Rapporteur, Satu Limaye

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PREFACE

The end of the cold war has brought many challenges and opportunities for American involvement in the world. As Americans seek to frame a new agenda for U. S. foreign policy, it is critical that they take account of those regions and issues long obscured by the compulsions of cold war ideology and strategy. Among these regions is South Asia, comprising the countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. South Asia's secondary role in the East-West conflict, together with its inherent complexity and many problems, has kept it at the periphery of U.S. governmental and private attention. Now forces inside and outside the region make it apparent that South Asia should be more central to U.S. concerns in the years and decades ahead, that it has been ignored too long.

This point is the focus of a project of multilateral dialogue and American public education organized by The Asia Society beginning in 1993. The project has sought to understand the forces shaping the future of South Asian countries and the perspectives of South Asians on that future; to assess current and future U.S. interests and policies in the region; and, on the basis of these findings, to encourage and inform the public debate in the United States on relations with the region.

The centerpiece of the project was a study mission to South Asia which, at the request of The Asia Society, we were privileged to chair. After extensive briefings and preparation in the United States, 14 Americans from different backgrounds, most of us with only limited prior expertise or experience in South Asia, traveled in the region for two weeks in late March and early April 1994. All of us visited India and Pakistan. We divided into three groups to visit Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In each country we met a large number of South Asians in government, business, nongovernmental organizations, scholarship, and journalism. In small group discussions we sought their views on the issues facing their countries and region and on U. S. relations with South Asia.

Our mission was received with extraordinary interest and hospitality throughout South Asia. If this response was any measure, South Asians are eager to discuss with Americans how our nations and peoples ought to relate to each other in the future. Our very complex, and strenuous, schedules in each of the seven cities visited were arranged through the generous and highly effective assistance of eight South Asian cooperating institutions: in India, the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and the Confederation of Indian Industry, Bombay; in Pakistan, the Institute for Regional Studies, Islamabad, The Asia Foundation, and the American Business Council, Karachi; in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Institute for International and Strategic Studies; in Nepal, the Society for Constitutional and Parliamentary Exercise (SCOPE); and in Sri Lanka, the International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

This report is the record of our principal findings and recommendations on the future of United States—South Asia relations. We are concerned with both official and nonofficial ties, and with the full range of economic, political, social, cultural, and security relations. Our primary focus is on matters we believe are critical to the medium- and long-term interests of the United States in the region. Our objective is to stimulate public discussion within the United States and between Americans and South Asians about the future of our relations.

The report itself is to be widely distributed in the United States and South Asia. The issues it raises will be discussed at international symposia in Washington, D.C. and several other U.S. cities in late September 1994, at which leading South Asians will have an opportunity to comment on our findings and exchange views with a wide spectrum of interested Americans. Our group has also sought to bring our principal findings directly to the attention of key executive and legislative policymakers and Americans with a special interest in the region, including the growing community of South Asian Americans.

A separate report of the study mission examining in greater depth the nuclear issues in U.S.—South Asia relations will be published at a later date.

On behalf of all the members of our mission, we wish to acknowledge and thank the many organizations and individuals without whose cooperation and support this effort would not have been possible. We particularly wish to express our deep gratitude to the hundreds of South Asians who took time out of their busy schedules to meet with us, and to the cooperating organizations that expended great effort in arranging our visits. Our appreciation is due also to the many Americans who shared their knowledge and insights with us before we traveled to South Asia.

This report was drafted for us by Dr. Satu Limaye, whose expertise, persistence, and ingenuity in forging consensus from our often divergent perspectives were critical in the shaping of the document. We and our fellow mission members wish to give him credit for whatever fluency is in these writings, and to absolve him of whatever failings they may have. Deborah Field Washburn, Susan Sokolski, Karen Fein, and Jenny Kaiser of The Asia Society's staff played valuable roles in editing, designing, and producing the report.

The study mission and the larger project have been enormously complicated and difficult undertakings. They have been accomplished through the extraordinary skill and diligence of two of the Society's staff: Sridhar Srinivasan, program associate in the Contemporary Affairs Department, and Shirin Malkani, administrative assistant. We thank them deeply on behalf of the entire mission.

We believe that The Asia Society deserves great credit for organizing this effort to increase American attention to the often-neglected region of South Asia. Marshall M. Bouton, the Society's executive vice president, deserves particular credit for envisioning and developing the project. The Society's president, Nicholas Platt, endorsed the project from the beginning.

The project "South Asia and the United States After the Cold War" has been made possible by the generous financial support of the Ford Foundation. Mahnaz Ispahani, Peter Geithner, David Arnold, and Raymond Offenheiser of the Foundation's staff were particularly instrumental in providing early encouragement and ongoing advice to the project. Additional funds were provided by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the United States Information Agency, and Ward W. Woods, Jr. We join The Asia Society in expressing deep appreciation to these donors.

Finally, we want to thank our fellow mission members for agreeing to participate in the project and committing so much of their time and energy to it over the last eight months. They were also cheerful and stimulating traveling companions under what were sometimes very demanding circumstances.

We have been influenced in our thinking and the shaping of this report by a suggestion from a leading member of Congress whom we met before traveling to South Asia. He asked that we try to devise a "road map" for future U.S. relations with South Asia. As it turned out, a true road map was beyond the scope of this study. Too much is uncertain about the future course of affairs in the region, or for that matter in the United States, to be able to see so clearly ahead. But we have endeavored to identify key signposts that Americans might follow in formulating their thinking about and dealings with South Asia as they chart new policy directions in the post—cold war era.

August 1994