South Asian Region
Growing Importance To US

By Karl Inderfurth

PRESIDENT Clinton’s visit to South Asia last March-the first such trip in over two decades-combined with other livel visits to and from the region, demonstrate the growing importance of South Asia to the United States This change is a significant part of redefining U.S. foreign policy for the 21st century, post-Cold War world. And because this change is so much in line with large U.S. national interests, and enjoys such broad support across the political spectrum, I am confident that it will endure long beyond the current Administration.

Important

Countries throughout South Asia are increasingly important potential partners for the United States on a whole range of crucial emerging issues: from global peace to global climate change, from cutting-edge technological cooperation to common cause against the age-old ills of disease and poverty or the new scourges in international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

As part of this broader engagement, our economic officials are working with regional partners to create better global regimes for e-commerce and biotechnology, while our technicians explore clean energy options to preserve our shared environment. Our doctors and scientists are collaborating in government-supported projects to fight HIV/AIDS and other killer diseases, with public health programs and research on new preventive vaccines. Our diplomats are working to narrow our differences on norproliferation issues, which will help make the whole world safer. And our experts are discussing greater cooperation in international peacekeeping, to keep today’s trouble spots from becoming tomorrow’s crises.

While some have misinterpreted our expanding regional ties as a desire to "tilt" our policy towards India, the reality is that our overall strategy is to improve relations with the South Asian region as a whole, according it higher prominence and priority in the overall U.S. approach to the world. The fact is that during the second Clinton Administration there has been an unprecedented series of high-level American visits to the region, and of return visits by South Asian leaders.

The list includes not just president and Prime Ministers, but also foreign ministers and ministers of commerce, finance, energy and senior officials dealing with public health, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and many other common concerns.

What explains this new American tilt toward South Asia? The answer is simple. We recognize that , as an increasingly dynamic region that is home to more than one-fifth of humanity, the futures of South Asia and of the United States are inevitably linked. Ths is already true in more areas than ever before, from trade and commerce, to science and technology, to global environmental and medical progress-and also, to an ever greater extent, in terms of people-to-people ties of kinship and culture between our proudly diverse societies.

Looking ahead, we also recognize the enormous potential of the vast South Asian region, especially if it can forge a future free of the tragic elements of its past. I have in mind particularly the regional, ethnic, or religious conflicts that have cost far too many precious lives and resources.

We can also imagine a future in which the peoples and nations of this region move toward greater cooperation and better integration into the global political and economic mainstream, and are able as a result to focus more sharply on their own social and human needs. Part of this process, we believe, could be advanced through regional organisations, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

Other promising prospects are offered by more specialized cooperative ventures like the South Asian Regional Initiative on Energy (SARI), wich could help in harnessing the region’s huge but untapped cross-border markets for hydropower, natural gas, and other resources highlighted during President Clinton’s visit. And another crucial part of South Asia’s upward trajectory, we are convinced, will be a stronger engagement and wherever possible a closer partnership with the United States.

Opportunities

With all this in mind, the United States will keep looking for new opportunities to strengthen our ties with every nation in the region, each on its own-merits-from Nepal in the north to Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the south, and everything in between. It used to be said that South Asia was on the backside of the U.S. diplomatic globe. No longer. That globe is beginning to turn. From here forward, we hope to have strong and growing relationship across South Asia, which promises to take its rightful place higher on the scale of American foreign policy priorities in the years ahead.

(Karl Inderfurth is the present US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia)

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