Roemer key to U.S.-India relationship
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By DANIEL LIBIT & LAURA ROZEN, POLITICO
When former Indiana congressman Timothy Roemer
arrived in New Delhi in July as President
Barack Obama's new ambassador to India, he
inherited one of the few U.S. international
relationships that had dramatically improved
during the Bush administration.
George
W. Bush had reversed course from the sanctions
and hectoring the Clinton administration
employed toward India after its 1998 nuclear
tests and left it to India and Pakistan to
resolve their dispute over Kashmir. Most of
all, under Bush, India felt that it had managed
to at long last escape from being lumped with
Pakistan and Afghanistan as problem children of
the region.
But well before Roemer's
arrival there were concerns in New Delhi about
the new administration. Those concerns have
continued, making the state visit this week of
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in the
words of Nicholas Burns, a high-ranking State
Department official, "a very big symbolic
gesture toward India" by the new
administration.
Shortly before the 2008
presidential elections, Obama created
considerable anxiety in New Delhi when he told
Time magazine that as president he would seek
to mediate the Kashmir dispute, even mentioning
Bill Clinton as a possible envoy for the task.
India was none too pleased and vigorously and
successfully lobbied against it.
Just
last week, Indians took great offense at two
speeches Obama made on his trip to Japan, China
and Korea. In Tokyo, Obama gave a speech on the
importance of Asia without once mentioning
India. And in a joint statement with Chinese
Premier Hu Jintao, Indians saw signs of Obama
encouraging a larger Chinese role in mediating
relations between historical rivals India and
Pakistan.
While perhaps inadvertent,
such slights suggest "that nobody in the Obama
administration is standing up now for India,"
said C. Raja Mohan, a professor of South Asian
studies currently on a fellowship at the
Library of Congress.
Burns, a former
undersecretary of state for political affairs
and now a professor at Harvard, attributes some
of the problem to the administration's simply
having too many balls in the air. "The problem
is that [the Obama administration] has been so
focused by necessity on Afghanistan and
Pakistan and on building the relationship with
China that there is the perception that it is
not spending as much time thinking about the
India relationship," he told
POLITICO.
But in Roemer, the exquisitely
sensitive U.S.-Indian relationship is being
managed by someone with a finely tuned
political ear, as well as with less-known but
serious academic and policy credentials — he
has a Ph.D. in government from Notre Dame and
after leaving Congress served as president of
the Center for National Policy, a Washington
think tank.
"Peace and stability, and a
peaceful relationship between Pakistan and
India, is very much in the U.S. interest,"
Roemer said in an interview with POLITICO last
week, after arriving in Washington ahead of
Singh's visit. "And any kind of talks between
India and Pakistan, India and Pakistan will
determine the pace and character and progress
of those talks."
To the task, the former
six-term congressman brings a prodigious
interest in intelligence, counterterrorism, and
nonproliferation issues and a reputation as a
heartland centrist who earned Obama's gratitude
for his endorsement. Roemer burnished his
foreign policy reputation as a member of the
joint House and Senate intelligence panel that
investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, where he had a reputation for his keen
interest in the raw data and his spending hours
doing research.
Eleanor Hill, who served
as staff director of the joint inquiry, recalls
Roemer frequenting the special secure suite in
the Ford House Office Building where the
records were kept, proceeding to spend hours
poring over documents and staff
statements.
"A lot of them can't spare
the time to do that," said Hill, "and he made
sure he made the time to do that."
Hill
noted that Roemer didn't just learn about
terrorism but about counterterrorism as well, a
study that she said perfectly correlates to his
work now in India.
After retiring from
the House, Roemer continued to immerse himself
in counterterrorism and intelligence issues
serving as a member of the independent 9/11
Commission. Fellow former Indiana Rep. Lee
Hamilton, co-chairman of the commission and
another occasional Obama confidant, said Roemer
was a key consensus builder in the bipartisan
group dealing with hugely sensitive and often
politicized issues.
"Tim was early on a
team player," Hamilton said. "He was not
striking out on his own, but was instead very
supportive of the leadership of the
commission."
Hamilton also credits
Roemer with establishing an especially strong
relationship with the families of the Sept. 11
victims and serving as their de facto point
person on the commission.
During both
post-Sept. 11 inquiries, Roemer was
particularly dedicated to the task of
overhauling the nation's intelligence system.
When the position of director of national
intelligence was created in 2004, Roemer
asserted his concerns that the job live up to
its billing. His interest in the position and
his background in intelligence led many at the
time to believe he was destined for the post in
a future Democratic
administration.
After losing to Howard
Dean in his bid to become chairman of the
Democratic National Committee, the
anti-abortion Roemer took the reins at the
Center for National Policy, a security-focused
think tank where another former Democratic
House member, Leon Panetta, served as chairman
of the board of advisers.
It was at CNP
that Roemer first connected with Obama, soon
after he was sworn in to the Senate. CNP was
cultivating a bipartisan nuclear security study
group at the time, and Roemer sought out the
Illinois freshman and his chief of staff at the
time, Pete Rouse, to join in.
When Obama
decided to run for president, Roemer was among
those who endorsed him early on. After the
Obama nomination, Roemer's name was circulated
as a potential running mate.
Ultimately,
the job that many speculated Roemer might get,
director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
went to Panetta, his CNP compatriot. While
Roemer was said to be disappointed with getting
passed over for the CIA job, in the final cut,
Roemer, according to multiple sources, passed
up another high-level intelligence post as well
as the post of ambassador to Mexico to accept
Obama's offer to serve as his envoy to New
Delhi instead.
"Imagine the opportunity
to represent your country of 300 million people
and then to be the public face and the outreach
for diplomacy on the ground in India with 1.1
billion people," Roemer said.
Roemer's
predecessors in the job during Bush
administration — Robert Blackwill (2001-2003)
and David Mulford (2003-2008) — were popular in
New Delhi and credited with transforming the
U.S. relationship with India.
Mohan
credits Blackwill, a former Harvard professor
and NSC official in the administration of
President George H.W. Bush, with doing the
conceptual heavy lifting that led to the real
strategic transformation in the relationship
early in Bush's first term.
Blackwill
"started the process of saying, ‘We must find a
way out of this nuclear dispute,'" Mohan said.
That led in 2005, during Mulford's tenure as
ambassador, to Bush's 2005 announcement
supporting the U.S.-India civil nuclear deal —
a deal that Roemer said in the interview last
week he hopes the coming visit will be able to
advance across the finish line.
The
question for Roemer is perhaps similar to the
one faced by his boss, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, another ambitious Democratic
politician with her eye on a longer career
horizon: how to distinguish himself in the job,
and, of course, where does he go from
here?
In that context, getting passed
over for CIA director, a job usually considered
a career ender, may have been a blessing in
disguise.
Those close to Roemer see
another administration job in his future,
particularly if Obama wins
reelection.
"I will be surprised if this
is Tim's last post in government," said Lorne
Craner, a former Bush-era State Department
official, who said the younger, gregarious,
Harley-riding former politician is a perfect
face for this moment in the India-American
relationship. "The Indians are going to have a
good friend high up in the U.S.
government."
Scott Bates, CNP's vice
president, sees a political road map for Roemer
that leads to a run at higher office, either in
the Senate or as governor of Indiana.
"I
look forward to when he is able to go back to
Indiana and talk about India," said Bates. "He
is going to be able to bring back that
understanding to the heartland. It is really
important for America at the beginning of this
century not to put up isolationist walls. That
is going to be a very important aspect of him
you may not think about. It's not all
externally related."
