MUCH of the popular and policy interest in India during US President George W. Bush’s visit in March was focused on the nuclear question – especially the separation plan and the technical issues surrounding it. But to understand the successful Indo-US nuclear engagement with Bush, one must look beyond it. The question to be asked is: Why was Bush prepared to risk so much political capital at home and abroad to modify the three and a half decade old non-proliferation regime in favour of India.

It is not often that a hegemonic power is willing to go to such great political lengths – to seek a modification of the domestic laws as well as international regulations in order – to please one nation. Difficult as it might have been for President Bush, the decision to press ahead with a nuclear exception for India was not an end in itself; it was a means to build an enduring partnership with New Delhi. Bush’s determination to put the old agenda of Indo-US relations – nuclear proliferation and Kashmir – behind was rooted in an appreciation of India’s rise in the global system and the expectation that partnership with New Delhi would be useful in maintaining a stable balance of power in Asia and the world in the 21st century.

It was this political conviction that allowed Bush to push through the nuclear deal twice over, once on 18 July 2005 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went to the White House and again on 1 March 2006 when he arrived in New Delhi, overruling his own bureaucracy. On both occasions, the Indian establishment was paralysed by the past experience in dealing with the United States and obsessed with nit-picking on the nuclear question and raising almost impossible demands be written into the agreement. Each time it was President Bush, focused like a laser beam on the future of Indo-US relations rather than the past, who came through to concede the Indian demands, much to the disgust of the non-proliferation lobby in Washington.

The Indian public debate on the nuclear negotiations with the Bush Administration was lost in the technical trivia on the fast breeder reactor and the number of reactors to go under international safeguards. Only a small section on the left and few observers from the mainstream saw that at stake was something far more important than the scope and nature of India’s nuclear weapons programme. It was the prospect of a fundamental restructuring of Indo-US relations towards an alliance-like relationship. Some left-wing analysts were afraid that Bush might simply cede most of the demands of the Department of Atomic Energy to facilitate the larger political objective he had in mind. Only a few in the mainstream were willing to bet on Bush’s commitment to see the deal through. That precisely was the outcome from Bush’s visit.

The only other occasion that one can recall when the US radically altered its extant policies to accommodate a rising power was the Nixon-Kissinger initiative towards the People’s Republic of China during 1971-73. Recognising the importance of befriending Communist China and altering the balance of power against Communist Soviet Union, the Nixon Administration reached out to Mao Zedong. Reversing two decades of not recognising the existence of PRC, Nixon and Kissinger laid the basis for bringing China back into the global mainstream, even as they pursued a policy of détente with Soviet Union. In the process, America created for itself unprecedented space at a moment when the military intervention in Vietnam was turning out to be a disaster. In accommodating China, Washington had to de-recognise Taiwan as the legitimate representative of the Chinese people and get most of its allies to do the same. At the same time, the US sustained a working relationship with Taiwan, the parameters of which were worked out to mutual satisfaction with Beijing.

 

The parallel with Bush’s India initiative is in fact quite impressive. In accommodating India, Bush was willing to down play its traditional alliance with Pakistan and get its friends and allies to agree to a revision of global nuclear order to facilitate full civilian nuclear cooperation with India. At a time when the US is bogged down in Iraq and when China is rising on the world stage, the Bush Administration has bet that an alliance with India would provide it greater room for manoeuvre on the global stage. This judgement flowed out of a strategic review conducted by the White House in the interregnum between the general elections in November 2004 and January 2005, when Bush was sworn in for a second time.

Based on an assessment of global redistribution of economic power, the changing demographic patterns of the world, the prospects for continued high growth rates in India well into the 2050s, and shared democratic values, Bush chose to seek radical reorientation of the relationship with New Delhi. The nuclear deal was earnest money that the US was willing to deposit to win Indian trust and cooperation in building a new global balance of power. While the strategic rationale of the Bush Administration in seeking the nuclear deal with India is clear, there is considerable skepticism about the prospect for an alliance-like relationship between the two nations.

