There are two ways in which one can view the decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rush to Washington DC this week. One view, which many in the national media and among New Delhi’s think tanks will enthusiastically convey would be that he is not only among the first three heads of government to be hosted by the newly minted President Donald Trump, but that he would also break bread with him.
This, we would be told, is a sign of not just the friendship between the United States and India but also of the personal chemistry that bonds Trump and Modi. Birds of a feather. India is important for the US and the US is important for India.
A second view would question this ‘partnership of equals’ narrative. Trump recognises no equal. His first two visitors were in fact supplicants. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu represents a country that came into existence thanks to the United States, that has survived many battles with its neighbours thanks to the US and that is willing to sell conquered real estate to the world’s richest real estate dealer masquerading as head of state.
Trump’s second visitor was Japan’s beleaguered Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba who was desperately seeking an audience with Trump to help him boost his domestic political rating. Ishiba is a pale shadow of the man who first knocked on Trump’s door at the beginning of the latter’s first term, the late Shinzo Abe.
Perhaps Abe too was nervous about what Trump would mean for his country but he was at least secure in his office. Ishiba would have been doubly unnerved by Trump’s invitation to President Xi Jinping of China. Would the US dump Japan for a deal with China and would a China-US detente end his political career?
Unlike Israel and Japan, India stands apart as an independent power
Both Israel and Japan had reasons to be nervous about Trump. Their national security and defence depends on a good relationship with the US. They are both essentially supplicant states and have long behaved as such. In the so-called Quad, both Australia and Japan are client states of the US. Only India stands apart as an independent power with a mind of its own.
India is Vishwabandhu, we are told. It walks and talks in an ‘India Way’. It still values its “strategic autonomy”, even though from time to time it has reached out to other nations for military support in defending her territorial integrity. India was not created by the West, like Israel. It is a civilisational state that secured its freedom from colonialism by emerging as a global beacon of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. We are leaders of the Global South.
Even if all that rhetoric is set aside, and we accept our limitations and vulnerabilities, we are still different. Why have we given the impression of nervousness in dealing with President Trump and his authoritarian regime?
Granted that there are at least two issues why India would seek stable and good relations with the US. First, India’s desire to ensure balance of power within Asia in dealing with the rapid rise of China. A US-India partnership would enable both to deal with growing Chinese power. But this is a two-way relationship.
The fear induced by Trump’s call to President Xi ought not to have unnerved Indian leadership in the visible manner in which it did. There are limits to a US-China detente. This has been talked about for a quarter century now ever since Fred Bergsten at the Peterson Institute in Washington DC wrote about a possible G-2. It was dismissed by some as ‘Chimerica’ – a geopolitical chimera.
More importantly, it is not in India’s capacity to prevent a G-2 if the two dominant global powers choose to divide and rule the world. India’s destiny remains that it deals with the world as it exists and not with a world it can hope to create. India will have to deal on its own terms both with US-China conflict and a US-China rapprochement. Rushing to DC in search of reassurance is not going to make too much of a difference apart from exposing our nervousness to the world.
Trump’s threat to launch a global trade war
A second concern that India has with Trump is his threat to launch a global trade war, raising tariff walls all around. Here too a bilateral trade deal with the US is not going to make too much difference to India’s overall trade deficit. Even if the US can hurt India by raising tariffs on merchandise exports, the US still needs India’s service exports. In services trade the relationship is two-way. Both need each other. India has adequate lobbying power within US, with so many American billionaires around Trump profiting from access to Indian talent.
Finally, two other issues that are often mentioned as areas of concern are US visas for Indians and access to American technology. In both cases the relationship is two-way and, at any rate, India ought not to be genuflecting in Washington to secure either visas or technology. During the Cold War era, when government to government relations were terrible, the US willingly issued visas to Indians to drain away Indian talent and benefit from their emigration.
No government had to negotiate away the millions of talented Indians who have willingly gone to the US over the past four decades. And, on the other hand, this US-friendly government has not been able to prevent the deportation of Indians who entered the US illegally and their treatment as criminals, with men, women and children handcuffed.
Also Read: Trump and Modi: Why a Fragile India Should Be Uneasy
No harm would have come to India if Prime Minister Modi had conveyed Indian displeasure at the treatment of its wayward citizens and had said that he would visit Washington DC at a later date when the diplomatic atmosphere was more convivial. In fact, no harm would have come to India if the Indian government remained calm and waited for the dust to settle down in Washington DC. If Canada, Mexico and other Latin American countries more dependent on the US have been able to stand their ground, we too could have.
Declaring love for Trump at this stage does no credit to India’s global standing as an independent nation, a leader of the Global South. Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said he would not attend the G-20 Summit in South Africa because he does not approve of the government there. Our silence, as a former chair of G-20 that made such a big deal about hosting G-20 the summit, and our silence on Trump’s imperialistic notions about taking over Greeneland and Gaza, does not sit well with our place in the world.
The many countries around the world that have so far declared their support for India’s permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council have done so in the hope that India’s voice would be India’s voice. That it would stand for some principles based on its history of anti-colonialism and refusal to enter into military alliances with big powers, whatever the limited compromises made along the way.
To arrive in Trump’s Washington days after Netanyahu and Ishiba does little credit to the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, much less to the global standing of India.
Sanjaya Baru is an economist, a former newspaper editor, a best-selling author, and former adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
