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Description
[The following are excerpts of the remarks presented to the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., May 23, 2007.]
When I was thinking about this opportunity to discuss the United States and India relations I recalled the title of a book by Gurcharan Das, the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble India. Das wrote a sweeping economic history of India from independence to the new millennium entitled India Unbound, which many of you have no doubt heard of. In India Unbound, Das describes one of the most extraordinary international stories of the late twentieth century India's evolution from socialism and a state-planned economy to a vibrant free-market economy.
The transformation Das so eloquently describes has brought about remarkable economic growth in India, and that growth has in turn launched India onto the world stage as a rising global power. Within the first quarter of this century, India will likely be among the world's five largest economies, and an undisputed global technology leader. It will soon be the world's most populous nation, with a huge, skilled, and youthful workforce. It will continue to possess large and ever more sophisticated military forces that will remain strongly committed to the principle of civilian control. And it will serve as an example of, and a partner for, democracy to its neighbors and to developing countries in each part of the globe.
With this unleashing of India's potential has come the opportunity for a different relationship with the United States. President Clinton and President Bush have both sought to take advantage of this great change to build a new and fundamentally different United States and India relationship over the last decade. Instead of an adversarial relationship, we have a cooperative one which is bilaterally, regionally, and internationally. Where once we were constrained from working together by history, politics, and distance, now we are global partners, tied together at the most fundamental levels. Our partnership rests on a solid foundation of shared values, shared interests, and our increasingly shared geo-strategic view of how best to promote stability, security, and peace worldwide. To borrow Gurcharan Das's metaphor, our shared future is indeed unbound, and its possibilities are limitless. I believe that the U.S. and India will continue to create a global partnership that will become for the 21st century a force for stability and peace in Asia. I also believe we Americans will count India as among our most important strategic partners worldwide for the coming century. I would like to review the state of our relationship as I see it now, and as I see it in the future.
The Present
We are witnessing between the American and Indian people an explosion of ties in culture, the arts, technology, and business. The relationship between two states is most often based... |
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