Behind breakthrough pacts, weeks of parleys

Three months, over a dozen drafts, sleepless nights, extensive internal consultations, virtual and in-person negotiations, a bilateral process marked by remarkable cordiality and warmth, a mutual germination of ideas, and finally, a problem of plenty.

- Prashant Jha

This was the experience of negotiators from India and the US, as they drafted the most ambitious joint statement to have emerged in the history of the 75-year diplomatic relationship. While the text of the statement was not out, conversations with multiple people on both sides who were either directly or indirectly involved in the talks, on deep background, gave HT a sense of the process behind the outcome which they said was path-breaking.

The context

When they began negotiating, there was already a lot to work that had been done and provided a framework. Over the past few years, Delhi and Washington DC have intensified their exchanges in a wide range of areas. If the growing China challenge, and both visible and behind-the-scenes security cooperation, had made both systems recognise they can do more in the field of security, the pandemic, particularly vaccine collaboration, made both realise how mutual collaboration in health care can help. Climate has been both a shared concern, but also a source of divergence over historic responsibility and financing, while trade has witnessed a paradox, of growing volumes with deep and recurring disputes. The American need for talent and Indian hopes of elevating already existing educational ties into a genuine knowledge partnership had already moved the conversation in the domain.

But both systems acknowledge that it was truly the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) this year that provided a new framework. It caused palpable excitement on both sides about the potential collaboration in several new sectors. Defence industrial cooperation was suddenly a real possibility; semiconductor collaboration was on the table; both could work together on artificial intelligence and quantum research; and the telecom infrastructure needed a counter to China.