The recent flood of threats and blandishments from the US towards India, and many other countries, has focussed attention on Donald Trump as a despot out of control. While his style obscures the US's similar, though usually less blatant, use of its preponderant power to coerce other nations into accepting offers they supposedly cannot refuse, history has shown that the Godfather approach has not worked with India and many other self-respecting nations.

Even as we recall the American record of invasions, engineered coups, even illegal wars – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on – over the past decades, which dwarfs acts of aggression by any other power outside of the World Wars, we need to take a closer look at US policy and actions across the board. 

As far as India is concerned, pressure to conform to US interests commenced in the 1950’s when non-alignment was declared ‘immoral’. While the US did come to India’s aid in 1962, and provided food aid through the PL 480 program, episodes reflecting honest cooperation were few and far between.

The US has mostly acted out of its national interest, even when it professed it was pursuing a ‘rules based order’. This was starkly brought out during the Nixon-Kissinger bounce to China via Pakistan and the Seventh Fleet in the Bay of Bengal in 1971. The ‘cold, hard’ message Carter blurted out during his India visit in 1978 on our nuclear policy crystalised in 1998-99, with a financial embargo on World Bank loans. Resurgent India Bonds then brought in several billion dollars from non-resident Indians.

Better sense prevailed in 2005 when the Bush administration, realising the futility of this policy and, with an eye on India’s growing stature, gave up trying to freeze India out of the nuclear club. 

Earlier, attempts by Ronald Reagan and George Bush I to deprive India of ‘dual use technologies’ (used in civil and military applications) were soundly rebuffed. This writer was a deputy secretary in the Americas Division of the Ministry of External Affairs in 1989 when the US Embassy, seeking tougher restrictions on sale of a Cray XMP 48 supercomputer to the Indian Institute of Science was politely shown the door.

India eventually produced the Param supercomputer in 1991, and by 2002 the Param Padma, with a Teraflop capacity, the first Indian supercomputer to enter the Top 500 list.

In 1989, the US threatened to suspend the bilateral Vaccine Action Program, meant to produce cheap vaccines for the world, if US pharma companies were unable to patent their medicines in India in accordance with legal protection equivalent to that in the US. This cynical move morphed into the Special 301 US provision which till date targets India, among others, as a country with inadequate intellectual property protection affecting American businesses. 

The other coercive provision of US trade law – Super 301 – which threatened higher tariffs if India did not open its government procurement and other investment avenues to US business, was shelved in 1990 in the face of firm Indian resistance, spearheaded by Rajiv Gandhi. 

US refusal to supply cryogenic engines for India’s space program – on the specious claim that India was not a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime – resulted in an agreement with Russia for supply of seven such engines. India subsequently developed this technology independently and is a space power providing more bang for each space buck today than any other country. Russia also backed India on the Advanced Technology Vehicle Project (nuclear submarine) through the 1990s. Little wonder Russia is treated as a more reliable defence partner than the US. 

Independent-minded and self-respecting countries like Brazil have also been targeted by Trump. Weeks ahead of the BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro in July last year, Trump threatened massive tariffs against the group’s members if they tried to assail the dollar’s supremacy. The summit declaration skirted the issue by focussing on easing trade, currency  flows, etc.

Trump, however, found a new excuse to call out Brazil: The trial and conviction of Lula’s predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump clone, for attempting a coup against his failed election in January 2023. The US establishment has specially targeted Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes who, after Trump’s threats, showed his defiance at a Sao Paulo football match, and days later put Bolsonaro under house arrest.

Trump has equated India and Brazil by threatening 50% tariffs on both, though in Brazil’s case the US actually enjoys a trade surplus. Lula’s outreach to Prime Minister Modi after this episode is notable.

There have been several instances of successive US administrations exerting pressure on India. Trump’s is just the most brazen of them all. The Indian establishment should stand firm, as it has in the past, despite the short-term pain. It is just as important to reduce our vulnerability to US pressure, politically and economically.

Apart from the wide-ranging interests the US has in this relationship, which has been painstakingly brought closer to parity over past decades, it would be important to first verify US intentions and their impact before reposing trust in their proposals. The bully will have no choice but to back down.

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