 

Many in India have cautioned against such an alliance on the basis of a number of arguments – departure from the traditional policy of non-alignment, and the political costs of being associated with the United States in the world. It is interesting to note that much of the liberal opinion in the United States has scoffed at the idea of an alliance with India, despite the shared values. Strobe Talbott, the former Deputy Secretary of State underlined that the motivation to contain China was an important consideration for Bush in giving India the nuclear exception. He argued:

‘There is also an important though officially muted – sometimes denied – anti-Chinese subtext to what happened when Mr. Singh came to Washington. By the Bush standard, China, as the world’s largest non-democracy, is a long way from proving itself to be on the right side of the good-versus-evil dividing line. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on record, in an article she wrote in Foreign Affairs during the 2000 presidential campaign, with the argument that the US should regard India as a strategic counterweight to China. That consideration, which dropped out of administration rhetoric after 9/11, is making a bit of comeback in official Washington. It no doubt further inclined the administration to accede to India’s aspirations not just for special treatment in general, but for special treatment under the NPT.’¹

 

Many in India too echo this argument, by suggesting that the nuclear pact is an inducement to draw India into an alliance against China. One left-wing analyst argued, ‘India’s nuclear weapons are not a problem for American power but an asset in the larger game of tethering China and preventing the emergence of an Asian security architecture that might exclude the US.’² The Bush Administration argued that it was not trying to contain China but try and embed Beijing within a stable Asian balance of power. In a speech in Tokyo during her first visit to Asia in March 2005, Rice argued, ‘I really do believe the US-Japan relationship, the US-South Korean relationship, theUS-Indian relationship, all are important in creating an environment in which China is more likely to play a positive role than a negative role. These alliances are not against China; they are alliances that are devoted to a stable security and political and economic and, indeed, values-based relationships that put China in the context of those relationships, and a different path to development than if China were simply untethered, simply operating without that strategic context.’³

Irrespective of what the Administration and its critics argued, there was a larger question that was being posed in the United States. This suggested that India was not amenable to an alliance relationship with the United States, especially in relation to China. George Perkovich argued:

‘India has clear strategic interests in improving relations with China, and these interests are more likely to be satisfied if India is close to Washington but not too close. New Delhi for the foreseeable future will see the benefit of good relations with both the United States and China. India’s history of nonalignment reflects its political culture and its strategic interests. Some American strategists understand this, even those who are inclined to hedge now against a potential Chinese threat. But others, particularly in the US Congress, have already jumped to "contain-China mode" and will be less likely to appreciate India’s autonomous and sometimes "anti-American" behavior.’⁴

 

The House International Relations Committee, in its third hearing on the Indo-US nuclear pact during November 2005 asked experts to answer questions on how India could support Washington in meeting its strategic objectives. One strong view suggested that India’s non-aligned record suggests an enduring reluctance to align with the United States. Talking about China and a putative Indo-US alliance, Francine Frankel argued, ‘The goal for India is not an alliance against China, but an opportunity, with US assistance, to sustain 8 per cent economic growth over one or two decades so that India can… be truly independent. Meanwhile, India will have to take into account US interests in its foreign policy decisions, but it would probably be unrealistic to expect a "willingness to ally itself with American purposes".’⁵

 

While Frankel highlights an important dimension of India’s foreign policy, one underlying assumption widely shared in the United States is indeed questionable. The proposition that ‘non-aligned’ India would not ‘align’ with any other power is challenged by India’s own diplomatic history of politically associating itself with the Soviet Union. New Delhi always denied that its prolonged security cooperation with Moscow was an ‘alliance’ or a departure from the principles of ‘non-alignment’. But these assumptions were always questioned within India itself and political demands on Delhi to pursue ‘genuine’ non-alignment were rampant throughout the Cold War.

In retrospect, it is impossible to characterise India’s ties with the Soviet Union as any thing other than an alliance-like relationship. India’s 1971 peace and friendship treaty with Moscow, which consolidated this relationship, was a structural response to the emergence of what India saw as a US-Pakistan-China axis in its neighbourhood. If India’s Soviet relationship was an alliance for all practical purposes, the question arises whether India had to compromise its independence as part of this relationship. The fact is that while New Delhi sided with Moscow on many global issues during the Cold War, and had to pay an occasional political price for that support, it by no means cut at the root of India’s independent foreign policy.

The analytical problem arises only when a fundamental tension is posited between India’s declaratory positions on ‘non-alignment’ and real world ‘strategic cooperation’ with great powers. India’s foreign policy survived that political tension without too much trouble. It must also be recalled that India’s experimentation with alliances was not limited to Soviet Russia. Jawaharlal Nehru himself dabbled in the attempt to construct a security partnership with the United States as Sino-Indian tensions boiled over since the late 1950s. India actively collaborated with the CIA to raise a force to foment rebellion in Tibet and sought American military assistance following the Chinese attack on India in 1962. The potential for an Indo-US alliance in the 1960s could not be realised, thanks to U.S unwillingness to disturb other arrangements with Pakistan and the incipient Sino-US rapprochement.

