U.S.-India Dialogue, January 2015
The Aspen Strategy Group and the Ananta Aspen Centre celebrated the 20th session of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in New Delhi, India from January 9 – 11, 2015, ahead of President Obama’s historic second visit to India later that month. The meeting began with a public panel discussion on the future of the U.S.-India bilateral relationship, hosted by the Ananta Aspen Centre and moderated by Aspen Strategy Group Director Nicholas Burns. The subsequent two days of closed-door roundtable discussions focused on a set of key issues that concern the relationship. Moreover, the American delegation met with several senior Indian officials in the Modi administration, namely National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley, Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh, Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar, Minister for Power Piyush Goyal, and the Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Robin K Dhowan. The conversations with Indian government officials, as well as the roundtable discussions, focused on elevating the relationship beyond that of transactions to a decidedly strategic partnership through deeper economic and security cooperation with India’s new leadership. During our time in New Delhi, several members of the American delegation gave interviews to the Indian media, sharing their insights on jumpstarting the Indo-U.S. relationship: Ambassador Frank Wisner on the importance of the economic and trade aspects of the relationship and Ambassador Tim Roemer on the historic importance of President Obama’s second visit to India and the need for the relationship to keep moving ahead. For the American audience, ASG Director Nicholas Burns wrote an op-ed on the revival of the Indo-U.S. relationship in the Boston Globe and Richard Fontaine contributed his thoughts to the Aspen Institute’s Journal of Ideas. The Dialogue will reconvene for its 21st session in late 2015.