Former US President George W. Bush is in New Delhi as a private citizen to participate in the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. He spoke to Pramit Palchaudhuri of Hindustan Times about his present life, why he sought to change the Indo-US relationship, and the global role he sees India fulfilling:
Q. How do you keep yourself busy these day?
I’m giving a lot of speeches, some thirty are lined up. I’m also working on a book. Making speeches is an interesting way to make a living, gives me a chance to share some of the experiences I had as president. The book will be about the decisions I made as president and as you know I had some pretty consequential decisions to make. I just want people to get an idea of what it was like. It’s really going to be a book for history. It’s not going to be a slash and burn type book. It will be a book about the environment in which I had to make some tough calls. And then it will let the reader to make up his own mind as to what he would have done. There is an autobiographical component to it. But it’s really about my days as president. We are having a good time. The book should be out, hopefully, next year.
Click here to read the full interview.
Bush told Anil Padmanabhan of Mint: “I think the way out is for the United States to help the Pakistan government in dealing with these extremists.”
During your first visit to India you set the stage for the bilateral relationship between India and the US. Now you return as a private citizen. What are your thoughts?
First of all, the bilateral relationship forged with previous prime ministers is important for America and I believe it is good for the region and good for the world. India is an important country and it is one with which America shares values.
Secondly, its importance is becoming more relevant as the world recovers from the economic downturn. I think historians will look back and say that isn’t it interesting that one of the reasons behind the recovery is India and other emerging countries like her. That would not have been said 20 or 30 years ago. So, India is a country of vital importance. It is important for peace and prosperity. More here.
Laura Rozen in Foreign Policy on India’s stealth lobbying against Richard Holbrooke’s brief:
When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — flanked by President Obama — introduced Richard Holbrooke as the formidable new U.S. envoy to South Asia at a State Department ceremony on Thursday, India was noticeably absent from his title.
Holbrooke, the veteran negotiator of the Dayton accords and sharp-elbowed foreign policy hand who has long advised Clinton, was officially named “special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan” in what was meant to be one of the signature foreign policy acts of Obama’s first week in office.
But the omission of India from his title, and from Clinton’s official remarks introducing the new diplomatic push in the region was no accident — not to mention a sharp departure from Obama’s own previously stated approach of engaging India, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, in a regional dialogue. Multiple sources told The Cable that India vigorously — and successfully — lobbied the Obama transition team to make sure that neither India nor Kashmir was included in Holbrooke’s official brief.
“When the Indian government learned Holbrooke was going to do [Pakistan]-India, they swung into action and lobbied to have India excluded from his purview,” relayed one source. “And they succeeded. Holbrooke’s account officially does not include India.”
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And click here to read The Washington Post story.
Previously in AW:
From IHT:
Richard Holbrooke, a former United Nations ambassador, was chosen Thursday for the post of special envoy to Pakistan and India.
[ Update: India managed to trim Holbrooke's portfolio to Pakistan and Afghanistan -- basically eliminating the contested region of Kashmir from his job description. Click here to read The Washington Post story]
Holbrooke has more than 45 years of foreign policy and diplomatic experience, including brokering a peace pact between warring factions in Bosnia that led to the 1995 Dayton peace accords.
Holbrooke, who supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primaries, is good friends with two early supporters of Barack Obama: James Johnson, who headed Obama’s vice-presidential search team, and Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning human rights expert. And Holbrooke took pains to avoid criticism of Obama.
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Martha Nussbaum in 3quarksdaily:
I should like to focus on a letter written by then-candidate Obama to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, dated September 23, 2008, and published in India Abroad, the October 10 issue. I address these remarks to my former University of Chicago Law School colleague in the spirit of the type of respectful yet searching criticism that I know he will recognize as a hallmark of our faculty workshops and discussions.
The Obama letter has three slightly disturbing characteristics.
First, the letter gives lengthy praise to the nuclear deal, without acknowledging the widespread debate about the wisdom of that deal in both nations. Perhaps, however, this silence simply reflects politeness: Obama is surely aware that Singh has been an enthusiastic backer of the deal, risking much political capital in the process.
Second, the letter speaks of future cooperation that will “tap the creativity and dynamism of our entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists,” particularly in the area of alternative energy sources, but never mentions a future partnership in the effort to eradicate poverty and illiteracy. This silence, unlike the first, cannot be explained by politeness, since Singh has devoted a great deal of attention to issues of rural poverty, and it is plausible to think that he could have gotten a lot further had he had more help from abroad.
[Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at The University of Chicago, and the author of The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future.]
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