Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
India's ambitious National Action Plan on Climate Change seeks to develop strategies for scaling up solar power, energy efficiency and switching to sustainable agriculture. U.S. collaboration and cooperation are key to achieving these goals.
Relations between India and the U.S. have improved in recent years, thanks in part to a “building block” approach that aims to build trust from the bottom-up. Carnegie hosted Ambassador David Mulford to discuss this relationship.
The Obama administration should pressure Pakistan to bring the LeT leadership responsible for the Mumbai attacks to justice, and to eliminate the organization's terror infrastructure to prevent it from threatening U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration will continue to treat relations with both New Delhi and Islamabad as a non-zero sum game. The new administration will not undo the U.S.-Indian nuclear agreement despite their reservations, while Vice-President Biden's expertise on Pakistan will provide new opportunities for progress.
A broad-based relationship between the U.S. and India will be necessary to solve complex global challenges, achieve security in the South Asian region, reestablish stability in the global economy, and overcome the threat of violent Islamic radicalism.
India will continue to face a serious jihadi threat from Pakistan-based terrorist groups for the foreseeable future. However, India lacks military options that have strategic-level effects without a significant risk of a military response by Pakistan. Neither Indian nor U.S. policy is likely to be able to reduce that threat significantly in the short to medium term.
The civilian government in Pakistan faces hard choices in its response to the Mumbai attacks. Action against the groups responsible for the violence will overturn traditional strategy that considers these groups national security ‘assets’ against India. There is also the danger of opening up another battle front for an army already conducting counter-terrorism operations on its western border.
Despite the tangled history of India and Pakistan, the latest terrorist attacks in Mumbai require the world to take a fresh look at the nature of the terrorist threat. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group which carried out the attacks, is a global threat, seeking to promote an Islamic Caliphate by breaking up India and destroying confidence in stable democracies.
The Mumbai attacks demonstrate that terrorism demands a global response. The best way to address militant groups operating outside Pakistani state control is to promote stable democracy and increased state capacity so the government can dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism in under-governed parts of the country – a project in which both India and the international community have a stake.
The objective of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group which carried out the Mumbai attacks, is global jihad. They are second only to al-Qaeda as a terrorist group of global reach.