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The Biden Administration has named senior diplomat Elizabeth Jones, 74, as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim in its Embassy in India, the sixth interim envoy in the 19 months since January 2021. The appointment is considered to be a placeholder until a full-time Ambassador is confirmed by the US Congress.
“Ambassador Elizabeth Jones…will join our Embassy and Consulate interagency teams [in India] in advancing and expanding the partnership between our governments and people, a partnership that Secretary [Antony] Blinken has called one of the most consequential in the world,” the US State Department said in a statement on Tuesday.
A long procession
Kenneth I Juster, a political appointee of the Trump Administration, who departed after the Biden Administration was inaugurated on January 20, 2021, was followed by a battery of interim envoys at the US Embassy in New Delhi — Donald Heflin, Edgard Kagan, Daniel Bennett Smith, and Atul Keshap before the current Chargé d’Affaires Patricia A Lacina took over on September 9, 2021.
President Biden chose Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti for the India job in July last year, but the nomination has been stuck in the United States Senate.
It was initially blocked by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley over allegations of inappropriate behaviour by one of Garcetti’s staffers. That hold has since been lifted; however, the Democrats, with their razor-thin Senate majority, have been unwilling to put the nomination to vote for fear it may not pass.
The results of the mid-term elections scheduled for November 8 — 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be contested — are expected to bring clarity on the Biden Administration’s next steps on the appointment. Meanwhile, almost half of the President’s four-year term is already over.
In absence of envoy
While senior officials such as Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Assistant Secretary Donald Lu have visited New Delhi, the absence of a full-time Ambassador for so long has the potential to impact ties.
Comments by the State Department’s envoy on international religious freedom on human rights issues, especially on the rights of minorities in India, have riled New Delhi, which has reacted sharply to the criticism.
The role of NGOs and civil society activists in India, who have been under scrutiny for the last few years, has also been an important issue for the Democratic administration.
New Delhi’s discomfiture about Washington’s position on defence supplies to Pakistan, including the recent F-16 upgradation programme, is another prickly issue between the two “natural partners”.
The presence of a full-time Ambassador is helpful in handling complexities of this kind — which is done at senior levels of the government, and differences are ironed out behind closed doors without public articulation. This is the longest that the US has been without a full-time envoy in New Delhi since 1950.
For New Delhi, a full-time US envoy is important to deliver key messages to Washington DC. From South Block’s perspective, the envoy must be able to get on the phone with someone in the corridors of power in the US capital — the higher the better.
Likewise for Washington — the presence of a full-time envoy opens access to top echelons of the government and the ruling establishment in hierarchy-conscious New Delhi.
Stresses and the glue
Bilateral ties have been facing a “stress test” over the last eight months, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has put New Delhi and Washington on different sides of the aisle.
So far, the US has been very calibrated in its remarks on India’s position, and has acknowledged New Delhi’s concerns given the latter’s dependence on Russia for defence supplies.
Also, the two countries have joined hands in moving several proposals to list Pakistan-based terrorists at the UN Security Council (UNSC) over the last few months.
Even as they navigate the minor turbulence in the relationship due to the Ukraine war, both India and the US continue to see China as their biggest threat and rival. Despite differences, the two partners are determined to make the relationship work, as was evident in the US National Security Strategy published recently.
The absence of an Ambassador is often perceived as a slight or a downgrade in ties. The challenge for officials and the political leadership on both sides is to address this perception, and to strengthen their strategic communication.
If the Democrats lose the Senate, it will most likely be curtains for Garcetti’s nomination — unless the Biden Administration is able to persuade the Republicans to sign off on his nomination. Otherwise, a Plan B candidate will have to be found for the remainder of Biden’s term.
