US President-elect Joe Biden was an early supporter of the US-India relationship, and his administration will continue to prioritize the defense and security partnership with New Delhi, a key area that has progressed during Donald Trump’s tenure as president, a senior official in the Barack Obama-era administration has said.
The US media has cast Biden, a Democrat, as the winner of the 2020 presidential election held on November 3. However, incumbent President Trump, a Republican, has yet to admit defeat and has vowed to mount legal fights in several key states on the battlefield. There is much speculation about how the relationship between India and the United States will form during Biden’s time in the White House.
“Building on the priorities already articulated by President-elect Biden, I anticipate that the Biden-Harris administration will continue to place a high priority on the defense and security relationship with India, the main area that has advanced during the Trump administration.” Alyssa Ayres, Senior Researcher for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told PTI.
Author of ‘Our Time Has Come: How India is Making its Place in the World’, Ayres served as Deputy Under Secretary of State for South Asia from 2010 to 2013.
Former Vice President Biden was an early supporter of the US-India relationship, he said, adding that the president-elect 15 years ago viewed the United States and India as “the two closest nations in the world.”
Biden had even defended the civil nuclear deal with India in Congress, Ayres recalled.
Biden’s election campaign website talks about partnering with India to support the rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific region.
Biden’s global priorities for fighting the coronavirus pandemic and addressing climate change will require close cooperation with India, Ayres said.
“I have seen a lot of attention in the Indian media to the question of whether President-elect Biden will criticize India on issues of democracy and human rights; He has stated that he has concerns and given his decades of diplomatic experience, He is likely to convey his views privately, but I have seen little on the issue of climate change and clean energy, ”Ayres said in response to a question.
Ayres hopes that clean energy and climate cooperation will return to the forefront of the agenda during the Biden administration, as was the case during Barrack Obama’s tenure.
“We can see the catastrophic effects of climate change before us. Our country is on fire and our coasts regularly hit by hurricanes, while India battles floods, droughts and extreme weather events; and we cannot solve this without dramatically increasing clean energy, ”he said.
“India has become a world leader in solar (energy) and it will be in our collective interest to renew cooperation in this area (which) the Trump administration sidelined,” Ayres said.
Originally trained as a cultural historian, Ayres has conducted research on geopolitics between India and Pakistan.
Prior to serving in the Obama administration, Ayres was a founding director of the India and South Asia practice at McLarty Associates, a Washington-based international strategic advisory firm, from 2008 to 2010.
From 2007 to 2008, she served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs as a CFR International Affairs Fellow.
Prior to that, he worked in the nonprofit sector at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Advanced Indian Studies and the Asia Society in New York. PTI LKJ IND
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