U.S. Relations with the People's Republic of China (2005)

U.S. Department of State

Question and Answer Session After his Speech at the Asia Society

R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs; Moderated by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke
The U.S. and India: The New Strategic Partnership
New York City
October 18, 2005

QUESTION: The Bush Administration has spent years urging all states to strengthen export controls in order to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Yet the Bush administration now wants to loosen controls to help India. How do you respond to critics, including many Bush Administration partisans, who say you are in fact boosting the importance of nuclear weapons rather than diminishing their importance? And how do you counter their concerns that you will encourage other states like China to make exceptions for their friends?

AMBASSADOR HOLBROOKE: Before you answer Carol's question, let me add a very precise addendum: Is, as your critics charge, the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty effectively dead as a result of the deal you made with India?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: The nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is very much alive and very much important to the future of the global order. We made this arrangement with India with one conviction in mind: it was important to bring India, and to allow India to be brought into compliance with the global nonproliferation regime, for reasons that all of you understand, that it is not possible for India to come into that regime officially and formally. But to take the world's soon to be largest population and consign it to a place outside that system does not appear to us to be strategically wise. Instead, giving India's very good record in stemming and preventing the proliferation of its nuclear technology over the past 30 years, we felt it makes sense to ask India to open up its system, to submit to international inspections and safeguards, and take the steps necessary in separating civilian and military nuclear facilities that will allow it to come into effective compliance with international norms.

You have to ask yourself, you have to choose: if you have that advantage of bringing a new India into compliance with international norms, then of course you further…because of nonproliferation, you find ,on the other hand, you retain the artificial distinction in an artificial world in which India has to live. You don't achieve the benefits of the changes that India has agreed to make. So, for all of us who care about nonproliferation, which I assume everybody here in New York, and everybody there in Washington…This is a step forward, and that's why the United States decided to take this initiative.

I was the negotiator in this initiative with my friend, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, and I can tell you that we thought long and hard about the respective commitment we have to make to each other. India has made commitments to the United States which I believe India will fulfill. We, Americans, our government has made commitments in return. We are fulfilling them. In arguing for a lessening of restrictions by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, in taking Indian entities off the Commerce Department's list, and (inaudible) in seeking congressional legislation that will change the American law to permit American businesses to work on a more normal basis with India over the period ahead.

AMBASSADOR HOLBROOKE: Nick, now, let me thank you now on behalf of all for us again having chosen the Asia Society to make this major speech on the eve of your trip by knowing the world is literally listening to the speech today. You mentioned Tom Friedman. I might just add that he opened his book tour here pre-publication from the symposium, and faced some very hostile criticism. But he did wonderfully well, and this meeting today following by only a week Chris Hill's using the Asia Society as a platform to discuss North Korea, I think symbolize the direction the Asia Society is going under President Desai and her colleagues.

I want to ask the next question, then we will bring it back to New York. Other than a brief passing mention, you didn't mention China. But you used the phrase "strategic partnership" to describe India. The Administration has deliberately no longer used that phrase to describe its relationship with China, even though, as you recall, that phrase was used by previous administrations. You praised Bob Blackwill in your speech for his service. He has written at least two major articles in the Wall Street Journal, stating -- as a private citizen -- stating that one of the major reasons behind this improvement of India-American relations is as a counterweight to China. I fully support the improvement of relations with India, and I think everyone in this room does, but there is this issue of whether there is an additional motive, as you well know, your colleagues well know, in Beijing, among Chinese watchers and Chinese officials speaking off-the-record, that concern has been voiced. So would you care to deny and address it?

The problem is we have worked so close together for so long and you are watching one of the greatest diplomats in America, in American modern history, and I know what he is going to say.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: But I don't have to say that.

AMBASSADOR HOLBROOKE: Well, I think there are people in New Delhi and Beijing who want to hear.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you for the easy question you gave to me, Dick. The U.S.-India relationship has to stand on its own. How could the United States -- as it looks over the world, as it looks for allies in the world in the next century -- not focus on India? One billion free people living in a democracy, living in a country that shares a lot of values that our country embodies: tolerance for multi-religiosity, for multi-linguilism, and for a multi-ethnic life. India is a personification of that country, and so are we. The essence of any great relationship in history between two countries has to rely on this societal cohesion, as similarities that lie in the foundations of this relationship.

Second, we are looking for partners in the world. We are going to face a very different strategic picture in the future than we are faced in the past quarter-century. There is much less emphasis on state-to-state threats than there are in global threats, and I mentioned that in my speech. But the fact is, if you look at the agenda of the Secretary State of the United States or the Foreign Minister of India, that agenda is increasingly not the traditional continental issues of war and peace, but global climate change, trafficking of women and children, and drugs and crime, and WMD proliferation.

AMBASSADOR HOLBROOKE: We went through the Beijing-Washington-Moscow triangle. And the Sino-American relationship, as you will remember, was forged, originally, over a common adversary. I am not saying it's a duplicate here, but the great new triangle is really Delhi-Beijing-Washington, for reasons that you outlined perfectly in your speech. Everyone wants to see U.S.-India relations improved. But the issue is that several of your colleagues and ex-colleagues have been very explicit on this strategic counterforce argument, and that needs to be addressed.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: And I am going to finish my answer, thank you very much. And the answer is we need a democratic partner that is a global power that can help us fight against these transnational problems that are at the heart of our foreign policy agenda. Shared values and shared interests are usually at the root of any diplomatic friendship, and that is the case in the United States with India. As we look towards China, as Secretary Rice said very often, we don't seek to contain China, we seek to engage China. Our Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick was in Beijing in early August. He started the global dialogue with China.

China is a country that we hope will increasingly take on management of these world problems with us -- and with India, and the EU, and Japan, and Australia and Brazil, and South Africa and Nigeria, the other great countries in the world among them that are going to be responsible for working together on an equal basis to attack these problems. I didn't describe some kind of Delhi-Beijing-Washington axis in my speech. The words aren't there. The thoughts aren't there. We have regional allies that are paramount in our foreign policy. India has become one of our allies.

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Released on October 26, 2005