Ambassador Howard Schaffer, a 36-year-old veteran of the US Foreign Service and author of the acclaimed book titled The Limits of Influence: America's Role in Kashmir, has said that President Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate in US history to mention Kashmir in a presidential campaign.
'A good ambassador needs to know, and to represent, the interests of the United States. In South Asia, career officers have done well by this standard; so have most of the non-career appointees.' Career diplomat Nancy J Powell, the US ambassador to India, resigned on Monday. Retired United States ambassadors Howard B Schaffer and Teresita C Schaffer look at how political appointees and career diplomats sent as envoys to India and South Asia have fared over the years.
The strengthening ties between India and United States have made Pakistan paranoid. Fearing that US might just discard it, Pakistan is now turning to its "enduring friend" China, believe America's powerful couple in diplomatic circles -- former ambassadors Howard and Teresita Schaffer. Aziz Haniffa reports
Retired senior US diplomats Teresita and Howard Schaffer believe the 'US cannot afford to continue restricting its contacts with Narendra Modi.' Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa reports from Washington, DC.
No book on South Asia published in recent years has received the kudos veteran diplomat Howard B Schaffer's The Limits of Influence: America's Role in Kashmir, published by Brookings Institution Press, elicited.In an interview with rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa, he explains why the Barack Obama administration should intervene in resolving the contentious Kashmir issue.
To mark Prime Minister Modi's seventh meeting with Obama and his historic joint address to US Congress -- the sixth Indian PM to do so -- India Abroad, the newspaper published from New York and owned by rediff.com, reached out to diplomats and strategic thinkers in New Delhi and Washington, DC, to assess the current state of the US-India relationship and suggest a road map for the future.
'The US-India relationship is in a different league altogether,' Obama administration officials tell Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com in Washington, DC.
Friends and colleagues pay rich tributes to the "charming, approachable, and very accessible" Indian Constitution scholar Granville 'Red' Austin.
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