 

This brief discussion of the past is to underline the importance of seeing India’s foreign policy record in structural terms that goes beyond the conventional wisdom that India was always non-aligned. Independent India’s behaviour was a product of the tension between its aspirations to become a great power and the limitations that were imposed on it by the Partition of the subcontinent and the Cold War. For all his focus on moral-politik, the idea of India as a great power exercising influence in Asia and the Indian Ocean regions never receded from Nehru’s mind. Even as he was proclaiming in 1946 that non-alignment would be the essence of India’s foreign policy after independence, he was also highlighting the geopolitical dimensions of Indian diplomacy. ‘India can no longer take up an attitude other than that demanded by her geographical position, by her great potential and by the fact that she is the pivot round which Middle East, the Indian Ocean and South East Asia revolve.’⁶ While non-alignment was necessary to preserve her autonomy of action during the Cold War, India would in no way give up her own ambitions to either become a great power or bring influence to bear upon her chosen spielraum.

 

Despite the limitations imposed by the Partition and an inward looking economic strategy, India’s strategic behaviour was shaped by power calculus rather than the declaratory commitment to moralpolitik. Within the subcontinent, where it exercised hegemony, neither non-alignment nor third world solidarity had anything to do with India’s foreign policy. India’s treaty-based relations with Nepal and Bhutan were security alliances where Delhi promised to protect these states against external threats. In the next concentric circle, the extended neighbourhood, India’s policy was determined more by balance of power considerations than ideological ones. India’s refusal to join the non-aligned bandwagon against the Soviet Union intervention in Afghanistan and the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia from the late 1970s to late 1980s are two important examples.

At the global level, the third concentric circle, India’s emphasis on third world solidarity had as much to do with playing a leadership role with few cards as it had to with the ideology of non-alignment. Throughout the Cold War, India determinedly sought to reduce Chinese influence in the subcontinent and contend with it in South East Asia. There is nothing, then, in the history of India’s non-aligned policy that suggests a fundamental aversion to playing power politics, that includes alliances.

 

As India’s economic interests changed after the reforms launched since the early 1990s, and the prospect of emerging as a major economic power in the world became a real one, India has increasingly thought in terms of power rather than ideology. The foreign policy of the BJP government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee amply demonstrated this. Less than four months after the nuclear tests, Vajpayee was proclaiming that India and the United States could be ‘Natural Allies’.

Brajesh Mishra, his principal foreign policy adviser, who grew up in the Indian Foreign Service, had no qualms in dismissing ‘non-alignment’ as irrelevant: ‘In the post Nehru period, non-alignment became a mantra just as Gandhiji’s non-violent struggle had become the "moral path"; the fact that these policies were grounded in strict rationality and realpolitik was lost sight of. Escapism was often couched as being principled… There is a new India today that is ready to question these shibboleths and take decisions on the basis of national interest.’⁷ Once the Congress government took charge in 2004, ‘national interest’ became the new mantra to justify such controversial decisions as voting with the United States and Europe against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency in September 2005 and February 2006.

With the growth of Indian economic strength and the sense that its great power potential is on the verge of being realised, New Delhi’s past emphasis on foreign policy ‘autonomy’ – so dear to traditionalists is slowly being replaced with the emphasis on becoming a responsible power. ‘Autonomy’ is for weak states who want to protect themselves from the consequences of great power competition and collusion.

As new India recognises that its political choices could make a difference to the ground realities, the big guiding principle would no longer be ‘autonomy’ but engineering acceptable political outcomes on most issues. Alliances are an important part of the foreign policy tool kit of major powers. The search for alliances was always part of Indian strategic behaviour and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Many Indians who warn against a partnership with the United States are not arguing against the principle of alliances. They merely want a different alliance, say one with Russia and China that seeks to limit American power in the world. For many on the left, non-alignment always meant a ‘natural alliance’ with the Soviet Union. Only a few foreign policy purists in India believe alliances are fundamentally incompatible with the notion of ‘non-alignment’.

 

That India is capable of making alliances, the burden of my preceding argument, does not mean New Delhi would necessarily form an alliance with the United States. The formation of such an alliance would depend upon the reality of shared interests and the political capacity to act upon them. The main judgement of the Bush Administration at the beginning of the second term was that facilitating the rise of India would serve American interests.

