Category Archives: India – U.S.

India - U.S., Writing, international affairs, Geopolitics

The fault line in India, US ties: America doesn’t understand ‘equal’

New Delhi must respond with open-eyed diplomacy, not open-hearted sentiment.

US President Donald Trump’s visit to China may not be remembered by posterity as much as Richard Nixon’s famous trip in 1972. But it has forced Indians to confront the parallels with what was hitherto considered the darkest chapter of the India-US relationship.

Nixon, like Trump, believed that resetting relations with China was in paramount American interest. Nixon, like Trump, led a White House and establishment that was instinctively unsympathetic to Indian concerns. And Nixon, like Trump, viewed the Pakistani military leadership through rose-tinted glasses. Nobody, not even ordinary Pakistanis, has ever celebrated a Pakistani military dictator more than Nixon or Trump.

But here is what matters: The relationship between India and the United States survived Nixon. It grew and flourished. The partnership is stronger than any one person, even an enormously consequential president. It is greater than any administration, any party, any geopolitical moment. It is beneficial for both and yet it is not definitional for either. We can live without it.

In the past, India navigated a hostile White House, a hostile establishment, and an indifferent American public. Today’s position is better, even if the Trump White House returns to overt hostility from its current passive-aggressive demeanor. Large sections of the Washington establishment continue to value the bilateral partnership. People-to-people connections have deepened. And the business-to-business ties of investment, innovation and trade have already demonstrated their capacity to ignore and outlast shifts in capital markets or political fashion.

This is not to minimise divergences that are neither superficial nor personality-driven. A structural faultline has emerged in Indo-US relations. It cannot be papered over. There are, in fact, three faultlines, not one.

India’s energy security, its abiding concern in global affairs, is imperiled by American unilateralism and breathtaking double standards on sourcing fuel from Russia. Washington’s search for detente with China removes the relationship’s strategic ballast. And India has reforged its sense of self: It will, and it must, continue to refuse to play the compliant partner to a whimsical Washington. These are serious, structural disagreements. They deserve to be named as such.

But we must also recognise the institutional convergences that persist. Bilateral military-to-military cooperation. Strands of collaboration under the Quad’s umbrella that Trump dislikes and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ambassador Sergio Gor seek to cleverly sustain. The INDUS-X defence ecosystem. The TRUST initiative for emergent technology and critical minerals and multiple supply chain partnerships. All of these receive undiminished official energy, and will continue to do so. And hard words and the 50 per cent tariffs notwithstanding, a trade deal was eventually arrived at. The glue holds. Barely, but it holds.

We should think of this moment as an opportunity. The US-India relationship has always been sold as an inevitable strategic convergence. But until recently, it was something else: Two very different civilisational world-views cohabiting uneasily. What Trump’s arrival did was strip away the diplomatic veneer.

New Delhi must respond with open-eyed diplomacy, not open-hearted sentiment. It must engage all strands of thought in the United States, a democracy almost as diverse and complex as ours. Trumpism may outlast Trump — both sides of the aisle asking, if in more polished terms, the same uncomfortable questions the current administration has posed.

The truth is that this president has done us a favour. We can now rework this relationship on more honest, durable terms.

This cohabitation was in many ways an arranged marriage. The two countries were joined together by a panchayat of wise elders: P V Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Bill Clinton, Manmohan Singh, George Bush, and their generations. The arranged-marriage mantra is: Ceremony first, compatibility later. For our two nations, the strategic relationship came first. Strategic convergence was supposed to follow.

It didn’t. Our worldviews did not converge the way matchmakers anticipated. A philosophical gap, one rooted in our respective democratic cultures, has persisted: India does not understand alliances; America does not understand autonomy.

In any marriage, both partners change, compromise and build a partnership of equals. A relationship between two civilisation-states is no different. The White House cannot write the rules of marriage without co-opting India’s distinctiveness. Until Washington accepts that India is an ancient nation with its own immutable timeline and unalterable threat calculus, and not a junior supplicant seeking admission to some charmed circle, this relationship will oscillate between promise and frustration. The fact is, America does not understand “equal”.

