.
• Kashmir Factor: In the 1990s, the Indian security establishment was deeply concerned about US meddling in Kashmir by the Bill Clinton administration. Clinton’s successor, George W Bush took Kashmir off the agenda by ending the US activism on the question.
• Nuclear Dispute: The nuclear dispute with the US was considered unresolvable since the early 1970s. George W Bush moved decisively in 2005 to alter the US domestic law on nonproliferation and pushed the international community to change the global rules of nuclear commerce in favor of India. 
• China Factor: The last few years under Donald Trump and Biden have left no room for India’s long standing resentment against the US partnership with China. 
  • The US now has a bipartisan consensus on standing up to the China challenge and limiting the possibilities for Beijing’s hegemony over Asia.
  • This has coincided with the growing Chinese threat to India and facilitated a convergence of interests between India and the US on stabilizing the Asian balance of power.

Bilateral Relations between India and the US:

• Defense and Security Cooperation: The two nations have signed several agreements to enhance defense and security cooperation. 
  • These include GSOMIA, LEMOA, COMCASA, and BECA, which facilitate information sharing, logistics support, and communication security. 
  • The US is also offering technology and capital to help India reduce its reliance on Russian weapons.
• Trade and Economic Relations: The U.S. has emerged as India’s biggest trading partner in 2022-23.
  • The bilateral trade between India and the U.S. has increased by 7.65% to USD 128.55 in 2022-23 as against USD 119.5 billion in 2021-22.
  • Exports to the U.S. rose by 2.81% to USD 78.31 billion in 2022-23 as against USD 76.18 billion in 2021-22, while imports grew by about 16% to USD 50.24 billion.
• Multilateral Engagements: India and the US collaborate closely at various multilateral organizations, including the United Nations, G20, ASEAN, IMF, WTO, World Bank, Quad, and ISA. 
• Clean Energy: The PACE (Partnership to Advance Clean Energy), The Department of Energy (DOE) and the Government of India have established the Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC) designed to promote clean energy innovations by teams of scientists from India and the US.

• Science & Technology Cooperation between India & US:
  • India-U.S. Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement signed in 2005, which was renewed for a period of ten years in 2019.
  • The Indo-U.S. Science & Technology Forum (IUSSTF), promotes cooperation in Science, Technology and Innovation is playing an important role in strengthening cooperation in this field.
  • The India-U.S Joint Working Group on Civil Space Cooperation regularly reviews the status of cooperation and identifies new areas for furthering space cooperation.
  • ISRO and NASA are also working together on projects like NISAR, Mars exploration, heliophysics, and human spaceflight.

The future potential of a bilateral relationship:

• Assistance: The US is eager to assist and benefit from India’s long-pressing need to reduce its massive reliance on Russian weapons. 
• Offerings: There is now an offering of US technology and capital to expand and modernize India’s defense industrial base.
• New geopolitical convergence: The challenge for India and the US now is to translate the new geopolitical convergence into concrete outcomes.
• Geoeconomic Collaboration: The real challenge and opportunity today for India and the US lie elsewhere – in seizing the possibilities for geoeconomic collaboration that have been opened up by the Biden Administration.
• Restructuring the Global Economic order: Today, the US is seeking India’s cooperation in restructuring the global economic order and making the world less vulnerable to Chinese pressures.
  • India today is the world’s fifth-largest economic entity and poised to become the third-largest in a decade. For the first time since independence, India is in a position to shape the global economic order.

Conclusion:

• Geopolitics is not an end itself but an instrument to build national prosperity that is at the root of all power. 
• Converting the India-US geoeconomic possibilities into positive outcomes will demand the kind of hard work that went into bridging the geopolitical divide between Delhi and Washington over the last three decades. 
• India’s engagement with the US national security adviser this week is a good moment to start.

News Source: The Indian Express

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