Blackwill's Vision of India

The following is a statement by the U.S. Ambassador to India, Robert D. Blackwill, announcing his desire to leave his post and return to academic career at the Harvard University.

The following is a statement by the U.S. Ambassador to India, Robert D. Blackwill, announcing his desire to leave his post and return to academic career at the Harvard University.

This past January while in Washington, I informed President Bush, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Rice that I would be going back to the faculty at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government near the end of this summer to  continue my academic career, I will thus join my illustrious colleague, John Kenneth Galbraith, in proudly representing my country for two years as American Ambassador to India, and then returning to Harvard to teach and to write.

It has been a special privilege to serve the President over the past four years, first during the 2000 Presidential Campaign, and then as the U.S. Ambassador to India. In naming me as his envoy to this magnificent country, President Bush did me a great honour. I have tried to justify his confidence by energetically promoting his vision of India as a rising great power of the 21st century, and his primary goal of the world’s oldest and largest democratics operating together to transform their relations, to forge concentrated strategic collaboration for the decades ahead.

Under the leadership of President Bush and Prime Minister Vajpayee, Washington and New Delhi have made enormous strides to achieve this aim. I said in my Senate confirmation hearings that international peace, prosperity and freedom would be further advanced if the relationship between the United States and India were fundamentally transformed. In partnership with an accomplished Mission staff of Americans and Indians, I can say with certainty that this is occurring powerfully each day between the two nations.

Before the U.S.-India transformation began, it was rare for members of a President’s Cabinet and senior American officials to visit India. Almost a hundred have come in the past two years. Two years ago, there were economic sanctions applied by the United States against India related to its 1998 nuclear tests. Today, those sanctions are long gone. Two years ago, the American and Indian militaries conducted no joint operations. Today, they have completed six major training exercises, and our defence cooperation flourishes. American and Indian counterparts now intensively engage across a broad spectrum of other essential subjects: fighting terrorism, diplomatic collaboration, intelligence exchange, law enforcement, development assistance, the global environment, HIV/AIDS and other public health problems. Two years ago, American and Indian policy-makers did not address together the important issues of cooperative high technology trade, civil space activity and civilian nuclear power. Today, all three are under continuing bilateral discussion. And in addition, there has been crisis management from time to time along the way concerning tensions in South Asia.

With President Bush and Prime Minister Vajpayee showing the route and buttressed by the Indian American community in the United States and the U.S. Congress, our consistently troubled bilateral past is behind us. In my view, close and cooperative relations between the United States and India will thrive in the decades ahead most crucially because of the convergence of common democratic values and vital national interests. We have overlapping vital national interests in promoting peace and freedom in Asia, slowing the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and combating international terrorism.

With respect to the global war on terrorism, President Bush emphasizes that this scourage threatens both our values and our interests. As I have said many times during my stay in India the fight against international terrorism will not be won until terrorism against India ends permanently. There can be no other legitimate stance by the United States, no American compromise whatever on this elemental geopolitical and moral truth. The United States, India and all civilised nations must have zero tolerance for terrorism. Otherwise we sink into a swamp of moral relativism and strategic myopia.

As was so often the case, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it best, “reason and careful moral reflection…teach us that there are times when the first and the most important reply to evil is to stop it.”

There is another issue on which together we must try harder.

As I used to teach students in my course on strategy at Harvard University and will soon do so again, national economic strength is a prerequisite for sustained diplomatic influence and military muscle.

Therefore, I hope for a robust India economic performance in the years ahead, and for a sharp increase in U.S.-India trade and American investment in India. Promoting U.S. business has been one of my major preoccupations while Ambassador to India.

The U.S-India relationship has a glittering future. To play a part in advancing this cause under President Bush’s direction has been my duty, my pleasure and my encompassing strategic conviction.

In that context, I particularly thank senior members of the Indian Government for their unfailing generosity to me as I have carried out my official duties.

I especially have in mind Prime Minister Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister Advani, Finance Minister Singh, External Affairs Minister Sinha, Defence Minister Fernandes, and Principal Secretary and National Security Adviser Mishra. I would also like to express my appreciation to the Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Gandhi, for her many courtesies to me.

Around this vast land, I have met men and women of superlative talent, of consummate entrepreneurial and political skill, individuals committed to helping their fellow citizens. Countless Indians from every part of society have given me their assistance, their views, and their hopes and dreams for stronger bonds between our two nations. I am grateful to them as we all recognize that people-to-people ties are at the heart of the U.S-India relationship.

For my wife Wera Hilderbrand and myself, getting to know something about this fabulous country has been one of life’s pinnacles. From North Block and South Block to the Valleys of Assam to the spare splendour of Rajasthan’s deserts and Mumbai’s exuberance, from the mountains of Kashmir to the Golden Temple to Kutch and Bangalore’s IT dynamism, all that is India compels us.

How could it not, for to quote Mark Twain.

“India is,

the creadle of the human race,

the birthplace of human speech,

the mother of history,

the grandmother of legend,

and the great grand mother of tradition.

Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man

are treasured up in India”.

But we miss our five children in the United States. We have one grandchild there and, praise be, two more on the way. We are attached to our home in Cambridge and to our friends in America. Harvard beckons. So during this coming New England winter, our vivid and lasting memories of India-its people, its culture, its beauty-will warm us as we face the snows.

Mother India has marked us deeply and only for the better-for all time.