Ashley Tellis lists out a detailed set of eight objectives that India and the United States share. These include: preventing Asia from being dominated by any single power, countering terrorism, arresting the further spread of weapons of mass destruction, promoting democracy, encouraging the diffusion of economic development, preserving global commons, especially the sea lanes of communication, promoting energy security and safeguarding the global environment.⁸ ‘It would not be an exaggeration to say that for the first time in recent memory Indian and American interests in each of these eight issue-areas are strongly convergent. It is equally true to assert that India’s contribution ranges from important to indispensable as far as achieving US objectives in each of these issue-areas is concerned,’ Tellis concludes.

 

India’s own policy pronouncements at the highest levels in recent years have underlined India’s interest in these objectives and more importantly many of these shared interests are reflected in the ten year Defence Framework that the two countries signed in June 2005. Kanti Bajpai argues that the US relationship might be more important for India, than ties with New Delhi are to Washington.⁹ Whether it is regaining access to nuclear technology, stabilising South Asia, combating terrorism, managing the rise of China, accelerating India’s trade and economic development, or modernising India’s military capabilities, Bajpai argues India has no alternative other than the United States.

Even when states have shared values and common interests, they do not necessarily end up in an enduring alliance. The alliance between the Soviet Union and Communist China did not survive the 1950s. Despite being democracies, India and the United States could not construct a political partnership during the Cold War. Yet the absence of a direct clash of interests and the natural affinity between the two open societies prevented them from becoming adversaries. Since the end of the Cold War, despite many problems, as India deepened its commitment to being an open society and moved towards becoming an open economy, the two countries have steadily drawn closer. This process accelerated under the Bush Administration’s first term. In the second, it began to underline the importance of building India’s power capabilities. India in turn responded favourably on many of American interests that coincided with those of New Delhi. Despite the emerging strategic parallelism between India and the United States, there is a widespread consensus that New Delhi and Washington would find it difficult to establish a formal alliance.

 

Part of the problem is rooted in the very nature of alliance formation. As Tellis argues, shared interests do not mean ‘that the United States and India will automatically collaborate on every problem that comes before our two countries. The differentials in raw power between the two sides are still too great and could produce differences in operational objectives, even when the overarching interests are preeminently compatible. Beyond differentials in power, bilateral collaboration could still be stymied by competing national preferences over the strategies used to realize certain objectives. And, finally, even when disagreement over strategies is not at issue, differences in negotiating styles and tactics may sometimes divide the two sides.’¹⁰

This has been quite evident in the very negotiation of the defence and nuclear pacts problems over their implementation. A second set of problems relate to the challenge of negotiating the terms of an alliance in the open between two democracies. Such a negotiation does not have the advantages of smart statesman or clever chancelleries coming up with an alliance framework to pursue a clutch of political objectives. In the absence of a habit of cooperation and the diversity of domestic interests which must be propitiated, producing a consensus in each capital on the terms of endearment between the two democracies has been difficult as the debate on the nuclear pact in India and the United States showed had demonstrated since July 2005.

 

Another set of problems arise from the inequality of power between India and the United States. As a great power, the United States has either chosen to opt out of balance of power politics at the global level or chosen to lead it on its own terms. Equality or shared leadership has not been for the United States. The European democracies had no option but to mobilise American support at the end of the Second World War to save Europe from further conflict and deter the internal and external threat of Communism. Japan was a defeated and occupied nation when it aligned with the United States.

India in contrast is neither a defeated nation nor a devastated continent. Nor does India face an existential threat to its security. And India has valued its independence even as it experimented with alliances. While America prefers to lead, India has no tradition of being junior partner in an alliance. As Tellis argues, ‘Given India’s large size, proud history and great ambitions, however, it would be unrealistic to expect that New Delhi would become a formal alliance partner of Washington, even if the current improvement in US-Indian relations were successfully consummated.’¹¹

 

In a similar vein, Stephen Cohen argues that ‘India has its own special qualities and advantages, as well as many liabilities, and while its power is balanced, many Indians remain leery of close cooperation with the United States, and none would subordinate Indian interests to American ones. India will not be a dependant state, nor will it become a close ally like Britain; it is more likely to emerge as an Asian France, a state with which we have many shared interests, and even an alliance relationship, but one that sees the world through its own prism, not ours.’¹² India perhaps will not even be an Asian France to the United States. Unlike France, whose demonstrations of independence were predicated on continuing American defence of European interests, India would want to be a freer force.

