When India's Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani was in Washington in June, his brief visit included a dinner hosted by the American Jewish Committee.
That Advani made time for the influential pro-Isreal lobbying group while on a trip to meet US President George W. Bush and his key aides, underscores the intensified relationship among the three countries.
Jason Isaacson, the American Jewish Committee's (AJC) director of government and international affairs, said the relationship between India and Israel was a natural alliance. He said it was about trade and common interests between democracies and one that complemented what he termed the growing relationship between Indian-Americans and Jewish Americans.
Links between India and the US, and India and Israel, have strengthened significantly in recent years. Isaacson has visited India seven times since 1995 -- the AJC plans to set up a liaison office in India this year -- and two lobby groups, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the US India Political American Organization, held a joint reception for Congress last month, in another step towards cementing ties.
India and Israel now have full diplomatic relations and, according to India's National Security Adviser, Shri Brajesh Mishra, speaking at an AJC annual meeting in May, New Delhi hopes Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will soon make a visit.
Two-way trade between Israel and India runs at more than US$1 billion a year with Israel particularly keen to cultivate India as a market for its defense industry. As a pointer to the future, the US, which must approve Israeli weapons sales that include American technology, recently allowed the transfer to India of the Israelis' Phalcon Airborne Early Warning, Command and Control System, in an estimated one billion dollar deal.
According to one US foreign policy commentator, Washington is transforming its growing partnership with New Delhi into an alliance comparable with the one it has with Japan.
Daniel Sneider, foreign affairs specialist for the Mercury News in California, said it was about time too. "The divide between our two countries -- the world's largest democracies -- has never made sense."
Sneider suggests the fear that India and Pakistan might use their nuclear arms against each other remains a major concern.
"The Bush administration has embraced this shift and opened previously closed doors to cooperation with India, including military ties," he said.
India has also leased two radar tracking systems from the US for use in Kashmir and, last month, Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes said 12 more will be delivered from September next year, in a US$190 million deal.
The Sept. 11 attacks gave added urgency to India's already long-running conflict with Islamic radicals -- Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution suspects intelligence co-operation also binds India and Israel -- and reports indicate the new radar systems, which are used to locate artillery and rocket batteries, will be deployed along the Line of Control between India and Pakistan in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir.
Washington's opening of what Sneider characterized as those previously closed doors to co-operation has also been emphasized by outgoing US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, who highlighted the broader shared strategic goals of the US and of India. Goals, which are, according to Sneider, global economics rather than geopolitics. India, as Blackwill pointed out in a farewell speech, is now the second largest source of legal migration to the US, after Mexico, and the largest source of foreign students.
Blackwill said the movement of people reflects the flow of capital and trade in both directions. "As we see here in Silicon Valley, India and the US are increasingly vital partners in one global economic space. There will be tensions as the two countries learn to work closely together. But the foundation for alliance has been created, and now we have to build upon it," he said.
Commentators would add that the warmth in relations between Israel, India and the US might be as much to do with geopolitics as it is to do with global economics.
The US intelligence community’s annual threat assessment for this year certainly cannot be faulted for having a narrow focus or Pollyanna perspective. From a rising China, Russian aggression and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, to climate change, future pandemics and the growing reach of international organized crime, US intelligence analysis is as comprehensive as it is worrying. Inaugurated two decades ago as a gesture of transparency and to inform the public and the US Congress, the annual threat assessment offers the intelligence agencies’ top-line conclusions about the country’s leading national-security threats — although always in ways that do not compromise “sources and methods.”
Let’s begin with the bottom line. The sad truth of the matter is that Beijing has trampled on its solemn pledge to grant Hong Kong a great deal of autonomy for at least fifty years. In so doing, the PRC ignored a promise Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) made to both Great Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the wider world back in the early 1980s. This was at a time when Beijing, under Deng and his successors, appeared to be seeking an equitable accommodation with the West. I remain puzzled by China’s recent policy shift. Was it because Hong Kong was perceived
The recent removal of items related to Japanese Shinto culture from the Taoyuan Martyrs’ Shrine and Cultural Park has caused an uproar. The complex was built as a Shinto shrine by the Japanese during the colonial period, but was transformed into a martyrs’ shrine commemorating veterans of the Chinese Civil War after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) retreated to Taiwan in 1949. Figurines of the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu Okami were allowed into the shrine for a cultural event last year, attracting throngs of visitors to see the Shinto decorations and practices. However, some people accused the Taoyuan City Government of
The “US skeptic” and “Lai skeptic” arguments are gaining traction in Taiwanese political discourse, and might become a major campaign issue in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. The former says that the US cannot be trusted to defend Taiwan should China launch an invasion, while the latter says that Washington does not have the faith in Vice President William Lai (賴清德) — a self-described “pragmatic independence worker” who is seeking the top job — that it has in President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). There is precedent for concern after the way US President Joe Biden handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and
RSS