US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti spoke at the U.S-India Defense News Conclave in New Delhi Thursday on the need to bolster the partnership between the two countries. “No war is distant anymore,” he said, urging India to not “take this relationship for granted”.
In what is being perceived as a veiled reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Russia trip, Garcetti said, “I respect that India likes its strategic autonomy. But in times of conflict, there is no such thing as strategic autonomy.”
Here is the full text of his speech:
You can move your shoulders, stand up if you need to, keep your feet, and I hope my words will keep you awake. But let me start first by thanking P.K. Sharma for welcoming me back to the U.S. Side. A wonderful hidden castle I call it here, the architecture which is stunning, the thoughts and the convening power which is powerful, and of course, institutions mean nothing, just as walls and spaces. It’s really the people behind them. So, thank you for being such a great connector of people and ideas and progress.
And Puneet Mehta, thank you as well for answering the call of our Kolkata consulate and of our mission here — a mission on a mission, by the way, the U.S. mission in India — to come together and come to the national research. An excellent job convening this U.S.-India Defense News series of conferences that is culminating here today.
I also want to thank our senior defence official Admiral Mike Baker, who’s coming to the end of his really illustrious and quite accomplished time here. I feel really honoured to serve alongside him and minister Gloria Urbana, who is here as well, heading up our public diplomacy efforts. And a shout out to our Consul General in Thailand, who’s not here, but I know, represented our entire Kolkata consulate, which, if you are a student of U.S.-India history, is the second oldest consulate the United States has in the world. In 1792, we established it.
The first one, if you’re curious, is Lyon, France. And then we appointed somebody in 1792, and because back then Consul General Dori was on the east coast of the brand-new United States, there was no west coast. He took two years to get here, and Benjamin Dori arrived in 1794.
In other words, today, by the time you arrive, they say that’s the end of your tour, now you’ve got to get to your next one. But it’s some place that we feel that depth of the U.S. and Indian people that have been interacting for centuries, a proud history in which we advocated even against a close ally, the British, for the independence of this country, a place in which we celebrated last night our International Day and looked at the space-themed history of our two nations and the way that U.S. missiles were the first that were launched to look at rockets for the Indian space program.
Our ties are deep, our ties are ancient, our ties are increasingly broad, and today I think that culminates together as we look at the U.S.-India Defense Partnership.
Mukesh Aghi, always a pleasure to be with you, another superstar down here. Ashutella Su, who was part of the kitchen tavern and helped me before I got here, and an alum of our embassy as well, a great thinker about the U.S.-India work, and of all of you, everybody here is a VIP.
I recently returned two days ago from about five weeks away, as long as I’ve spent away from India, three weeks working in Washington, D.C. and the East Coast and a couple of personal weeks. Well, one personal week and one in which I was in the Arctic Circle, and another speech at another time.
But as I looked in Washington, I always say that the years tell us things that the days cannot see. It’s important to take breathers away from the day-to-day urgent work in order to see the importance and the movement, but also sometimes leaving the place of the work gives you the perspective to hear how people see that work, certainly from our national capital, Washington D.C.
And a year after the prime minister came to that historic… Yes, one of the highlights of post-independence India’s relationship with the United States, there is nothing that has died down in the enthusiasm, the focus, the relationship of Americans towards India. If anything, it continues to accelerate, even when we don’t have our heads of state visiting each other.
Even as two great democracies go through two great elections, let me tell you that it’s like water percolating after the rain into the soil. It’s really getting out into the bedrock, into the reservoirs of looking in Washington, where everybody came up to me at the Chief of Mission Conference, which brings all the ambassadors of the world for the United States together, CEOs, cabinet secretaries, White House officials, senior administration appointees, who all said, I need to know what’s going on in India. I might be representing another country or serving in another country. I might not have a business enterprise in India, but everybody is telling me I need to know India.
