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Partners in Progress: How Does the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Matter?

The Project and Its Goals

The Rising Powers Initiative, in collaboration with the Centre for East Asian Studies of Christ University, Bengaluru, launched this project to bring together credible voices who can fill gaps in the understanding and analysis of the US-India strategic relationship and its future. The 50 participants are mostly rising young Indian professionals drawn from the scholarly, policy, think tank and media worlds. This group also includes leading American and Indian senior defense and academic experts who serve as mentors in the project. 

This project focuses on defense and security relations within the broader context of the global and Indo-Pacific political and strategic landscape, with special emphasis on defense technology trade and production; military and security dialogues; and military operational engagement and cooperation between US and India.

Project Activities

Panel Sessions 

  • 01/18/2024: The U.S.-India Political & Strategic Landscape and Its Impact
  • 02/21/2024: Defense and Security Dialogue
  • 03/20/2024: Defense Technology Trade and Production
  • 04/18/2024: Military Operational Engagement and Cooperation

Conference, Bengaluru

  • 06/10/2024-06/11/2024: International Conference- Partners in Progress: How Does the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Matter?

Policy Commentaries

Press Releases

Support

This project is directed by Dr. Deepa Ollapally, GWU and Dr. N. Manoharan, Christ University and is supported by the U.S. Consulate, Chennai, India.

Shared Values and Worldviews in US-India Relations: Prospects for Cooperation

The Project

The U.S. and India have often been referred to as the twin towers of democracy. U.S. leaders have called India “an indispensable” partner, and Indian leaders see the two countries as “natural allies.” Their shared commitments to democratic values at home, and a rules-based order abroad, have combined to fuel this relationship. However, as India and the U.S. develop a deeper and more comprehensive relationship, there are opportunities as well as challenges.

For instance, as Indians come to dominate America’s H-1B visa allocation, they naturally suffer most from new U.S. restrictions announced in 2018. India and the U.S. view each other as critical anchors in the Indo-Pacific given China’s expansion and ambition, and are making rapid strides in maritime and defense cooperation, but the idea of freedom of navigation operations or joint patrolling are limiting factors. The two unquestionably hold a shared worldview on counterterrorism, but Indian analysts and public view the U.S. as unreliable in the regional context despite its 20 years of war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

On balance, the U.S. and India are forming a close and long-term bond whose impact will be felt well beyond the two countries. This is not always clear to audiences in India or the US for that matter, thanks in part to the amplification of even minor irritants in the relationship, whether in social media, traditional media, or by industry leaders, experts and policymakers.

Project Goals

  • The project seeks to fill the gap in understanding and explore how common values and norms are driving the upward trajectory of the bilateral relationship.
  • Bring credible and articulate voices to India from U.S. experts who work on U.S.-India relations across sectors from security, economics and soft power
  • Initiate greater interaction between U.S. foreign policy experts and India’s new “influentials” drawn from millennials and Gen-Z in Bangalore, India’s vibrant “Silicon valley” hub as well as in Hyderabad, Chennai, Pondicherry, Kochi)

Project Activities

Conference

Workshop

Roundtable

Policy Briefs


The project is being done in partnership between Rising Powers Initiative and Christ University (Bangalore, India).

Support

This project is supported by the U.S. Department of State, Public Affairs Section for the period 2020-2022.

Asia’s Energy and Maritime Debates

Asian states have shown limited cooperation over maritime commons, energy resources, and oceans governance. Instead, the Indo-Pacific region could be embarking on a path of energy conflict and naval nationalism. Some analysts argue the rapidly increasing demand for energy inevitably fuels “resource nationalism” and drives nationalistic naval policies, security dilemmas, and maritime territorial disputes. Others, however, have questioned this pessimistic structural logic by suggesting market-oriented changes in global energy markets and alternative energy supplies to adopt a more relaxed view of energy and maritime security interests.

How analysts and policymakers understand and interpret this issue has enormous policy implications. This is especially important for the United States as it calibrates and operationalizes the rebalancing strategy in Asia—or looking ahead to 2016, perhaps even revises it under a new administration.

