Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau at the Raisina Dialogue

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: Thank you so much. I am deeply honored to be here in India. I want to thank the Observer Research Foundation for inviting me, and of course the Government of India. It is important to have these kinds of dialogues and events, particularly at this critical moment in U.S.-India relations. I thought I would talk a little bit about our foreign policy vision in the Trump Administration generally and then pivot to the U.S.-India relationship specifically as an example of some of the points that I made in the general presentation.

One of the things that President Trump has done, whether you like President Trump or do not like President Trump, is that he has empowered those of us in the U.S. Government to think about some fundamental assumptions about foreign policy that honestly had not been subject to much debate or dialogue for many decades. If you think about it, the world that emerged after World War II had a very clear vision for American foreign policy. Around the world, whether you were talking about Malaysia or Montevideo, Uruguay or Malawi, we were seeking to contain the spread of communism and the Soviet Union, and that was the unifying principle in American foreign policy.

India had obviously adopted a pretty clear position of trying to balance between East and West and really fomenting the non-aligned movement to try to avoid taking sides in that conflict. And then of course as we know in the early 1990s, almost overnight the Soviet Union vanished, and somewhat strangely, there was never an assessment at that point in time of the purposes of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War world.

The United States had this massive military and diplomatic footprint that it never had historically all around the world. And instead of really having an important national and international debate about what the purpose of U.S. foreign policy was post-Cold War, we just kind of let it all happen by default. There was never a moment of reckoning to say, what is the point of U.S. policy now? Ever since Pearl Harbor, really when we got wound up for World War II, and then we went right into the Cold War. So, from the early 1940s through the early 1990s for a period of 50 years, we had a very clear understanding of what we were doing around the world.

In the last 35 years, really almost as long as the original 50 years, we really have not had any kind of vision about what we are doing in the world and what the point of U.S. foreign policy is. And President Trump, with his America First foreign policy, has made it very clear that our objectives are to make our country safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Now that does not mean that we do not want to do things that also advance the interests of other countries, but it recognizes that in the American government, the purpose of United States foreign policy is to advance our national interests. We are not a charity organization. We are not the United Nations.

And it is important, I think, the work of diplomacy is to find the win-win situations. We say, this is one country’s interest, here is another country’s interest. We have to find the area in which those two circles converge. And that, it seems to me, is a very important point that we have lost in terms of what is even the basic objective of foreign policy in our country. And so, we have made this very, very clear, that this is the goal, and America First obviously does not mean America alone, because some of the ways that you can accomplish those objectives are through cooperation with other countries.

I think some people have very superficially said, oh, well, this is an isolationist foreign policy. Not at all. Again, our country is not safer, stronger, and more prosperous walling itself off from the world, but in so far as we are engaging with the world, we have to be able to explain to our own people how we are making our country stronger again through those kinds of engagements. And frankly, we expect other countries to pursue their interests. So just as President Trump wants to make America great again, he would expect the Prime Minister of India or other leaders to want to make their countries great again. National sovereignty is ultimately the basis of the international system. Although many people have declared the death of the Westphalian system for many years now, we very much are organized as a nation state. We have a constitution, and we expect other nations to behave the same.

Concurrently with the drift in the substantive objectives in American foreign policy in the last several decades, our foreign policy has become increasingly bureaucratic and no longer subject to the desires of the President, who is, after all, the elected representative of our people, who has control of foreign policy under Article Two of our Constitution.

We have seen that our whole foreign policy process was really more concerned with the process itself than the results it would yield. And so, we had for many years high level dialogues and summits, and everybody would give themselves awards and say how great it was and congratulate each other without actually looking at how we are serving the interests of our people. Ultimately, we have to be able to go to our people and say, this is what our foreign policy has achieved for you. This is how it makes your life better, and frankly, this is not something President Trump came up with on his own. This goes back to the earliest days of our country. If you read what the founders of our country wrote about foreign policy, they talk primarily about the importance of commercial intercourse with other countries, and how that was important to foment our prosperity.

The United States has been blessed by geography, with relatively few neighbors compared to many other countries, and we have less concerns about land invasions from our neighbors than other parts of the world. So, we can really focus on economic diplomacy and commercial diplomacy as a key objective for foreign policy, and President Trump has brought that back to the fore of U.S. foreign policy in a return to our first principles, and he personally has taken on a key leadership role in foreign policy. So it is not some anonymous desk in the State Department that is making the important decisions; they are really coming out of the President and the White House and reflect the President’s own political agenda rather than a deep state agenda that remains the same regardless of who is in the White House.

So, I think my thesis here is that over the last several decades, American foreign policy had descended into a kind of toxic brew of moralism and impotence. When we felt that we could go around the world lecturing people about values, but then when other countries would do things that were very much against our interests, we would just express concern or issue a strongly worded letter.

