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U.S. Engagement in Indian Health Care: What is the Impact?

A report by Teresita C. Schaffer for the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Global Health Policy Center.

This report assesses the impact of U.S. engagement with India’s health sector in the past six decades. The United States’ involvement with health in independent India goes back to the earliest days. The longest involvement is through the U.S. foreign aid program, which has worked primarily with the government of India. Other parts of the United States government have also been involved, chiefly the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and both the capacity-building and research activities of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Private American institutions have been involved in India, including foundations, universities, and medically oriented businesses, as well as private Americans, including many of Indian origin. In at least one case, the recently founded Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), both the American institution represent public-private collaboration.

Originally published by CSIS in November 2010. Read the entire report.

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The United States and India 10 Years Out

A working paper by Teresita C. Schaffer in conjunction with the Center for a New American Security’s study on the relationship between the U.S. and India.

India and the United States have transformed their relationship in the past 20 years. Looking ahead a decade or more, this trend is likely to continue. The two countries can expect strong economic ties and a lively security relationship, including defense trade and especially stronger cooperation in the Indian Ocean. Economic issues will remain important drivers of Indian foreign policy. Cooperation on the global scene will have ups and downs, but the two countries will gradually find more areas where they can work together. As India’s international trade encompasses more sophisticated and knowledge-based products, India will pursue economic interests that do not necessarily dovetail with those of the developing countries as a group. India-Pakistan relations are likely to remain brittle. India will continue to see China as its major strategic challenge.

Originally published by CNAS in October 2010. Read the entire paper.

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India and Global Nonproliferation

The Working Group on an Expanded Nonproliferation System, headed by Teresita Schaffer and Joan Rohlfing, President of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, issued a statement June 30, 2010 recommending that India and the United States declare their intention to work together to bring India into the four export control groups that form part of the nonproliferation system. They argued that this would strengthen the nonproliferation system, and that it would give India the opportunity it seeks to be part of the management of this system rather than an object of its controls.

The statement was originally appeared on the CSIS and NTI web sites. To read it in full, go to Statement.

Click to read analytical papers prepared for the Working Group by Lisa Curtis, Senior Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation, and C. Raja Mohan, Strategic Affairs Editor, Indian Express. Both reports were published on the CSIS and NTI web sites December 8, 2010.

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India: Driving the Global Superhighway

An article written by Teresita C. Schaffer on India’s global positioning, with considerations of the country’s role in the United Nations, the G-20, international nonproliferation, and climate change.

In early 1991, as the global structure of the cold war lay in tatters and India was starting to consider the role it would play in the new system that had emerged, the soon-to-depart Indian ambassador to the United States mused about his parting advice. “I keep telling my government,” he told the author, “if you want to drive on the superhighway, you have to get up to 100 kilometers per hour.” The decade that followed was a time of transformation for India, domestically and internationally. A more economically-driven foreign policy was the natural consequence of its accelerating growth. These trends, along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, thrust India’s relationship with the United States into a much more central position for both countries. But the ambassador’s metaphor was particularly apt in describing the coming transformation of India’s role in the world’s multilateral deliberations. Nearly two decades later, India has found the transition to highway speed surprisingly unsettling, but it is starting to find its stride.

Originally published in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of the Brown Journal of World Affairs.

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Avoiding Disaster in Kashmir

An article by Teresita C. Schaffer and Howard B. Schaffer on actions India, Pakistan, and the United States can take to quell the crisis in Kashmir.

Since mid-June, over 50 civilians, many of them teenagers, have been killed in clashes between stone-pelting protesters and police in the streets of Srinagar and other towns in Kashmir. This could pose a serious threat to peace in South Asia. India needs to address both the domestic alienation in Kashmir and its 60-year-old dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir’s future, issues it has rarely before tried to deal with at the same time. The United States can play a useful but very limited role in this dangerous drama.

Originally published August 20, 2010 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Commentary. Read the entire article.