New Delhi is not holding its breath. As the old order dissipates, India is neither dismantling nor defending it. Foreign policy and strategic autonomy have visibly been very hard work and yet an imperative. To be fair, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team are rearranging the pieces rather well. India has discovered a new and appropriate proximity and distance to the US, deeper strategic intimacy with the EU, recalibration with Beijing — while engaging Moscow in a dynamic world.

The India-US partnership will endure. It survived Nixon; it will survive Trump. But whether it matures is a different question entirely. The answer depends on one thing alone: America deciding it can accept India on mutually agreeable terms. The Trump White House doesn’t understand the question. Perhaps its successor will need to find the answer.

Originally Appeared in Indian Express. Read it here

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China, Digital India, India - U.S., Indo-pacific, Research

India @ 75: Ethic, Economy and Exemplar

If a weary international community—reeling from unanticipated challenges and unprecedented disruptions in the early 21st century—was looking forward to a stabilising start to the 2020s, its hopes were short-lived. COVID-19 continues to weave its way through borders and continents, felling victims and flummoxing governments. Two years down the line, it is increasingly clear that we have to learn to live with the virus, as it shows signs of transitioning to become endemic. A “new normal” where COVID-19 does not cripple communities, countries and whole continents is the future, even as vaccine inequity makes the possibility of more lethal variants imminent.

But even before COVID-19 forced us to radically rethink and redo the way we live our very lives, a certain tiredness had been evident. Generational and geographical shifts in the balance of power, rapid advances in technology-led innovations, and existential global risks like climate change have all strained the capacity of prevailing international norms and institutions. These have left them looking wilted, if not withered. Now, these norms and institutions have all but shattered from the strain of the pandemic. There is no percentage in stating the obvious, yet it must be reiterated: The international community needs new ideas, anchors and torchbearers to reinvigorate globalisation and strengthen global co-operation.

Towards this end, only asinine assessments of a future world order as the century turns 20 would ignore the crucial role of India in shaping this decade, and determining the trajectory of the decades to follow. Our endeavour with this series of essays is to capture the ideas and ethics driving contemporary Indian diplomacy; examine the methods and contours of India’s engagement with the world; and, offer a prognosis of India’s future as a leading power.

Under the rubric of ‘India@75: Aspirations, Ambitions, and Approaches’, ORF has curated 18 essays written by some of the world’s finest minds, representing former heads of state and government, members of parliament, heads of international institutions, leaders from business, and experts from academia and media. Between them, they have studied India’s evolving relationship with new geographies, its engagement with new domains of global governance, and the human imperative that must define India’s rise.

Few predict the path ahead will be easy for India, or that latent and legacy challenges confronting this nation can be ignored. Indeed, most assessments in this volume suggest disquiet and uncertainty. Amrita Narlikar begins her essay with a cautionary note on world affairs. “Multilateralism is facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions,” she writes, “It manifests itself in a fundamental questioning of the very value of multilateralism within countries and deadlocks in negotiations in multilateral organisations.” But this global crisis, she argues, also begets opportunities for India. C. Raja Mohan agrees and asserts that this period of churn offers India the opportunity to shed the temptation to act alone and actively build new coalitions and consensus with other powers. But this will depend, he argues, on how quickly India can restructure its traditional worldview.

As Harsh V Pant writes in this essay, this restructuring is already underway, as “India’s past diffidence in making certain foreign policy choices is rapidly giving way to greater readiness to acknowledge the need for a radical shift in thinking about internal capability enhancement by leveraging external partnerships.”

As the world’s centre of gravity shifts from the Atlantic system, India’s engagement with both emerging and old geographies acquires new salience. And this is where the new external partnerships are actively taking shape. Central among these is the dynamically evolving Indo-Pacific construct which, as Premesha Saha posits, will weave communities, markets and states from the East Pacific to East Africa into one strategic geography. How India adapts its “economic structure” to these realities and implements its “commitment to prevent hegemony in the oceans”, argues Kwame Owino, will determine its ability to lead these new regions.