Even as it decided that strengthening India’s power is in its own interests, the Bush Administration has recognised that a formal alliance with India is not on the cards. Tellis puts the Bush’s approach in perspective: ‘…a strong and independent India… represents a strategic asset to the United States, even when it remains only a partner and not a formal ally. I think that the administration has reached a similar conclusion – correctly in my judgment – in its 25 March 2005 statement about assisting the rise of Indian power. This appraisal is rooted in the assessment that there are no intrinsic conflicts of interest between India and the United States and, consequently, transformed ties that enhance the prospect for consistent – even if only tacit – "strategic coordination" between Washington and New Delhi serve American interests just as well as any recognized alliance.’¹³

 

The challenge for both India and the United States in the coming years lies in expanding the areas of strategic coordination and minimising those where their interests clash. Few are willing to bet that a structured strategic coordination between India and the United States would emerge in the short term. While most Indian observers are skeptical, many American scholars, even those who strongly support a deeper relationship between India and the United States are doubtful if the two bureaucracies could pull it off.

‘Despite the obvious common strategic interests, forging a working alliance – in name or simply de facto – between the United States and India will not be easy. Indeed, the alliance may be stillborn if the nuclear agreement that was the centrepiece of the July summit is blocked in Congress or if the Bush Administration caves in to the interests of its own arms control specialists. Moreover, much larger potential pitfalls loom ahead: Pakistan, Iran, China, the UN, and, ultimately, the obstacles inherent in preserving the liberal international order. A genuine partnership requires sacrifices and trade-offs on each side…

The Bush Administration’s impulses to…encourage Indian power are fundamentally sound, but impulses alone do not a strategy make… It is important to help India become a truly global power, show it how it can play a leading role in the world, and cure its South Asian myopia. But it is even more important… to attract others to what are not simply American purposes, but the rightful purposes of the world’s free peoples.’¹⁴

 

There is a growing recognition that partnership and strategic coordination between India and the United States requires institutional reform in the way the two sides do business with each other. Stephen Blank argues from the American side: ‘In order for the United States to take most effective advantage of the transformation of Asia as a strategic entity or entities where India plays a large and growing part, it must reorganize the way it does business with India and Asia in general. As the world and its strategic realities change, so must our institutions adapt and change lest they become ineffectual and obstacles to the realization of our strategic interests.’ Blank’s assessment rings even truer for India, where the security and strategic sectors in the government have suffered from lack of institutional reform and the slowest to adapt to the challenges of globalisation and least prepared to convert India’s new strategic opportunities.

Acknowledging the many past failures to build a partnership, Blank argues that it would be tragic for the United States and India to miss the current opportunity to build a credible partnership. ‘Continuation of that history of failed relationships when genuine partnership is within our grasp requires the sustained attention of the top-most ranks of government in both countries and of their respective national security bureaucracies to achieve it. This would, given those stakes, be worse than a crime. Indeed, it would be a profound mistake at the highest level of grand strategy.’¹⁵

 

Amidst the high expectations among the two leaderships and the intellectual chaos that has gripped the two establishments in New Delhi and Washington, it would be easy to despair that even an informal alliance or strategic coordination between India and the United States might be elusive. Stepping back, however, from the immediate, it is impossible to ignore how far India and the United States have moved from their traditional perspectives of each other since 2001. This could only be explained in terms of structural changes in the international system.

In responding to these structural changes – including the rise of China and the redistribution of global power – as well as the emergence of new threats – terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction which threaten the very foundations of the liberal international order – India and the United States have already moved towards a framework of tacit and explicit security cooperation. And the imperatives of their own national security interest – the American need for India as ‘a swing state’ in maintaining a stable and liberal international order and the Indian need for American support to realise its own long-standing objective of becoming a great power – would only push the two nations closer irrespective of the institutional and bureaucratic limitations.

 

At the turn of the 21st century, the Bush Administration and the two governments in New Delhi, one led by the right of centre BJP and the other by left of centre Congress, have repeatedly surprised the world and their own establishments by unprecedented decisions on cooperation with the other. While the debate in the United States is more explicit contestation of competing interest groups, in India the debate has been more vulnerable to ideological posturing and residual anti-Americanism. But beneath that veneer, India had steadily moved towards thinking structurally about the world and less as a victim.