The Project

The “Energy and Maritime Security in the Indo Pacific” project will address this problem by investigating the domestic political processes through which five pivotal Asian states—China, India, Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam—formulate their energy and maritime security policies. This research project will address the debate between those who see security competition and conflict in the energy and maritime arena as inevitable and those who see more market-oriented approaches to energy security by unpacking the domestic political dynamics in each of the five countries of this project.

Our working hypothesis is that the linkage of energy and maritime security discourses at both the elite and public levels has the potential of producing coalitional logrolling between energy and military interests and institutions on behalf of energy mercantilism and nationalistic military policies. Through the propagation of “a coalitional ideology” of nationalism, these groups are well placed to capture national discourse on energy and maritime policy and drive it in a more provocative direction. Naval interests and national energy companies in particular stand to advance their more parochial interests in this manner. It is not necessary that these actors actively collude to hijack policy through hardened logrolling coalitions; their promotion of a securitized, nationalist energy and maritime discourse could have the same effect. Once this process is set into motion, it would likely be just one step away from deliberate logrolling to achieve narrow ends. Reversing this would be extremely difficult, and it could reverberate as a contagion of logrolling in the region—leading to an environment reminiscent of East Asia during the late 1920s and early 1930s when logrolling between military and economic interests propelled Japan’s military expansion.

Why These Case Studies?

Our case studies – China, India, Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam – stand at an inflection point after the 2011 announcement of the U.S. rebalancing strategy: India and Vietnam weighing the costs and benefits between strategic maritime cooperation with the United States and studied engagement with China; Japan on whether to gamble on a more pro-active maritime and energy resource approach to the East China Sea under the assurance of the rebalance; the Philippines pursuing a surprisingly assertive maritime policy toward China and the Obama administration plans to base additional U.S. troops in the nation; and China holding out the possibility of a new phase of greater assertiveness in the East China Sea, South China Sea, and Indian Ocean in response to the rebalancing.

Project Goals

We will highlight and explain the risks of this competitive dynamic, but we will also develop ways to mitigate competition and promote cooperative approaches to energy and maritime security. Although the risks of inter-state conflict regarding energy and maritime interests are growing, our view is that coalitional logrolling between energy and military sectors has not hardened and that there is still an opportunity to loosen the linkage between energy and military policies in each of the five countries.

As a major player in the global energy market and the key provider of the public good of sea lane security, the United States can shape the energy and military discourse in the Indo-Pacific region and encourage cooperation over competition. The current U.S. rebalancing strategy is cast too narrowly in military terms and holds the danger of exacerbating competitive logics. Our project will generate and recommend a more comprehensive regional strategy than the current U.S. “rebalance” or “pivot” policy in Asia by fully integrating the energy and maritime security dimensions.

To accomplish this task, the project aims to close a gap in the current body of literature and scholarship by answering the following research questions:

  1. To what extent and in what ways are elite and public discourses about energy security and maritime security being linked in the five key states in the Indo-Pacific region?
  2. How has this linkage between energy and maritime security discourses in the above states changed over time during the 2005-2015 period, and what factors explain this discourse evolution?
  3. How has the linkage between energy and maritime security discourses shaped state military and energy policies and behavior?
  4. How do the five states selected for study converge and diverge in terms of the linkage between energy and maritime security discourses, the impact of this discourse linkage on energy and military policies and behavior, and what factors explain this cross-national convergence and divergence?
  5. How does the linkage between energy and maritime security discourses impact state policy and behavior and affect the prospects for inter-state cooperation, competition, and conflict in the realms of energy and maritime security?
  6. How do regional perceptions as well as the reality of U.S. military and energy involvement in the Indo-Pacific region shape the energy and maritime security discourses in each of the case study countries and the interactive dynamics among these states?

Support

This project is generously supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Asia Security Initiative. The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information is at www.macfound.org.

Nuclear Debates in Asia

Balancing Risks and Rewards

The promise and the perils of nuclear energy in the current era come together most graphically in Asia. On the one hand, nuclear power lessens the need to develop and transport fossil fuel resources in maritime regions of Asia and could contribute to addressing the problem of global climate change. On the other hand, promotion of nuclear energy compounds Asia’s nonproliferation problem, not only in terms of the spread of nuclear technology to outlier states such as North Korea or from North Korea to Pakistan and other countries but also the spread of nuclear radiation and safety threats.