But shaping new geographies will also require India to manage certain old relationships. The Indo-Pacific should not be seen in isolation—its markets and communities are also rapidly integrating with the Eurasian supercontinent. Steven Blockmans laments that the India-EU relationship has underperformed given its potential to anchor democratic and rules-based governance in greater Eurasia. Solomon Passy and Angel Apostolov boldly make the case for exploring the possibility of a dialogue between NATO and India, indicating just how drastically—and rapidly—the mental maps of the world are morphing.

There is a common thread that binds these analyses: A keen interest in India’s evolving relationship with the US and China. These three nations will, after all, rank among the largest three economies by the middle of this century. The turbulent Twenties will see the dynamics of this power triangle assume centre stage. The US sees India as a partner in its endeavour to neutralise an increasingly aggressive and expansionist China. Jane Holl Lute argues that India “has understood China’s principal strategic aim to replace the United States as the most consequential security power in Asia”. While India’s choices will undoubtedly implicate the balance of power between the US and China, India will most likely chart its own course in international affairs.

ORF Distinguished Fellow Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan highlights India’s behaviour in international negotiations on outer space as a primary example. In every significant process—from the UN GGE to the EU CoC—India has argued for greater multilateralism while actively discouraging behaviour that is “inherently destabilising”. I would add India’s engagement on cyber governance, particularly on emerging technologies, to this list. Although technological systems are rapidly unravelling, India has sought to frame rules for its digital economy that both serve its development interests and preserve interdependence. As Trisha Ray writes, “New Delhi must prepare to shape, rather than be shaped, by these shifting geopolitical winds.” Others remind us that much work still needs to be done. Renato Flores urges India to learn lessons from its RCEP withdrawal, shed traditional hesitations, and emerge as a leading advocate for multilateral trade.

India’s most significant contribution to the global commons will be providing sustainable livelihoods to its own people, and its battle against climate change. Indeed, Oommen Kurian & Shoba Suri begin their analysis with the proposition that success or failure in implementing the global SDG agenda is dependent almost wholly on India achieving its own targets. India already produces nearly half of all global vaccines and is a leading voice on IPR reform, as Khor Swee Kheng & K. Srinath Reddy note, making it essential for global health security. India will also be tasked with achieving livelihood goals for itself and the world in a carbon-constrained world, which is why Jayant Sinha argues that India can no longer rely on the ‘farm to industry’ model of development.

Instead, Nilanjan Ghosh asserts that India’s own goal of becoming a US$10 trillion economy, which is both equitable and inclusive, is only possible by following through on the SDG agenda. All of this, according to Adil Zainulbhai, will be powered by India’s already immense digital infrastructure, innovation capabilities and skilled workforce as it leverages the Fourth Industrial Revolution to its advantage. “India’s green transformation,” asserts Mihir Sharma, “will have to be led by the decisions of its people and by the energy of its private sector.”

It is these twin imperatives—achieving sustainable development and the climate change agenda— that make India a very different type of ‘rising power’. Its path to prominence will not be defined by military dominance or coercive economic capabilities. Instead, India’s rise will be characterised by its ability to provide solutions, technologies and finance to emerging communities in urgent need of new models of economic growth and social mobility. It is this ‘new economic diplomacy’, Navdeep Suri believes, that will define India’s foreign policy priorities in the decade ahead.

Underwriting India’s foreign policy will be its civilisational identity as a democratic, open and plural society. Arguably the most abstract of all its foreign policy tools, India’s own ability to retain social cohesion while providing economic growth and development will, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper observes, help “lead the world as a whole to greater prosperity and peace”. Indeed, each essay has this very sentiment at its core—the importance of India’s rise for its own people, its region, and indeed as a model for the world in this century.

We hope these essays will provide an intellectual stimulus to debates and discussions that will undoubtedly contribute to shaping our collective future, examine our contemporary challenges and allow us a moment to learn from the journey so far. The world in the 2020s demands more from us. Indians must be ready to deliver.

This piece is the Editor’s Note for the essay series, India@75: Aspirations, Ambitions, and Approaches

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India - U.S., Speaking

Interview with the New Stateman

Video

By Emily Tamkin and Valeria Cardi

It is no secret that Washington is bullish about the idea of fostering closer ties with India in an effort to counter China. But tighter ties takes two. Is Washington, DC’s enthusiasm matched in New Delhi?

