Recommendations for India-US development cooperation in the Indo-Pacific
Hindustan TimesAs the Indo-Pacific construct is internationalised through bilateral and plurilateral arrangements between regional and extra-regional powers, critics say the overt securitisation of the region has spurred the return of a “Cold War mentality”. PREMIUM The success of India-US defence cooperation offers lessons for bolstering bilateral development cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. For instance, the 2016 India- US joint statement affirmed the two sides’ commitment to expanding global development cooperation in agriculture, health, energy, women’s empowerment, and sanitation. Despite this early consolidation of the intent to pool resources and expertise for shared development aims in third countries and regions of mutual interest, India-US development cooperation has remained focused only on a few sectors and is mainly limited to Africa, Afghanistan and South Asia. The success of India-US defence cooperation offers lessons for bolstering bilateral development cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.