Tejinder Singh – AHN News Correspondent
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Republicans voiced their support for Indian causes on Friday as one of their top leaders lambasted the Obama Administration for demonizing India as a destination of outsourced U.S. jobs.
“We cannot allow our anxieties about globalization to cause us to demonize India for crass political gain,” Republican Senator John McCain said in his remarks on Indo-U.S. ties at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Republicans trounced Democrats in the mid-term elections held Tuesday gaining majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
During the campaign, Democrat President Barack Obama continued his tirade against companies, shipping U.S. jobs overseas including India and putting an end to tax breaks to such American companies.
“Outsourcing is an inescapable feature of today’s global economy, not an Indian plot to steal American jobs, and we should not condone any unfair punishments of Indian workers,” McCain said.
“On the Indian side, relations with the US cannot remain a political club, which the party out of power uses to beat up the party in power for doing exactly what it would have done were it governing,” he told his audience as Obama with First Lady Michelle Obama headed to Asia for a four nation trip including India.
“More leaders on both sides need to speak up for this partnership, and fight harder for it, and build the public support needed to sustain our strategic priorities. If not, our relationship will fall far short of its potential, as it has before,” McCain said.
Outlining a program of action, McCain said, “First, to shape the development of South Asia as a region of sovereign, democratic states that contribute to one another’s security and prosperity.
Second, to create a preponderance of power in the Asia-Pacific region that favors free societies, free markets, free trade, and free commons.”
“And finally, to strengthen a Liberal international order and an open global economy that safeguard human dignity and foster peaceful development,” McCain said.
“The main challenge to this common vision, as well as a central threat to U.S. and Indian security, is the violent Islamist extremism emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. My last visit to India was, by chance, just days after the tragic date that Indians mark as 26/11, the terror attacks in Mumbai,” he said.
“Being in India then was like experiencing September 11th all over again, and the restraint shown by Prime Minister (Manmohan) Singh was an amazing act of statesmanship, he recalled, adding, “This only reaffirmed my deep-seated belief that India has every sovereign right to defend itself, its people, and its democratic way of life. And the U.S. should continue to support this goal through enhanced intelligence sharing and counterterrorism cooperation.”
On the issue of India’s pursuit of permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council, Senator said, “If we want India to join us in sharing the responsibilities for international peace and security, then the world’s largest democracy needs to have a seat at the high table of international politics.”
“India must be represented in the foundational institutions of the global order. The United States should push for India’s inclusion in the International Energy Agency, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and those parts of the global nonproliferation regime from which India is still excluded,” he said.
“India is also naturally poised to lead in the global promotion of democratic governance, which is increasingly a norm of the international order that our nations should foster,” he said.
“If India and the U.S. are to build a strategic partnership, we must each want it, and commit to it, and defend it in equal measure.
“And though our democratic values are our greatest source of strength, it is the domestic pressures of our democratic politics that pose perhaps the single greatest danger to our emerging partnership,” he said.
“We must each navigate these issues with care and forethought” for although India and the U.S. will each make our own decisions, those decisions will be significantly shaped by the actions of the other,” McCain said.
Article © AHN – All Rights Reserved
View full post on Social Issue Stories