And the urgency of that for the American side towards India is certainly near every single day. Our one-year anniversary video got 540 million views here, which I know is kind of small potatoes when you’re in India, but something that really cuts to the core of how much we increasingly feel the same way and think the same way.
The question is now can we move the same way? In other words, if our heads and hearts are aligned. The big question, I would say, is can we align our feet and how quickly can we do that?
You know, Ashley Tellis is probably sick of answering questions for a headline he didn’t write about whether this was a good bet for our two countries. And he and I think both see eye to eye that this is not a bet. People don’t bet on each other.
Imagine if we made that about relationships, friendships, marriages. I’m making a bet on this fiancé and he’s going to be one of the two that are going to win. That’s a successful marriage or I’m going to lose. Or this friendship… This is my buddy, but I’m going to make a bet on him.
It’s the wrong metaphor and one that we should discard once and for all. Put it in the ground and lay it to rest. This is not a bet. It is commitment. It is a relationship. It is true. It is trusting. It is tried and it is tested.
And you know, as the old cliche goes, the thing about love, which is the basis, I think, of most friendships and relationships. Love is the only thing we can give more of and receive more of it back. It’s not a finite thing. It’s not a win or loss. It’s not a zero sum game. It’s important for us as Americans and as Indians to remember the more we put into this relationship, the more we will get out. The more we insist on kind of cynical calculations in the place of a trusted relationship, the less we will get.
But the more that we trust, not always what do I get out of this transaction today in exchange for something I’m giving, but that I give without thinking about that. Trust me, you will receive more back from both sides. That’s certainly been my governing philosophy as ambassador and leader of this mission. It’s also been what I’ve been trying to impress upon Americans. Because this relationship in Washington is a special one indeed. It is very wide. In Washington today, where very few things unite American political leaders, it is bipartisan, it is bicameral, and it is bi-branch. But as I also remind my Indian friends, while it is wide and it is deeper than it’s ever been, it is not yet deep enough.
That if we take it for granted from the Indian side towards America…
I’ll fight a lot of defensive battles trying to help this relationship behave.
But this senator or this member of Congress is concerned about an NGO, concerned about a religious group, concerned about a human rights issue, concerned about the things that sometimes we pretend don’t exist that we must actually confront and find a good language to talk about.
We are a little bit from two different cultures in which we say all the time, please do criticise us. We criticise ourselves. And he says, no, it’s not the role of countries to criticise each other. And then once in a while we might say something critical and he says, why are you criticising us? Countries shouldn’t do that.
But if you look at the circles that unite our values, they’re not completely concentric, but they mostly overlap. I would say 80 to 90 percent. And let us not, in the words of Freud, take the narcissism of small differences and focus on the small presence on the outside and ignore that huge middle in which two democracies that embrace elections — that’s a contrast with our autocracies and dictatorships. Two that do not want to project our power in the world, but that seek peace.
That’s different from countries who violate borders or who want to break or rewrite international rules. You see, we have much more in common. And indeed, it cuts to the heart of who we are to let that, those small differences, let others, either for us or even people in our own country, say, no, no,no. We’re not looking at the world the same way.
Because I fundamentally believe we are. India sees its future with America. And America sees its future with India. Full stop.
Any objective observer has to see that. We see it in our commerce. We see it in our people. And certainly, we see it in our security and our future. So with that as a backdrop, how do we move our feet together?
How do we build that continued deep trust? And how do we have the outcome that meets the security threats of this moment? Because if we only look inward, neither the United States nor India in the Indo-Pacific will keep up with the pace of threats today.
Let me say that again. If we only look inward, neither India nor the U.S. will keep up with the pace of threats today. Be they state actors on the border, that we also are concerned about in this region and in other regions. Be that climate change and the threats that we see with 800 million people, the largest population threatened by climate change here in this country. Or whether we see it in even the development of standards around artificial intelligence.
Or what country will get to quantum computing and decrypt the world’s computers overnight if they get there first. The stakes for our technological innovation together, the stakes for our climate action together, and the stakes for our military cooperation have never been higher. Because the pace of change has never been faster.