An India that began to globalise in 1991 and acquired nuclear weapons in 1998, has increasingly behaved like a rising power in the international system than merely as a champion of the Third World. As a nuclear India becomes stronger economically and acquires greater confidence in pursuing its manifest destiny on the global stage, the moralpolitik that overwhelmed the public discourse for decades has given some space to realpolitik. While idealism will not, and should not, disappear from its worldview, India has begun to rediscover the roots of realist statecraft in its own long history.

For all the claims that India always represented the idealist traditions of foreign policy, its own urtexts of Mahabharata, Panchatantra and Kautilya’s Arthashastra are steeped in an appreciation of power politics. The British construction of a modern territorial state within a mere geographic entity called India saw the emergence of a classic realist foreign policy paradigm, expounded most expansively by Lord Curzon at the turn of the 20th century. For all his emphasis on idealism, Nehru never gave up on either the geographic imperatives of India’s foreign policy or pursuit of great power potential. Despite its focus on non-alignment, independent India did not hesitate to embark on alliances.

 

As India became independent, Nehru sought good relations with all the great powers. But few could predict that India would find itself in an alliance like relationship with the Soviet Union by the early 1970s. If that was a response to the impact of great power politics on the subcontinent, structural changes in the world today have begun to draw India closer to the United States. Whether, when, and how the current political initiatives between the two governments might be converted into an informal alliance or strategic coordination depend not merely on the internal correlations of forces in the two democracies and bureaucratic politics. They would depend even more on the external circumstances and an assessment of New Delhi and Washington on how best they could pursue their interests in a changing world.

Bhishma, the great grandee in Mahabharata preached to the victorious Pandavas at the end of a great destructive war on the essence of alliances: ‘There is no condition that deserves permanently the name either of friendship or hostility. Both friends and foes arise from considerations of interest and gain. Friendship could turn into enmity in the course of time. A foe also becomes a friend. It is the force of circumstances that creates friends and foes.’ There is no evidence to suggest this lesson has been forgotten by the Indian state.

 

* The article has adapted material from the author’s book, Impossible Allies: Nuclear India, United States and the Global Order, India Research Press, New Delhi, 2006.

Footnotes:

1. Talbott, ‘Good Day for India, Bad Day for Non-Proliferation’, 21 July 2005; available at www.brookings.edu/views/articles/talbott/20050721.htm

2. Siddharth Varadarajan, ‘Indo-U.S. deal: negotiating the nuclear fine print’, The Hindu (New Delhi), 21 October 2005.

3. Condoleezza Rice, ‘Remarks at Sophia University’, Tokyo, 19 March 2005; available at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/43655.htm

4. George Perkovich, ‘Faulty Promises: The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal’, Washington D.C., Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 2005, p.6; available at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/PO21.Perkovich.pdf

5. Francine R. Frankel, ‘India’s Potential Importance For Vital U.S. Geopolitical Objectives in Asia: A Hedge Against Rising China’, Testimony before U.S. Congress, House International Relations Committee, Washington D.C., 16 November 2005. Available at http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/109/fra111605.pdf

6. Cited in Francine Frankel, ‘Introduction’, Francine Frankel and Harry Harding, eds., The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p.26.

7. Brajesh Mishra, ‘Rising World Players in Asia: Implications for Regional and Global Security’, Presentation at 36th Munich Conference on Security Policy, 5 February 2000.

8. Ashley J. Tellis, ‘The U.S.-India "Global Partnership": How Significant for American Interests’, Remarks before the U.S. Congress, House International Relations Committee, Washington D.C., 16 November 2005, p.2; available at http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/109/tel111605.pdf

9. Kanti Bajpai, ‘Why the U.S. Matters’, Times of India (New Delhi), 25 January 2006.

10. Ibid., p. 4.

11. Ashley J. Tellis, ‘The United States and South Asia’, Remarks before the U.S. Congress, House International Relations Committee, Washington D.C., 14 June 2005. Available at http://www.fas.org/terrorism/at/docs/2005/aphear_14_jun_05/tellis.pdf

12. Stephen Philip Cohen, ‘India and the Middle East’, Ibid; available at http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/109/coh111605.pdf

13. Tellis, op. cit., n.8.

14. Thomas Donnelly and Melissa Wisner, ‘A Global Partnership between the U.S. and India’, Asian Outlook (Washington D.C: American Enterprise Institute), August-September 2005.

15. Stephen J. Blank, Natural Allies: Regional Security in Asia and Prospects for Indo-American Strategic Cooperation (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, September 2005), p. 169; available at http://www.strategicstudies institute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB626.pdf