Provocations - Teresita C. Schaffer
The United States, India, and Global Governance: Can They Work Together?
Two snapshots convey the flavor of India’s pursuit of a larger role in global governing councils. The first dates from India’s most recent accession for a two-year term to the United Nations Security Council in January 1991, just as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was coming apart and the end of the Cold War was in sight. The first major issue to come before the council was the package of resolutions that would end the first Iraq war. Harried Indian diplomats, faced with draft resolutions being pressed on them with great insistence by their U.S. counterparts, spoke of their need to ‘‘find the non-aligned consensus.’’ Whatever decision India made was bound to alienate an international constituency it cared about. For Indian officials, this moment captured both the advantages and drawbacks of participating in the world’s decisionmaking. The then—Indian ambassador to the United States, Abid Hussein, expressed considerable frustration in a private conversation with me at the time: ‘‘Do you realize that we will have to do this for two years?’’
Seventeen years later, in November 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his top economic advisers attended the Group of 20 (G-20) summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy in Washington. Speaking with evident satisfaction to reporters on his flight home, he noted how serious the discussions had been, and how he and India were being taken seriously at this gathering convened to address a major global crisis. ‘‘There is one important significance of the summit. It is a clear indication that the balance of power is increasingly shifting in favour of the emerging economies . . . For the first time, there was a genuine dialogue between major developed countries and major emerging countries.’’ He recognized that the global institutional and financial reform processes had barely begun, and foresaw India’s continuing participation in both.
The current financial crisis has presented India with the opportunity to achieve the status of a powerful and influential state in international order. On the other hand, this role places unaccustomed demands on India. During a time of dramatic improvement in relations between India and the United States, their biggest successes have been in building up bilateral ties, while multilateral settings have produced some of their most difficult encounters, notably those in the UN and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Multilateral efforts have also created some of the most effective means for the United States and India to advance interests they share. International financial cooperation is the most promising current example.
Expanded global cooperation is one of the most important ways in which the United States and India can reinvent the partnership they have begun to build. This article examines it from two perspectives: first, from the highly structured world of international organizations, and second, from the looser amalgam of institutions and nongovernmental networks that are involved in the debate on climate change. In both settings, the United States and India have a great deal at stake. Some of their interests coincide, but others clash. The challenge for both countries is how to reconcile their concepts of global leadership with their different foreign policy styles and interests.
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