So as we look at the future, we have to look first at the foundation that we have. The U.S.-India Defense Partnership, which stands among the most consequential in the world. When our Commander-in-Chief and our President Joe Biden asked me to take this position, he said this was the most important country in the world. Something that I know no U.S. President has ever said about India in our history.
And I witnessed the emotional impact of the state visit for Prime Minister Modi to Washington. A place where he had come as a 20-something-year-old and gazed through the gates at the White House. At a place that embodied the ideals and the power of the number one country in the world at the time. And then to be welcomed, embraced, and hugged here in that place now as leader of the most populous country in the world. One of the most powerful economies and one of the most innovative groups of people. He now could see that this state was both personal but also indeed very special and natural.
And central to this partnership, the commitment to values. I remember being with NSA Doval and I was telling him my kind of thesis that I shared with you that our hearts feel the same and our heads think the same strategically. And he corrected me and said, it’s more than that. He said this is an ideological battle of our time between extremism and democracy.
Between religious extremism, between political extremism, and countries who say that shouldn’t be the way that human beings live and develop on this earth. Our defence partnership has to embrace those same values. Transparency, openness, dialogue, engagement with the media, and thank you to the media for being here. This commitment to meaningful exchange through conflicts like this is about a process that yes, sometimes leaves behind closed doors. For security reasons, for any defence conversation, but also that is a public conversation in contrast to places in the world where things are being developed that citizens don’t even know about. Those are threats both domestically and internationally.
When we look at how we approach friendship, it isn’t just two countries together. And one of the notes that I wrote is we don’t just see our future in India, and India doesn’t just see its future in the U.S. But the world can see great things in our relationship.
In other words, there are countries on the sidelines hoping this relationship works because if it does, it doesn’t just become a counterbalance. It becomes a place that we’re developing weapons together… If we’re integrating our training together… if we are figuring out a way for our leadership to know each other that in times of emergency, whether that be a natural disaster, or God forbid, a human-caused war, U.S. and India will be a powerful balance against the waves that will sweep over Asia and other parts of the world.
And I think we all know that we’re interconnected in the world. No war is distant anymore. And we must not just stand for peace. We must take concrete actions to make sure those who don’t play by peaceful rules, that their war machines cannot continue unabated. That’s something that the United States needs to know and that India needs to know together.
In the past few years, we’ve witnessed countries who ignore sovereign borders. I don’t have to remind India how important borders are as a central principle to peace in our world. I come here not to teach and preach or to lecture, always to listen and learn, but to remind us of those commonly shared values. Through violence and destruction, as Prime Minister said, that is not the age that we live in. But together, India and the United States can move against the idea that might makes right. And maybe just invert that to prove that right can make might.
That when we stand on those principles and stand together, even in difficult times, with friends, that we can show that principles are the guiding light of peace in our world and together, the world’s two largest democracies can enhance the security and stability of our region. Our troops today have joined training and operations from the mountains of Alaska to the Indian Ocean. Our forces have strong connections. They know each other from the command level to now the early recruits. We’ve been side by side from special forces to folks that are doing intelligence work, to folks that are developing weaponry, and everybody in between.
So at the strategic and operational and tactical levels, Indians and Americans know each other. Our defence industries are increasingly interconnected. But I want to echo the call that Mukesh said.
We can’t claim too much in the United States that here are our products, please buy them. And India can’t claim too much to only make India to the point where you might get more made in India. But our main adversary will outpace you in that very same time on whatever advances you make. It’s not an either-or between buying and developing. We must be both, and by the way, trained, interoperate, and understand each other’s systems because the greatest equipment in the world means nothing, if you don’t know how to use it and use it together.
When we look at how we depend now on India, for you as Apache helicopters, TL-130 transport aircraft, in making key components here, we are with you for the long haul. This wasn’t a year or two long back. This is a decade-long relationship of trust. And our leaders have pledged to go further.
