When John Kerry arrives in India to meet with Salman Khurshid in the next edition of the US-India Strategic Dialog, one thing that won’t be in short supply from both sides is the soaring rhetoric of good sense.
For, everything nice and positive that can be said about the relationship has been said before and will be said and said again. Common values, shared interests, the ’defining partnership’ of the 21st Century and so on. Despite the odd disagreement between friends, the overall bilateral relationship between the two largest democracies, born of good sense, has never been in better shape.
Kerry even put out a very upbeat video ’message to India’ on YouTube as a prelude to his trip. In a country where the personal computer density is 30-per-1000 people, the number of Internet users-per-100 people is 5, and the Internet bandwidth in bits-per-person is 32 (compared to over 11,000 in the US), it can, however, be legitimately asked how many people will get to see that video, and of those that do, how many start it and give up because it’s as choppy as a teppanyaki chef.
The video is destined to be seen mostly by the Indian intelligentsia, not the masses. And this perhaps is the perfect metaphor for the state of the strategic dialogue that Kerry and Khurshid will be shepherding next week. The primary characteristic of the bilateral relationship at the moment is high level declarations of intent that don’t translate well to the working levels.
At the top, communication between the senior leadership on both sides is very good. But, once you get past that, the real engine of any bilateral relationship -- the mid-levels of the bureaucracies -- do not communicate consistently well yet.
For instance, on the economic side of the ledger, which is expected to dominate next week’s discussions, it is an accepted mantra that a strong and growing India is in the US interest. A group of Members of Congress have even written to the White House suggesting that the US support India’s membership in APEC.
Yet, trade dialogue is dominated by squabbles over minutiae like the sale of pet food and milk products, and India’s concerns about US immigration restrictions for skilled labour. These differences will not be easily papered over.
The defense and security side of the ledger is arguably doing better, though serious differences do exist on Afghanistan. At a time when the first Indian P-8I and C-17 have arrived within a few weeks of each other, on time and budget, that the US is quietly working to dispel the notion of being an ’unreliable’ defense partner for India has never been clearer.
Further, the Defense Trade Initiative (DTI) aims to reform the US’ own internal processes on technology release where India is concerned so as to make even deeper collaboration on defense technology, such as co-production and joint development, possible. Something India has wanted all along.
A leading Indian publication recently called the DTI something India has to ’sign onto’. It isn’t. It offers India a forum, and the choice, to raise the issues on US export control it has always found trenchant. But, people in India who should know about the DTI don’t, and a frequent refrain is ’nothing has changed’.
So, two questions beg to be asked: what is truly ’strategic’ about the US-India relationship? And, when the relationship and communication effectively exists at two levels, can it be functionally ’strategic’?
If the only objective that can be agreed upon is that a strong India will help the US, and vice versa, that predicts a sea of tactical disagreements that take time to work through. The end goal, a rational partnership between the two countries that boosts each others’ economic and security interests is clear. How to get from Point A to Point B is not.
A large part of this lack of communication is a paucity of ’strategic messaging’ from the US in India. For instance, absent from the lead up to this year’s Strategic Dialog are Op-Eds by senior US leadership in Indian print, which still has far wider reach than social media. The Russians do it, the French do it. Even the Chinese do it. Vibrant, noisy, yes, but the media in India is still a public space where ideas can be debated.
Without such messaging, many actions the US takes or announces with India are prone to mis-representation. Even including areas of disagreement, the US attitude toward India as a strategic partner has changed irrevocably in the last decade. Not enough people in India know about it. The US has been reluctant to ’sell’ itself publicly.
Messaging won’t magically solve the riddles of partnership. But, it might help shorten the time to turn strategic good sense into acceptable strategic congruence. Perhaps the US-India relationship is one where reality always lags expectations, but how big a lag doesn’t have to be a mystery.
(The writer is a Visiting Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation and a security analyst based in US)
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