President Trump has made it clear that he wants to be the president of peace. He has made it a real priority and a point of pride that he has gone out of his way to help resolve many conflicts around the world, because the international system that we inherited had not been up to the task, and so he is personally doing that. And I think a lot of this is just going back to very basic common sense of what is the challenge and how do we get things done. And I think it is an indictment, in a sense, of the foreign policy establishment of the last several decades that there has been a lot of talk about problems, but frankly not a lot of solutions, and we fall into a trap of, if a country does something we do not like, we issue sanctions, and then everybody can feel virtuous about that without any real discussion about whether the sanctions were appropriate, whether they were having their intended effect. So, he has given us, in a sense, the freedom to reassess our relations with many countries and see how we advance our interests in a way that also advances those countries.

So, what does that mean with respect to a relationship like India? I think one of the things that is undeniable is that this century is going to be, in many ways, a century where we expect to see the rise of India. It is in our interest – and we think it is also in India’s interest – to be partnered with India. This is a country of almost unlimited potential. It is now the world’s most populous country. It has incredible economic, human, and other resources that make it one of the countries that is going to decide the future of this century. The United States very much wants to be part of that, and we think that we have many, many win-win situations with India.

And so, there is a reason I am here today, which is, I want to highlight the importance of India as we look around the world in the 21st century and see what relationships we really want to cultivate. And again, I am not here to do social work or charity. I am here because it is in the interest of our country, and we think it is in the interest of India to deepen our partnership, and it obviously has to be based on reciprocity and mutual respect. We are very excited about the trade deal that is almost at the finish line now and think that can be the basis for really unlocking almost limitless potential, and so we are very much excited about focusing with India on these economic and commercial opportunities.

But again, India should understand that we are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago in terms of saying, we are going to let you develop all these markets, and then, the next thing we know, you are beating us in a lot of commercial things. We are going to make sure that whatever we do is fair to our people. Because ultimately, we have to be accountable to our own people, just as the Government of India has to be accountable to its people.

So again, I think on the commercial-economic front, it is incredibly bright. I think on a more general political level, we have two leaders in our two countries who have forged a great relationship. I think they really think the same way about putting their countries’ interest first. And it just seems very logical that we are going to be deepening our cooperation, and it is very important that our two countries can build on this personal bond. I think in these next few years, we can really set the stage for decades of very close India-U.S. cooperation.

I hope we can move beyond the Cold War model, where India feels compelled to keep the United States at arm’s length. I think we can cooperate very, very forthrightly in areas where we have very many common interests, which are many. I will briefly just mention the security area. I think the United States and India have very co-extensive interest when it comes to preventing terrorism, when it comes to ensuring freedom of navigation on the high seas and elsewhere. And so, I think we are seeing some changes in the U.S.-India relationship, cooperation, and defense, in other areas that I think would have been impossible some years ago. And I hope that is an area that we can continue to lean into. I think the energy cooperation possibilities are limitless.

I think it is no accident that the President sent one of his closest advisors, Ambassador Gor, as Ambassador here. The President really understands the value of this relationship. And again, I am delighted to be here today to celebrate this relationship, and I really am grateful that you gave me a few minutes to talk a little bit about our vision for foreign policy and look forward to continuing this discussion. Thank you very much.

QUESTION: Thank you Deputy Secretary for that address. Lots to unpack, but we have limited time, so I’ll keep it to 3-4 questions. Maybe just to ask you what’s been on top of our mind. One of course is American foreign policy, Western Hemisphere centered foreign policy, how do some other regions fall into place, for example, Europe, Indo-Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and India itself. And I think you mentioned about India, but generally as you sweep the world map, how do regions fall into your assessment?

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: Thank you for that question. Again, I think we are rethinking a lot of assumptions that have gone unconsidered for too long. For too long, a lot of people in the United States thought, well, what is foreign policy really about? It’s about relations with London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, that was the paradigm. And for much of the Cold War world, everything else was ancillary to that.

I think in today’s world, frankly, you see a Europe that has embarked on certain policies that have made it economically a shrinking part of the world’s economic activity, whereas this part of the world has been going in exactly the opposite direction. Our foreign policy has to adjust accordingly, and that’s what we’re doing. I think for too long we have, frankly, ignored parts of the world, and I think that is why the Western Hemisphere focus is very important, and that is going back to very traditional roots in our foreign policy.

We were ignoring our own neighborhood for too long. I was ambassador to Mexico in the first Trump Administration. Previous administrations had paid much more attention to rivers between Iraq and Turkey than the river between the United States and Mexico, and so we are now very focused on events in our hemisphere, which is as it should be, what we all would expect.