And let me say, I’ve witnessed something. We can read leaders, as we might have done this week, leaders’ agreements all the time. Look through the ones that are kind of dressed up versus the ones that have to be edited down. I was told when we had the prime minister’s visit that a state visit that has five to ten deliverables is a very strong visit. At our peak, we had 173 separate deliverables of the United States and India working on together.
And let me tell you, both are democracies. When we don’t call each other, get a knock on the door and say, hey, what are we doing on that thing from last year, from space to the seabed and everything in between, we are working on the culture, on education, on defence, on trade, keeping the California almonds that you enjoy. With tariffs coming down, we’ll have a record year. Don’t forget, four California almonds for your baby helps their brain development.
I always have a presentation. But we have so much that we are doing together that we need to figure out a way to work closely on vital priorities that increase our mutual prosperity, that counter our primal crisis, uphold a rules-based order,and support respect for human rights. All of those must be priorities for both of us.
As a major supplier now of Indian defence equipment, we’ve gone from zero in 2008 to approximately $25 billion in 2023. We understand there’s legacy equipment. You’ve got to be battle-ready. You need spare parts for that. But as you look at the future, we know where the best systems, the best weapons are coming from. And it’s not because we’re trying to open up new markets, as you just said. Don’t look at this cynically. Our companies can go all around the world today. They have too much business. But it’s my personal opinion that if they are not here in India, we will miss the most important investment we can collectively make for the next two, three, four decades, which is that co-development, that co-production, and also, again, that co-operation. So whether it’s Apache helicopters, the maritime surveillance aircraft, whether it’s the M777 howitzers, or some of the things that we’ve talked too long about, we’ve got to strengthen at the moment, strengthen and get the strength we need. We have to figure out a way to throw that javelin and get it here. We have to figure out the ways that we can get past talking.
And we realise there’s work on the American side to accelerate that. Sometimes our own defence industries move too slowly. But let me tell you something from Washington. Every defence official I spoke with said the United States of America has not gone through a defence industry planning moment like the United States is doing right now. War in the Middle East and in Ukraine has made us all realise that our capacity has to be increased.
Do you want to be co-architects at that moment, or do you want to be bystanders? I would say as co-architects at that moment, We can do so much to develop an industrial policy for our military that grades into India’s military industrial training as well, and actually looks at places where India can help America with its defence needs as well as vice versa, an increasingly two-way street and relationship as well.
From ISEC to IDEX, I like anything with an I because I know it’s always standing for India, the quad, which is called the I-Quad, the quad to I2U2. These are critical pillars of the future development of defence, technology, and strategic and diplomatic relationships as well. As we look at the work that we have done, NSAs that were just together two weeks ago, NSA Sullivan and Doval, setting the vision for the next chapter of our strategic partnership by looking at the critical emerging technologies that will be secured, technology that some countries want to use to divide us and harm us and their own citizens, by the way, or technology that can connect us and protect us, detect for us disease, be used as a positive vision, not used to spy on us, but used to actually make sure that relationships deepen, that access to capital as we’ve seen DPI do here in this country can inspire us. We have plenty to learn from each other, but let’s accelerate the work we are doing and the outcome.
The roadmap for U.S.-India defence industrial collaboration initiated last year really served as a catalyst for strengthening India’s capacity, enhancing its indigenous defence production, facilitating some of our technology sharing and promoting supply chain resilience.
As we work on this, let’s spur investment. Let’s find those startups, not just the big boys and big girls who are coming together at the top, but that next startup, as we’re doing within this next space force with two Indian companies that are helping us meet a need of our space force by matchmaking. Our small business administrator will be coming here to India in a little bit over a month. We’re talking about a portal that will match startups on both sides of the Indo-Pacific to find each other and to be able to be the next vision of space and defence collaboration.
And we’re seeing progress, too, on what we can do on maintenance, repair, and overhaul. We want India to be a place that we come to to fix our ships, to look at our aircraft. We know that that creates jobs, the number one priority of this government here in India. India needs to create a million jobs a month for the next 20 years.
