Foreign Minster Natwar Singh, center, with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, left, who will replace Colin Powell as the Secretary of State, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, where President George W. Bush met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sept. 21. (File Photo)

U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was chosen on Nov. 16 as President George W. Bush’s new secretary of state, a move that augurs well for further intensification of U.S.-India ties.

Rice, whose naming follows Colin Powell’s resignation on Nov. 15, is currently considered the original architect of an expanded relationship with India and giving it a high priority in the Bush administration.

Selig Harrison, head of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, indicated that Rice’s appointment would make a significant difference.

“She would bring with her an attitude that relations with India are of great importance and that India and Pakistan should not be equated.

“What she said was the United States should not look at India in relation to Pakistan but in terms of the balance of power in Asia,” Harrison told News India-Times, adding that Rice’s frame of reference did not make India’s nuclear standing an issue.

“But in terms of reconciling our policy on India and Pakistan, I don’t know if she will be different,” Harrison qualified.

Rice has frequently met with top Indian officials when they came to the White House and spoken many times on intensifying and diversifying relations with India, not just after 9/11 but even as President Bush came to the White House.

A September 2000 interview with The International Economy sums up Rice’s views on foreign policy vis-a-vis India, in which she says: “The countries that get things right will determine the international political hierarchy. We need to encourage new centers of stability, new centers of prosperity. Let me give you an example: India. This is a country that we have generally treated as if it is simply a nuclear problem and a problem concerning Kashmir and that’s all we ever talk about with India. But this is an emerging knowledge economy that has a real place in the new international economy.”

Sumit Ganguly, head of India Studies at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, lauding Rice’s nomination, said that her coming to the State Department may not keep U.S.-Pakistan relations at the same level. “I am not so sure that the Pakistani front will be the same. I think she will be fairly clear-eyed and somewhat more tough-minded with Musharraf.”

Ganguly was critical of Powell’s handling of Islamabad. “For one thing, Powell seems to have a great fondness for Pakistan’s bluff generals. He was quite taken in by (Gen. Pervez) Musharraf’s perfectly starched uniform and clipped moustache.

“I think that American military has repeatedly fallen prey to the pseudo English accent, the carefully manicured lawns, and 21-gun salutes. India has that too but our generals are a little more overweight and their uniforms are a little less starched.”

He recalled that even before President Bush got elected, Rice wrote an article outlining her position on India, in which she devoted a whole paragraph arguing how India had to be looked at outside of the nuclear status.

In the article titled ‘Republican Foreign Policy,’ Rice said Washington should be more engaged with India.

However, Walter Andersen, associate director of the South Asia Studies Program, said: “My sense is she would continue more of the same if she took over the State.”

“Certainly, Rice is on record to build stronger relations with India, but I think there will still be the emphasis on Pakistan,” said Andersen, who is associate director at Johns Hopkins Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and formerly a State Department official.