But that does not mean we are ignoring other parts of the world. I think you mentioned the Indo-Pacific, and the United States is a Pacific nation. One of our states, Hawaii, is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I am coming here to India directly from a summit we held with Pacific Island leaders in Honolulu. Then I visited Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa before coming here. So, in my job as Deputy Secretary of State, I have been to Port Moresby, to Apia, to Nuku’alofa. I am delighted to be here in New Delhi. I haven’t been to London or Paris or Rome, and I think it is important to underscore that the United States is very much attuned to parts of the world that have been ignored for too long. And again, I think the Indian Ocean, this part of the world, is absolutely becoming the center of gravity internationally. And again, it’s no accident that I’m here today with you.

QUESTION: Excellent, I mean that’s a pretty large Western Hemisphere. If we are going to be part of your core priority, which we want to be, by the way, I think it’s absolutely right to focus on the neighborhood. India has its own neighborhood first policy, and most countries focus there.

So let me move on to the second question, and that’s important for us. We have incidents in the Indian Ocean, we have unrest in the GCC and the wider gulf, and I know I’m not going to ask you about operational and specific incidents, but the question is this: with 11 million Indian diaspora in this part of the world, with our waters being implicated in a conflict that is unfolding, is it fair to ask you, what is the end game? How do we see this resolved? What is America thinking about this particular situation?

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: Look, I think the end game is a Middle East that is not a threat to other parts of the world. Since I was a teenager – I was 15 years old when the Shah was overthrown – since then, Iran has been in a death-to-America setting, and we in this administration did not start out seeking to reach this state of affairs. We tried very, very hard to explain our red line, which is no development of a nuclear weapon. I mean, could you imagine what a threat to the world it would be to have an Iran that basically was able to blackmail the world with a nuclear device?

Again, some past governments that you could go back and see, gee, how did it come that North Korea was allowed to develop a nuclear device? Did nobody think that was a sub-optimal thing for regional stability or world peace? And I think we tried very hard to talk sense into the Iranians to say, this is our red line. And ultimately we concluded that that was not going to work. So, these are unsettled days right now. But I think the truth is this part of the world has been quite unsettled for quite a long time. And if you look at the roots of a lot of this, they can be traced back to Tehran. So, we will see how this plays out.

But again, I think it is critical to underscore that ultimately the Iranian people have to decide who their leadership is going to be. And I hope that the United States and India and other countries can work together to help foster a transition that will allow that critical part of the world, which has many Indians and many people from the United States, to reach a new normal, because it hasn’t been normal for a very long time now.

QUESTION: Look Mr. Secretary, we get it, right? We have folks from our part of the world who are being attacked there, they are facing these threats. So, it’s an everyday story in many Indian homes right now, it’s personal. ORF itself has ORF Middle East in Dubai, and I have 21 colleagues who send me messages and stories.

So, we get it. But if that region is going to be unsettled for a while, and like you mentioned, India has an economic journey to undertake, we need energy and fuel, as well. Many in India say that Russia would be a fair deal, that when you have one part of the world and so much energy, which is not going to be able to sustain it for us for everything, we should be thinking about alternate sources.

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: Well, I hope you are thinking of alternate sources. And I can’t think of a better alternate source than the United States of America. We are an energy rich country. We want to cooperate with you. That is one of the areas where we can cooperate. Obviously, there’s long term and short-term issues here, and we will work with you to make sure that your energy needs are met in in the short term as well as the long term.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, also in your speech, you described the political moment in both countries as quite similar, in some sense. Like America First, India first model, different grammars in different vocabularies, but very similar in their intent, two leaders who have a great relationship, but two strong leaders and popular leaders at home. What are the potential plans that can emerge if this partnership were to shed the 20th century legacies and create a 21st century model? In fact, Mr. Secretary, I work with some of my colleagues in the U.S., and I always say that America and India have to get used to the fact that for the first time, in the 2030s there will be two $10 trillion economies and more having to partner together. America has never done this before. We have of course never done this.

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: I think that’s a critical question. I think you look at what are some of our two countries’ strengths. Technology is a strength in both countries. And I think, what is going to drive progress? What is the 21st century going to look like?

I feel like only now we’re a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but I feel like we’re still kind of feeling our way. I think all of us have a sense that artificial intelligence is going to change everything. And I think to me, it is incredibly significant that India signed on to our Pax Silica initiative to make sure that those kinds of technologies can be developed in a way that is mutually beneficial, that we have supply chains. India has an incredible STEM background, and your human capital is amazing. You just look at the Indian diaspora of the United States. It is some of our most successful people in the United States.

And I think we can build on that to cooperate on developing AI that benefits both our people, because it’s very clear that whether we like it or not, that is probably going to be the key mover of this century. And we have to make sure that no other nation can monopolize supply chains and hold the rest of the world hostage to economic development.

