Biden will prioritise defence and security partnership with India, says Obama-era official

Washington, November 12

US President-elect Joe Biden was an early supporter of the India-US relationship and his administration will proceed to prioritise the defence and safety partnership with New Delhi, a key space which has progressed throughout Donald Trump’s tenure as president, a senior official from the Barrack Obama-era administration has mentioned.

The US media has projected Biden because the winner of the 2020 presidential election. However, incumbent Trump is but to concede defeat, vowing to mount authorized fights in a number of key battleground states. There is far hypothesis on how the India-US relationship will form throughout Biden’s time within the White home.

“Based on the priorities articulated already by President-elect Biden, I would anticipate that the Biden-Harris administration will continue to place a high priority on the defence and security relationship with India, the major area that has advanced during the Trump administration,” Alyssa Ayres Senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) informed PTI.

Author of ‘Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place within the World,’ Ayres had served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013.

Former vp Biden was an early supporter of the US-India relationship, she mentioned, including that the president-elect, 15 years in the past, seen the US and India as “the two closest nations in the world”.

Biden had even championed the civil nuclear settlement with India in Congress, Ayres recalled.

Biden’s election marketing campaign web site speaks on partnering with India to assist rules-based worldwide order within the Indo-Pacific area.

Biden’s world priorities on preventing the coronavirus pandemic and tackling local weather change will necessitate shut cooperation with India, Ayres mentioned.

“I’ve seen a lot of attention in the Indian media to the question of whether President-elect Biden will criticise India on questions of democracy and human rights — he has stated that he has concerns, and given his decades of diplomatic experience would be likely to convey his views privately — but I’ve seen little on the question of climate change and clean energy,” Ayres mentioned in response to a query.

Ayres expects clear power and local weather cooperation to return to the forefront of the agenda throughout the Biden administration as was the case throughout Barrack Obama’s time period.

“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, drought, and extreme weather events; and we cannot solve this without dramatically scaling up clean energy,” she mentioned.

“India has emerged as a global leader in solar (power) and it will be in all of our collective interest to renew cooperation on this area (which) the Trump administration set aside,” Ayres mentioned.

Originally skilled as a cultural historian, Ayres has carried out analysis in India-Pakistan geopolitics.

Before serving within the Obama administration, Ayres was founding director of the India and South Asia apply at McLarty Associates, a Washington-based worldwide strategic advisory agency, from 2008 to 2010.

From 2007 to 2008, she served as particular assistant to the undersecretary of state for political affairs as a CFR worldwide affairs fellow.

Prior to that she labored within the non-profit sector on the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India and on the Asia Society in New York. PTI