The rise in global demand for nuclear energy is heavily concentrated in emerging and aspiring Asian powers. Led by China and India, others such as Thailand and Vietnam, are joining Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan which have been already active in the nuclear energy field. Most are at a key transition point and are making important choices on nuclear energy and future defense strategies. The National Bureau of Asian Research’s annual flagship publication, Strategic Asia 2010-11 identifies nuclear power and nuclear nonproliferation as among the top five functional areas in Asia that have a significant impact on global power and security.

Domestic Debates:

Despite Asia being the region of greatest current and future growth of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons capability, our grasp of the domestic dynamics in the nuclear arena in these countries falls seriously short. We lack a clear understanding of how at the domestic political and societal level, positions on nuclear energy, national security, and nuclear non-proliferation are linked. Nuclear issues are often a source of domestic contestation. We tend to look at official pronouncements of governments as the last word or fall back on easy terms such as “pro-nuclear” and “anti-nuclear” to describe domestic sentiment. To reduce opinion in Asia to such simplistic characterization is to miss a wider, more nuanced and more complex range of viewpoints. As US policymakers design nuclear security and nonproliferation policies, it is vital that they take fully into account empirical data on the political and societal levers driving nuclear decisions in Asia.

The Project:

The “Nuclear Debates in Asia” project tracks the domestic debates and discussion on nuclear power and nonproliferation in eight countries in Asia at varying stages of nuclear power planning and acquisition: China, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Project Goals:

The goals of the project are:

  1. to fill a significant gap in the existing literature on nuclear power, security and nonproliferation
  2. to produce policy relevant material accessible to US government officials and media
  3. to educate students, policy communities and the informed public on critical nuclear viewpoints in Asia

Support:

The “Nuclear Debates in Asia” project is generously supported by the MacArthur Foundation. The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. More information is at www.macfound.org.

Asia’s Economic Challenges

Asia’s Economic Challenges is supported by the Centers and Institutes Facilitating Fund (CIFF) of the George Washington University. This project consists of four research topics:

Resource Nationalism: Energy Security and Competition for Resources

The International Energy Agency estimates that incremental growth in demand for crude oil and natural gas is dominated by the newly emerging states in Asia. Yet these states are resource-poor. Their domestic resource base is limited or lacking entirely, forcing them to venture abroad to obtain energy, and raising energy security issues. This has important implications for economic and political relations among the rising states, as well as between these states and established powers of the Asia-Pacific, including Russia and the United States. It also has implications for the relations of East and South Asian states with the Middle East and Central Asia. This interplay of economics, energy, security and geopolitics on a grand scale has been termed resource nationalism, or resource mercantilism. It presents new challenges and opportunities to scholars as well as policymakers.

China’s Economic and Financial Policies and External Impact

Responding to the current financial crisis, China’s monetary authority, following the United States, has taken a very aggressively loose monetary policy to stimulate the economy. This has aroused concerns of asset price bubble and inflation. China’s housing price increased dramatically from 2009, unlike the U.S. housing market which has yet to recover. Moreover, the valuation of the Chinese currency has become a resurgent issue in recent years and is a focal point for U.S.-China economic and even political relations. China’s financial stability will have significant impact on the global and American economy. At the same time, China has stepped up its efforts for regional integration with neighboring economies, for example, putting into effect a free trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in early 2010. One of the driving forces is to diversify China’s trade from too much reliance on current partners, especially the United States. Meanwhile, China’s rapid economic growth has created internal imbalances in several respects, such as regional imbalances, income and wealth gap, and urban-rural disparities.

India’s Global Investment Policies

India’s global investment strategy has recently become increasingly activist in an attempt to gain greater global economic and political clout. One important component is the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), agreements that have proliferated in the late 20th century, especially among developed countries, that give extensive rights and protection to foreign investors. Since 2009, the possibility of a BIT between the United States and India has grown significantly. Following its first BIT in 1995, India has negotiated 75 such treaties with both developed and developing countries across the globe, and has one of the largest BIT programs among developed countries. By reducing political and institutional risk an investor would face, a BIT is expected to promote Foreign Direct Investment. Yet there is limited evidence for this conjecture; further a BIT could impose “sovereignty costs” for the host country.