So, we are very, very eager to work with India and other partner nations to foster technological development. Again, that is in both countries’ interest, I mean, India should have amazing data centers, AI, we’re really doing a lot together. And I think the Ambassador was telling me that there are 700 American companies invested here. He’s nodding. So that means I’m right. And was that in Bangalore alone? In Bangalore alone? Okay, I thought that.

So, there are incredible opportunities, and we want to build on that. Again, not every country has the potential. I go around the world, big countries, small countries, rich countries, poor countries. I think India is in a moment of great transition. I mean, it’s very exciting for me, just as a human being, an observer of the international stage, to see India breaking free of some of the fetters that held its economic development back in the in the 20th century.

Obviously, the people of India will determine their own course. But I think this is a country of almost limitless potential, and the United States wants to be part of that story. And we think it makes sense for India for us to be part of that story. So, I think that’s going to be a critical part of it. Obviously, another one you’ve already alluded to is energy. I think one of the real challenges for India is to have secure and reliable energy sources. And you live in a complicated neighborhood here in India, right? That you know that better than I do, and so I think the United States, as you know, a very energy rich country, can be a part of your energy solution. And again, we look forward to partnering on that, as well.

QUESTION: Now let me also acknowledge Ambassador Sergio Gor, who joined us in the middle of the panel. You did mention him in your speech as being perhaps the star ambassador in the American government. And you did mention that was in some ways a manifestation of the importance of India. So let me give you a couple of points to think about and perhaps respond to.

One, the human bridge has always been perhaps the most significant relationship between the two countries. It’s the diaspora, but it’s also the fondness of American people for Indian culture, right? It’s been a really strong undergirding. How do we continue to nourish that? That’s the first one. And the second is the university and education system, and something I spoke with the Ambassador about, as well, that it has really created a common ethic, ethos, worldview, because of the universities we inhabited. And what is your response? How does the Trump Administration nourish the human bridge and the university linkages that have been so dramatically important?

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: I appreciate that question. And one thing I would ask you to keep in mind is that in the prior administration, something like 20 million people entered our country illegally. And one of the reasons President Trump is the president is because he vowed to the American people to actually enforce our migration laws, and so we are putting into place measures to deter illegal migration, visa overstays, etc. To me, this should be a no brainer. I mean, whatever the appropriate level of legal migration should be, in a sovereign country, we should all be able to agree that illegal migration should be deterred, even people who purport to be in favor of migrants.

Again, I know this better than anybody as Ambassador to Mexico. You can see the plight of people, often very poor people, who are lured to embark on an incredibly dangerous journey by false hopes that they’re going to see streets paved with gold. So frankly, in the first year, we have been looking to retain control or reestablish control over our borders and make sure the people who are not in our country legally are sent back to their countries of origin.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the headlines, but it is precisely in order to focus on legal migration, getting that right, that we have to take care of the illegal migration problem. I wish that we could only focus on the positive side of the agenda. Everybody would be very happy and slapping you on the back and everything. But, the truth is, we have frankly been overly lax as a government for many years in turning a blind eye to people who have abused our migration systems. And I just think migration is going to be one of the key foreign policy topics worldwide in the 21st century. And I think the sooner those of us who go to meetings like this grapple with the implications of that the better. I know I would love a world in which the brightest students are able to come from all over the world to our universities, but we have to make sure we understand what is in it for us to be doing that, right?

It seems to me, we want to attract a segment of people who are the true outliers, the overachievers, who are going to really move the needle in our country. It seems to me, we want to attract people who are going to be leaders in their country, go back after they’re educated the United States. I’m not sure we want to be educating people and taking slots in our own education institutions with people who will just compete with Americans for jobs. And again, I don’t think there’s any shame in saying we as a government should have an interest in being able to tell our people that our immigration policy, just like our foreign policy, is meant to promote your welfare. We have to be able to justify that.

And again, I think there’s a case to be made. But we have just seen a lot of people coming to our country without any kind of consequences. I’m looking forward to working with countries like India, because I think the stories are innumerable of people who have added greatly to the fabric of our country, coming from India and other countries. But we have also allowed abuses of our system, and we need to be able to correct those, as well.

QUESTION: Thank you, Chris, for this wonderful interaction and for your speech. The theme this year is Samskara – assertion, accommodation, advancement. I thought your speech had enough of assertion. It had perhaps a determination to accommodate and partner and, of course, with the purpose of advancement. In some sense, assertion, accommodation, and advancement are the realpolitik of the 21st century.

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: I should have organized my remarks around your three goals, because they do very much fit. I want to thank you again, Samir, and thank ORF for this invitation, the Government of India. It’s really an honor to be here, and I very much look forward to continuing to work with you, because this relationship, possibly more than any other one in the world, will define the future of this century. Thank you.

QUESTION: Thank you so much. Please join me in applauding the Secretary.