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| Foreign Minister of Iran Dr Javad Zarif meets Indian PM Narendra Modi (Image: Filckr User - Narendra Modi) |
By Mercy A. Kuo and Angelica O. Tang
Insights from U.S. Ambassador Teresita C. Schaffer.
The Rebalance authors Mercy Kuo and Angie Tang regularly engage subject-matter experts, policy practitioners and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into the U.S. rebalance to Asia. This conversation with Ambassador Teresita C. Schaffer – Non-resident Senior Fellows at the Brookings Institution, Senior Adviser at McLarty Associates, U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka (1992-1995), and co-author with her husband Howard Schaffer, U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh (1984-1987), of forthcoming bookNegotiating for India’s Global Role: Regional Primacy and Strategic Autonomy – is the fourteenth in “The Rebalance Insight Series.”
Ambassador Schaffer, as one of the U.S. State Department’s foremost experts on South Asia, your diplomatic service has spanned 30 years with posts in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. You have described India’s foreign policy of one of “strategic autonomy.” Please elaborate on this characterization vis-à-vis Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and in the context of the U.S. rebalance to Asia.
Two themes have dominated independent India’s foreign policy from the start: its determination to retain regional primacy and to exercise a policy that is beholden to no other country. Judging by his first year in office, Modi remains committed to both these policy drivers. He has pursued regional primacy with a tough policy toward Pakistan but a more accommodating one toward India’s other South Asian neighbors. He has made a big push for improved relations with the world’s large powers – especially for bigger economic relations. He has reached out energetically to the United States. He has also sought to expand India’s trade and investment with China, Japan, and the EU. He wants to work with all the major powers in Asia, but not get caught up in other countries’ problems with one another. In the past two decades, India and the U.S. have increasingly found that their interests in peace and prosperity in Asia push them toward similar policies. This is the key to India’s place in the U.S. rebalancing toward Asia.
Read the full story at The Diplomat