The News Freedom
New Delhi, November 10
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said that the India-US bilateral relationship has seen a growing convergence of strategic interests and enhanced defence, security, and intelligence cooperation.
In his opening remarks at the India-US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, he said that Defence remains one of the most important pillars of our bilateral relationship. “Your visit to India is at a time when India and the US are closer than ever before. In spite of various emerging geopolitical challenges, we need to keep our focus on important and long-term issues. Our partnership is critical for ensuring a free, open, and rules-bound Indo-Pacific region.” Rajnath further said.
He said, ”We look forward to closely working with the US across the domains of defense for capability building and for an abiding partnership which can address emerging challenges. “I look forward to engaging in enriching discussions today,” he added.
While addressing the gathering, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said, “ We are meeting at a time of great momentum in the United States and India partnership. In the face of urgent global challenges, it’s more important than ever that the world’s two largest democracies exchange views, find common goals, and deliver for our people.
“We have made impressive gains in building our major defense partnership over the past year, and that will help keep us – help us contribute even more together to the cause of peace and stability,” Austin said. “We are integrating our industrial bases, strengthening our interoperability, and sharing cutting-edge technology,” he added.
He further said, “The scope of our cooperation is vast. As our ambassador is fond of saying, it stretches from seabed to space. And of course, the strength of our partnership is rooted in the people-to-people ties that are at the heart of our longstanding friendship.
“ Together our diplomats, entrepreneurs, and students are expanding our partnership in new domains, including clean energy, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors. Our increasingly strong ties give us all hope for the future of this partnership and for our common efforts toward a more secure world,” Austin said.
On this occasion Minister of External Affairs, Dr S. Jaishnkar, said that this visit is part of an intense diplomatic engagement between our two countries, and its highlight this year was the prime minister’s historic state visit to the United States in June, which has truly opened a new chapter in our relationship. President Biden’s visit to Delhi in September contributed immensely as well to the positive trajectory of our ties. His support was key to ensuring productive outcomes at the G20 Summit.
“The dialogue today will be an opportunity to advance the vision of our respective leaders, building a forward-looking partnership while we construct a shared global agenda. In the 2+2, we will undertake, as we have done before, a comprehensive overview of cross-cutting strategic, defense, and security ties, technology and supply chain collaborations, and people-to-people exchanges,” he added.
Jaishankar said, “Our meeting takes place even as we make rapid strides in all aspects of our bilateral agenda. Our trade is today in excess of 200 billion U.S. dollars; FDI is rising in both directions; 270,000 Indian students study in the United States; and we have a diaspora of 4.4 million,”. “We are exploring domains such as critical technologies, civil outer space collaboration, and critical minerals, even while consolidating established domains. Raksha Mantri Shri has highlighted new elements of our defense cooperation, including industry collaboration and innovations.” he added.
He further said that a key focus of our discussions today will be the Indo-Pacific region. As we all know, India and U.S. are key members of the Quad, which is scheduled to meet at the leaders level early next year in India. “Similarly, we are also engaged in other plurilateral frameworks which reflect our strategic convergences, such as the IPEF, I2U2, and the recently launched IMEC.” he said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that when President Biden hosted Prime Minister Modi at the White House in June, both of our leaders set out a very ambitious agenda to build an even stronger and even more comprehensive strategic partnership that delivers for our people as well as for the region and, we believe, for the world.
“And together, we have been taking very concrete steps to deliver on the vision that our two leaders put forward. We are promoting a free and open, prosperous, secure, and resilient Indo-Pacific, including by strengthening our partnership through the Quad, with Japan and Australia,” he added.
He further said, “One significant way we’re doing that is by enhancing maritime domain awareness: sharing commercial satellite data with countries in the region to boost their capacity, for example, to combat illegal fishing, piracy, drug trafficking. We’re also coordinating humanitarian relief and disaster response efforts in the Indo-Pacific,”.
“We’re harnessing together the power of innovation to make our economies more resilient and to make our communities more secure, while expanding inclusive economic opportunity. That’s evident in the cooperation on semiconductors and advanced biotechnology; on our unprecedented investments in deploying clean energy at scale in our countries as well as across the region; and our joint research and exploration projects in space’ he added.