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| Author: | Esther Pan |
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February 27, 2006
President George Bush travels to India March 1 for the first time in his presidency, highlighting the increasingly important role New Delhi is playing in world affairs. Many analysts see a stronger U.S. relationship with India as part of a longer-term effort to check China's influence in Asia. India's leaders have dismissed suggestions their country should be part of any U.S. containment strategy toward China and have cited the importance of booming economic ties with China. But officials in both New Delhi and Washington have stressed what they term is a "natural" partnership based on their traditions as large, multiethnic democracies.
Experts say both India and China are pursuing their foreign policy goals more assertively as each country tries to position itself as the major political and economic force in Asia. "It's the start of the realignment of the balance of power in Asia," says Anupam Srivastava, executive director of the South Asia program at the University of Georgia's Center for International Trade and Security. Others say New Delhi is not quite sure how to deal with Beijing. "The Indians don't know what they want with China," says Sumit Ganguly, the Rabindranath Tagore professor of Indian cultures and civilizations at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. "On one hand, they see China as a major strategic threat," while at the same time a growing economic relationship is bringing the two countries into increasingly closer contact, he says. That economic growth has kept the bilateral relationship, with its potential for conflict, generally positive thus far. "There's a sense right now that they're both rising, and it's not a zero-sum game yet," says Adam Segal, the Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Right now it's still win-win."
President George Bush said in a February 22 speech that U.S. relations with India have "never been better," and praised India's commitment to secular government and religious pluralism, saying they made the nation "a natural partner for the United States." Many experts say the United States and India have worked for the last several years to build a close, cooperative alliance. Robert Blackwill, a former U.S. ambassador to India, said at a Council meeting February 23 that while there is not likely to be a formal U.S.-India alliance, the bilateral cooperation between the two nations will continue to increase. Srivastava agrees. "There's a very close partnership between the United States and India," he says, one that spans a range of issues, including counterterrorism, joint protection of critical sea lanes, and close cooperation on security investigations.
Some experts say India is seeking a closer relationship with the United States both to improve its regional standing and to bolster its security position against China and Pakistan. Ganguly says India suffers from "status anxiety" in relation to its northern neighbor, and is "constantly peering over the Himalayas at China, trying to catch up." China began its economic reforms nearly a decade before India did and its per capita income is now nearly three times India's, he says. Beijing also enjoys greater world standing—including UN Security Council membership and a prominent role as a political power broker in situations like the North Korean nuclear issue—which some in India covet, experts say.
While U.S.-China relations have also shown steady improvement, there is a strong awareness from the U.S. side of China as an emerging competitor for everything from international markets to energy resources to military primacy. Some experts suspect the United States is cultivating a closer relationship with India to contain China, a factor they suspect is behind the recent nuclear deal. But some say this would be a mistake. "There's no better way to empty a drawing room of Indian strategists in New Delhi than to start talking about this idea," Blackwill said. Indian officials have "no interest whatsoever in trying to contain China because they believe this could be a self-fulfilling prophesy, and their whole policy is to seek the best possible relationship with China and to try to shape their policy to that end," he says. "Neither India nor the United States is interested in any kind of containment of China," Srivastava agrees. Still, he says, Chinese officials still harbor suspicions about U.S.-Indian intentions.
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