Erstwhile commander in chief of the United States Pacific fleet, Admiral Walter F Doran (retd), whose association with India goes back 34 years to his attendance at the Indian Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu, says it is imperative that Americans understand that "the US-India relationship is going to be a generational issue."
Doran, who participated in the rollout of the seminal report published by the Wadhwani
Chair in the US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, acknowledged, "As Americans, that's kind of a difficult pill for us to swallow."
'We tend to want to move very quickly, our businesses report to the Wall Street every quarter -- our publicly-trade businesses -- we have an election every four years, we tend to want to see immediate results and return on invested capital," he said. "These are the terms within which we look at things."
But Doran warned, "This will not develop that way. This is going to be a generational issue but it is worth a generation of work."
"India, quite frankly for the United States, from a very selfish point of view, is too important, and will continue to be too important to either be ignored or put on the back-burner or be allowed to succumb to this feeling of fatigue to a certain degree that has come over the discussions right now," he argued.
Doran said it was important "that we remember how far we've come and not forget the progress that we've made."
He lauded the CSIS report, US-India Military Engagement: Steady as They Go, and said, "The idea of re-igniting the US-India relationship is set perfectly and the military-to-military relationships are a perfect place to start to re-ignite that relationship."
Doran reiterated that the military-to-military relationship was the ideal place to start "because there is a natural -- particularly in the maritime sphere understanding between these two bodies."
"There are of course difficulties on both sides that will have to be overcome," he acknowledged, and noted that despite the progress that has been made, "there is still an incredible amount of baggage on both sides that will have to be addressed."
Earlier, Doran provided a fascinating and nostalgic insight into his attendance over three decades ago at the Indian Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu and the friendships he built up with fellow students, including Arun Prakash who went on to become an admiral and chief of India's naval staff, while he took over as commander of the US Pacific Fleet and their working in concert when the horrific tsunami struck the Indian Ocean in December 2004.
He hoped that "my relationships can reflect the importance of the informal relationships than can be developed between military officers at a very young age that then can be matured over the length of a career and on occasion will have great significance when these officers come into positions of important commands or major commands."
"Also, in my case, it never ceases to amaze me the curious manner in which my relationship with India focused and also shaped the rest of my 38-year
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