Leaving India-US Relationship In A Very Good Place, Expect Continuity In Trump Era: Biden Admin

Washington: The outgoing Biden administration said it was leaving the India-US relationship "in a very strong place", and exuded confidence that it will continue to have bipartisan support during the Donald Trump presidency as well.

“We continue to be very ambitious about the US-India relationship. We've had very high-level engagement over the course of the last several months with the QUAD summit in Delaware, and we are anticipating a high-level engagement in the last few weeks of the Biden administration,” Kurt Campbell, Deputy Secretary of State, told reporters during a conference call here on Tuesday.

Campbell joined by Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer and Indian Ambassador to the US Vinay Mohan Kwatra, were in Houston on Tuesday to meet with astronauts from the Indian Space Research Organisation who are training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center to execute a joint effort to the International Space Station in partnership with NASA next year.  “We are quite confident that we'll be handing the bilateral relationship off to the incoming Trump team at its strongest possible apex, with key support from stakeholders in the industry, in technology, in finance and defence. As we were here today, it was inspirational to see the manifestations of engagement between the United States and India in critical endeavours associated with space,” Campbell said.

Observing that the US-India partnership is an "anchor of stability", not only in the Indo-Pacific, but increasingly for the world, Finer said from southeast Asia to Africa, the two countries can play a leading role in building prosperity, driving development and contributing to security.

“To a large degree, there has been bipartisan consensus on the importance of this relationship. Over the last two decades, different administrations in Washington and New Delhi have helped strengthen our cooperation. While no relationship is without challenges, we believe that we are leaving this partnership in a very strong place as we prepare to pass the baton to the incoming team,” Finer said.

Responding to a question, a senior administration official exuded confidence that the India-US relationship will have the same speed and scale with bipartisan support from both sides as has been the case under the several previous administrations. The same goes for QUAD as well, the official said.

“The QUAD originated in the George W Bush administration. It was continued on at the foreign ministry level and through other venues in the Trump administration. We have engaged closely with the incoming team, and I think there is substantial interest in continuing the QUAD given its remarkable achievements in such a short period of time,” a senior administration official said.

“We all recognise that a driving force, increasingly in all areas of QUAD endeavour, is the ambition of India. They've made clear in a variety of statements and engagements with the incoming team their desire to continue there. I do not think the ambition, though, for the US-India relationship stops there. You are going to see a variety of areas of continuing activity,” the official said.

The official described the progress made by India and US in various fields, including space. “I expect technology work will continue at a pace. We are engaging more in the Indo-Pacific. We are sharing information and intelligence on matters of critical concern, including along the line of actual control. We are also very much focused on increasing our cooperation and collaboration in the Indian Ocean. These are new avenues for important dialogue,” said the official.

“My expectation is that this work will continue and that it will receive broad support in a bipartisan manner, not only in Congress, but frankly, it is one of the arenas of engagement that is broadly supported across the Indo-Pacific as well,” said the official.

A second senior administration official said that the Biden Administration has found the QUAD to be an extremely valuable format, including at the head-of-state level, befitting relationships that are as consequential as those among the four countries involved.

“That said, the US-India relationship is bigger than any particular format. It's really much more about common interests, and the interests that we've described .. and that we have worked on together over the last four years, from technology cooperation to an increasing defence relationship, to our broader economic engagement to increasing collaboration on global and regional issues, is going to be unbounded by any particular administration, frankly, in either country,” “We expect a degree of continuity here that may not be the case across the whole set of issues we face. But that has been the case for the US-India relationship, and we have no reason to believe that won't continue,” said the second senior administration official.