Boy, am I glad I’m not a leader here in India, but I can only imagine the stress that that causes. But we’ve got some solutions by adding to those MRO facilities, whether they be in the civil aviation sector and commitments we’ve seen from General Electric and from Boeing, or whether it’s in the defence sector, where we can see great jobs for Indians, great service for our military, and in times of war, a strategic stop at a place where we don’t have to worry about, in the heat of war, how we can keep our ships and our planes and our equipment going. We’re already seeing progress.
In July of last year, the U.S. NSSAL war docked at the Larsen-Tuborg shipyard in Katipali, which is near Chennai, and made it the third U.S. Navy ship successfully completing its maintenance and repair here in India. These are huge. We look forward to finalising the security of supply arrangement, or SOSA, a key priority in our roadmap, to integrate these ecosystems, and maybe one day, to be able to make sure that Indian ships and equipment, as they go further out in the world, can use American maintenance and repair facilities and vice versa. I know that India, and I respect that India likes its strategic autonomy. But in times of conflict, there is no such thing as strategic autonomy.
We will, in crisis moments, need to know each other. I don’t care what paddle we put to it, but we will need to know that we are trusted friends, brothers and sisters, colleagues in times of need. And the next day, we act together. And we’ll know each other’s equipment, and we’ll know each other’s training, we’ll know each other’s systems, and we’ll know each other as human beings as well.
And so as we look at everything from our joint challenges to the U.S.-India trade relationship and creating something more frictionless so that we can up from that $200 billion to one day the half trillion dollars that then-Vice President Joe Biden talked about, we look at the exercises that we’re doing, and now we are proud to be India’s number one exercise partner.
The 27th edition of Exercise Malabar, which is off the coast of Sydney in August 2020, illustrated how the Quad is coming together as a strategic partnership that is going to uphold a rules-based order here in the Indo-Pacific. Or whether it was the third Tiger Triad, which I went to myself to look at, where we brought the amphibious transport dock to USS Somerset. We focused on humanitarian emergencies, but the lessons learned go beyond humanitarian emergencies to those moments that we all pray will never happen, whether they’re on your northern border or whether they’re in the East China Sea, whether they’re in the Straits of Taiwan, or whether they’re in the Middle East.
And I’m so proud to see our great dear friend India, our partner, in this time of conflict, doing an incredible job with 10 ships that were in the Western Indian Ocean, taking on something not just for India but for the world, against piracy, special operations that were able to take out the hijackers of the world ship engines. This is something that America has had to burden up for so long, and we love having a partner that is doing that with India and doing it so brilliantly as well.
So let me conclude. Don’t take this relationship for granted, but enjoy every day of it. Pay something into it. It’s like a marriage. If you don’t have a date night, you’re not going to have a strong marriage. Find out those moments and those places when we’re not asking something from each other. To just say, I believe in you. I believe in this relationship. I believe in its people. I believe in its potential. Let’s listen to each other’s needs better than we do today. And let’s make sure that we look at each other not as a bet.
Neither of us is a bride or a groom to be wooed or everyone’s friend at the party, but a strong set of powers that want to see a future together as two countries and a world in which we act together for the greater good. We have to look to actions that reduce conflict as well as standing in principle against war. So that means in our own companies domestically and where they do international trade or whether it means the development of technology like the semiconductors that will win the next war just as much as any systems or missile technologies will as well.
Some of you have heard me say I love when I was taking Hindi in college, the expression, my teacher loved Hindi expressions and my favourite was always — alag des, alag vikaas — in another country, in another custom. But I think increasingly what we have is not a description of two countries within a country. It is ‘do desh but ek team’. We have one heart that is coming together in a different way. It feels that the future cannot just be defined by principles. It must be defined by friendship. It must be defined by trust and that the U.S. and India together are an unstoppable force for good in the world. Thank you all so much. Thank you very much.
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