“We know that we don’t share a typical Atlantic-style relationship. It’s a more Asian relationship, more grays than black and whites in our relationship,” Samir Saran, the president of the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank in New Delhi, told me.

Dating back to the Cold War, India has maintained a formal policy of non-alignment. In reality, though, the Soviet Union, which supported India in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War and provided the vast majority of its defence equipment, earned India’s support and sympathy. The US, meanwhile, was seen as an untrustworthy and unreliable actor; nor did it help that America was close to India’s neighbour and foe, Pakistan.

In recent years, however, relations between India and the US have improved. There are many reasons for this, but the most important one is arguably a rising China, which America is seeking to counter and contain by working with other countries, and with India in particular. Pakistan, meanwhile, cooperates closely with China.

A year after the US president Joe Biden’s election, and with China at the top of America’s foreign policy agenda, I turned to Saran to ask how, exactly, policymakers in New Delhi perceive US overtures, particularly given the fact that, historically, America has been seen as a less than reliable partner.

“I think much of what you sometimes may hear in Delhi or in DC could possibly be remnants of the 20th century, people holding on to positions of the past, people who have written books on India’s behaviour or American attitudes to the past, wanting to still be relevant in the 21st century,” he said. “I think there is a more pragmatic assessment of each other today.”

Still, he added, “I’m not saying that we trust the Americans all the time.”

One area in which America and India have traditionally not seen eye to eye is in India’s immediate neighbourhood, including Afghanistan. “I think the Americans had to leave [Afghanistan],” Saran told me. “Could they have left better? I think all of us would agree, yes. It was a bit of a messy withdrawal. I don’t think any amount of spin can change that.” He also noted that India could have been consulted, though added that Delhi has always seen America maintain a certain distance from India on Afghanistan. “And in that sense, it’s not surprising. It’s not that we’ve been let down heartbroken because America did not consult us.” In other words, the events of this summer were not enough to deter India from cooperating with the US.

Relatedly, if China is bringing India and the US together, some have wondered if Russia might tear them apart.

“Russia punches above its weight in terms of global affairs,” said Saran. “Russia is going to remain a relevant voice. And we do not want a situation where we paint Putin into the Chinese corner. I think that would be disastrous for us. So we will have to find ways in which we can accommodate Russia.

“I think that is now visible to all in DC, we have not let that come in the way of being more bold, more ambitious, more forward-looking with our American partners.”

This is, broadly speaking, true, though there are some in Washington who feel differently: for example, John Bolton, former president Donald Trump’s national security adviser, penned an op-ed in the Hill on 10 November in which he argued that India’s purchase of S-400 air defence systems from Russia “raises serious obstacles to closer politico-military relations between Washington and New Delhi”. Saran, unsurprisingly, sees it differently, painting a picture in which India can help the US by developing economic ties with Russia, thus moving Moscow away from Beijing.

Even issues as weighty as US-China or India-Russia relations, however, seem small next to the existential issue of our age: climate change. India is already battling air pollution and will be profoundly impacted by the climate crisis. Is there a sense there that America is not doing enough?

India, he told me, has been a strong proponent of climate justice, equity, and action. And this is an area where the US and India can “work together and create a new framework that would catalyse trillions of dollars of green capital to flow into green projects”. He didn’t mean aid or grants, he stressed. “We are talking about commercial capital from banks… We are talking about creating a whole new green financial ecosystem.”

And what about the gap between India’s rhetoric and, say, the reality of air pollution in Delhi? How does that gap close?

“​​The gap closes like it was closed in New York and London, by more advanced, cleaner, greener systems,” he said. “We are going to have to go through that decade of pain.”

The painful period would hurt less if it was accelerated, he acknowledged. Still, some element of what India will go through to get to the other, better, greener side will require discomfort. The same could perhaps be said of the US-India relationship itself.

Read the original interview here – https://www.newstatesman.com/the-international-interview/2021/11/samir-saran-on-india-us-relations-there-is-a-more-pragmatic-assessment-of-each-other-today