New York: India “will never be a formal ally or partner of the United States” as it is “also a great power” with “its own beliefs, its own interests” but the two can act as allies on the global stage, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has declared.
Not being a formal ally “doesn’t mean that we cannot have the strongest possible relationships as allied nations on the global stage,” he said Tuesday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington
“I do believe that we bent India’s trajectory in ways that are consequential and very much in our interests,” he added.
He stressed that ties with India are “probably the most important relationship for the United States to get right”.
Campbell’s characterisation of India acting on its interests and having alliances to reach objectives without formal pacts reflects External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s foreign policy rubric of strategic autonomy.
He gave the assessments of ties with India during a committee hearing on strategic competition with China while replying to an interjection from Republican Senator James Risch, who said that front page pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi embracing Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during his recent Moscow visit were a “bitter pill to swallow”.
However, he did add that India is an “important actor. There’s no question about it” and acknowledged India’s and Russia’s “geographical location” and “historical connection”.
Campbell said, “I think we’re likely to hear news of India engaging more directly in Ukraine. I’m grateful for that. I think India wants to play a responsible role globally.”
“One of the hardest things to keep in mind is that India is also a great power and it has its own beliefs, its own interests,” he said.
“There are very few other countries in the world that have such an appeal to the Global South and their ability to engage there is unmatched and we are seeking to work with them,” he said of India’s strategic importance to the US in the context of China’s international diplomacy.
“You’ve got to take comfort in some of these things and recognise fundamentally, that in a number of things that we’re engaged in, India is an active and supportive partner,” he said.
On Washington’s cooperation with New Delhi, Campbell said, “We’ve supported them in intelligence and military along the Line of Actual Control (on the border with China and) in the Indian Ocean”.
Indian and Chinese troops are locked in a tense standoff along the Line of Actual Control with periodic clashes.
In the last major incident, about 20 Indian soldiers and several Chinese were killed in a confrontation in 2022 with makeshift weapons in an area where firearms are mutually banned.
On ties that bind at the level of people, Campbell spoke of the Indian diaspora in the US and the favourable sentiments in India towards the US.
There is a “wonderful diaspora in the United States that connects our two great countries”, he said.
“I believe that the vast majority of people in India want a better relationship with the United States,” he said. “They’re grateful for our bipartisan attention. They liked the work that we’ve done together in education and technology”.