'India, U.S. Must Commit To It for True Strategic Partnership'

WASHINGTON: If India and the U.S. are to build a truly strategic partnership, the two countries must each commit to it and defend it in equal measure, Republican Senator John McCain said.

"If India and the United States are to build a truly strategic partnership, we must each commit to it and defend it in equal measure. We must each build the public support needed to sustain our strategic priorities," McCain said in a major speech on India on the Senate floor yesterday.

He proposed three strategic interests that India and the U.S. clearly share, and these should be the priorities of a reinvigorated partnership.

"First, to shape the development of South Asia as a region of sovereign, democratic states that contribute to one another's security and prosperity. Second, to create a preponderance of power in the Asia-Pacific region that favours free societies, free markets, free trade, and free commons," he said.

And finally, to strengthen a Liberal international order and an open global economy that safeguard human dignity and foster peaceful development, McCain said.

Cautioning against parochialism in the Indo-U.S relationship, McCain warned: "We must resist the domestic forces in each of our countries that would turn our strategic relationship into a transactional one? One defined not by the shared strategic goals we achieve together, but by what parochial concessions we extract from one another. If we fail in these challenges, we will fall far short of our potential, as we have before."

Excited to be returning to New Delhi to meet Modi and his national security team next week, McCain hoped that Modi's election could mean for the revitalisation of India's economy and its rising power, and for the renewal of the U.S. -India strategic partnership.

The decisive mandate to the BJP, he said gives the Prime Minister a historic mandate for change, which Indians clearly crave.

"I want Prime Minister Modi to succeed, because I want India to succeed," he said.

"It is no secret that the past few years have been challenging ones for India - political gridlock, a flagging economy, financial difficulties, and more. It is not my place, or that of any other American, to tell India how to realize its full potential. That is for Indians to decide. Our concern is simply that India does realize its full potential - for the United States has a stake in India's success. Indeed, a strong, confident, and future-oriented India is indispensable for a vibrant U.S.-India strategic partnership," McCain said.

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