Convergences, divergences: EAM outlines crux of US ties

India and the US are geostrategic aligned in the way they see the world, the national security systems of both countries have moved from being suspicious of each other to being most enthusiastic about working together, India is non-West but isn't antiWest, and there is convergence on the Indo-Pacific, connectivity projects, economy and technology issues, external affairs minister S Jaishankar has said.

- Prashant Jha

At the same time, he said that while India and the US "dealt" with each other, they were just beginning to "work" with each other in recent areas. Flagging areas of possible challenges, Jaishankar warned that the fact that political conversations have become global without a corresponding cultural understanding of each other can cause friction, as can viewing each other's societies through one's own templates. The minister was in conversation with American foreign policy scholar and commentator Walter Russel Mead at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC on Friday.

The convergences

Asked about the convergences, Jaishankar said that India and US were "aligned in a geostrategic way". In what appeared to be allusion to shared anxieties about China, Jaishankar said, "We both want to see a certain stability, a certain set of rules, a certain distribution of power which is advantageous to both of us. And our interests are not clashing in that respect. At the biggest picture level, there is a powerful case for India and the US to work together." He then pointed out that within both systems, the national security side historically had "the greatest suspicion or reservations" about each other in the past but were today the "most enthusiastic about working together", at a time when both NSAS, Jake Sullivan and Ajit Doval, have shepherded the initiative on critical and emerging technologies, a key framework to deepen ties on defence, space, semiconductors, telecom, quantum, artificial intelligence, among other domains.

He referred to the economic convergence, particularly the focus on tech which is shaping the direction of global economy as well as everyday lives. "This is the knowledge economy, information embedded economy. And there is again new and powerful convergence between us. At a global level, US will need partners and India will need opportunities and possibilities."