Economic Interdependence and Strategic Implications

The enormous surge in economic relations between China and India over the last ten years has stimulated concern as well as optimism. Many national and external analysts view China and India as natural competitors, with consistently strained relations since the 1962 Sino-Indian war. They have a long simmering border conflict in a strategically sensitive area for India that has yet to be resolved. Yet within a relatively short period of time, China has become India’s largest trading partner, replacing the United States in 2009. China’s exports to India have been rising at a galloping rate ranging from 20 to 60 percent per year since 2000. There is however a huge trade imbalance in China’s favor: in 2008, India’s exports to China were $9.26 billion, whereas imports from China amounted to $31.33 billion. The so-called “hot economics, cold politics” phenomenon is exemplified elsewhere in Asia as well, particularly in Sino-Japanese relations.

Power and Identity in Asia

The Power and Identity project addresses whether international relations in Asia are likely to be characterized by cooperation and regional integration or by security tensions and interstate war in the foreseeable future.

The project’s secondary goal  is to assess the dominant security orientations of the powers studied (China, India, Japan, Korea, ASEAN) regarding cooperation with the United States and US leadership in Asia. We study how those outcomes are affected by variation in national identities: what values key actors in those states hold and how they prioritize them, how they perceive their role in the region, and what international perspectives they hold.

The project is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Asia Security Initiative. The Asia Security Initiative was launched in May of 2009; its grantmaking currently focuses on three particularly critical security issues: strengthening regional cooperation, preventing conflict in Northeast Asia, and building international cooperation to respond to internal challenges.

The project will make an important contribution to the international relations literature. Scholars increasingly study identity issues, but defining and operationalizing identity have remained problematic issues. A related problem has been a lack of cross-national comparison and testing in the literature on the relationship between power and identity. Our project examines several countries across the same dimensions of identity which allows for cross-national comparison.

The project also provides key insights for policymakers. Identity issues matter for international security outcomes, and thus are important from a policy perspective for regional actors and the U.S. alike. Moreover, perceptions of history and past conflicts greatly shape national identity and images of other countries. A better understanding of how identity issues affect the international polices of China, India, Japan, Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), is essential for promoting regional peace and cooperation. We will make information about the relationship between identity and power in Asia available to policymakers, journalists and analysts through several mechanisms, including holding regional colloqia in Beijing and New Delhi, an international workshop in Washington DC, and through the production of policy briefs and commentaries.

Worldviews of Aspiring Powers

Worldviews of Aspiring Powers focuses on identifying and tracking the internal foreign policy debates in five countries: China, Japan, India, Russia, and Iran. By understanding how these major and aspiring powers think about their own national security, international economic policymaking, identity and power, and the role of the United States in the world, this project will illuminate the implications for U.S. global leadership in the twenty-first century. Worldviews of Aspiring Powers is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The Worldviews project consists of two phases:

Phase 1- 2009-2011

Phase 2- 2011- 2013

The first phase of the Worldviews project focused on identifying and tracking the internal foreign policy debates in five major and rising powers-China, Japan, India, Russia and Iran.  The strategic awakening and reawakening of these countries is leading to domestic debates about their own national security, international economic policymaking,  image and power, and U.S. global leadership. The research team developed a “schools of thought” framework useful for comparative analysis. An edited volume entitled Worldviews of Aspiring Powers was published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

Phase 2 of this project aims to apply the framework developed from Phase 1 by exposing the domestic debates in rising powers to a Washington audience. The second phase adds a component on energy, maritime security and nuclear power that examines how schools of thought react to these issues.  When concluded, the project will bring domestic perspectives on energy and maritime security together with differing views on nuclear power and nonproliferation in China, India, Japan, and South Korea for the first time. This research will produce fortnightly Policy Alerts and an edited book volume entitled, The Asian Energy Security Complex:  Maritime Security, Nuclear Energy and Nonproliferation and U.S. Policy Implications  along with numerous publications and four major conferences and policy briefings.

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