LA mayor Garcetti will be Biden’s man in Delhi
COVID AND CLIMATE CHANGE ON AGENDA FOR NEW AMBASSADOR
PRESIDENT Joe Biden last Friday (9) nominated Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, an ambitious star in his Democratic Party, to be ambassador to India, with which the US has an increasingly close relationship.
Garcetti, who has led country’s second-largest city since 2013 with a focus on improving transportation and sustainability, declined to run for president last year but has been widely seen as seeking to burnish his credentials with a new job. A Rhodes scholar who spent 12 years as an intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserves and plays jazz piano on the side, Garcetti said in a statement he had “committed my life to service.”
“And should I be confirmed, I’ll bring this same energy, commitment and love for this city to my new role and will forge partnerships and connections that will help Los Angeles,” Garcetti said.
The White House biography accompanying the announcement of Garcetti’s nomination highlighted his role in co-founding the bipartisan “Climate Mayors” network and in leading more than 400 US mayors to adopt the Paris Climate agreement.
It said Garcetti is the current Chair of C40 Cities, which it described as “a network of 97 of the world’s biggest cities taking bold climate action,” and led the organisation’s engagement and expansion in India and its global response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
India is the world’s third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States, albeit with far lower emissions per capita than those countries. It is under pressure from the United States and others to commit to a target of decarbonising its economy by 2050.
If confirmed by the Democratic-run Senate, which appears likely, the 50-year-old Garcetti would take up an ambassadorship with a storied history. Previous tenants of Roosevelt House, as the official residence in New Delhi is known, include the celebrated economist John Kenneth Galbraith and policy intellectual Daniel Moynihan, who went on to become a senator.
Garcetti would head to New Delhi at a time that the United States is seeking to flesh out a burgeoning relationship with India in the face of an increasingly assertive China, the only other nation of a billion-plus people.
Biden has stepped up the “Quad” partnership of the United States, India, Japan and Australia – four democracies that largely share common cause on China’s rising military and economic might. But Garcetti, the first Jewish mayor of Los Angeles, would also head to India amid growing concern in the United States, especially among Democrats, over the treatment of minorities under prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
Biden as a candidate voiced disappointment over a citizenship law pushed by Modi that critics say would disenfranchise Muslims; and the State Department last year voiced rare, if muted, criticism of India over a sweeping crackdown in Kashmir.
India has been facing major challenges from Covid-19 and air pollution – two issues that Garcetti has tackled in Los Angeles.
Garcetti in December said that he turned down an unspecified job in the Biden administration so that he could focus on defeating Covid-19 in Los Angeles. Garcetti has long shown an interest in foreign policy, pointing to the city’s deep tradition of immigration, vibrant tourism industry and its port, which is the busiest in the Americas.