India-US ties: Up, close and personal
Even as Canada rubbished Trump's call for it to become the 51st state, Nato, Japan, and South Korea wondered about the credibility of the US nuclear umbrella, and Europeans did their best to reassure a beleaguered Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, the February visit reassured India that the Modi-Trump relationship was intact and India-US ties were on a positive trajectory. Opinion polls across the world noted that Indians were the most optimistic about Trump's second term.
Bilateral trade talks began soon after. Five rounds have taken place but trade deals take long, years at times. But Trump's qualities do not include patience and subtlety. To push the Indians, he added a 25% tariff with a deadline of July 31.
Also, his second term was promising to be very different from his first. In his inaugural speech, he had talked of ending wars, of leaving behind a legacy as a 'unifier and peacemaker'. It soon became clear that in addition to deploying his favourite policy tool, tariffs, to get his trade deals, his goal was the Nobel Peace Prize, preferably in the first year itself.
His tactics seemed to be working. The US has announced new trade deals with the EU, UK, Japan, and South Korea, covering more than 25% of US foreign trade, though details haven't been worked out. In addition, negotiations are underway with over a dozen countries. China is playing hardball, and using its leverage to restrict exports of rare earth magnets. Canada and Mexico have their own leverage. China's tactics may be working as the US has already relaxed its export controls on H20 chips to China.
On Trump's peace-President agenda, progress has been slow. The two big conflicts that Trump had promised to sort out quickly, Ukraine and Gaza, have proved difficult. Both Russian president Vladimir Putin and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu have their own ideas about their objectives and have been stringing Trump along. However, Trump has been nominated for the peace Nobel jointly by the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia and by PM Hun Manet of Cambodia for brokering the ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia. The White House has also highlighted his role in ending the conflicts between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia. And somewhat cheekily, for the ceasefire between Israel and Iran especially after Trump came to Israel's help by firing Tomahawk missiles and deploying B2 bombers to deliver the GBU 57 bombs on Iranian targets.
Netanyahu has mollified Trump by nominating him for his role in the 2020 Abraham Accords that enabled Israel to normalise relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Putin is now scheduled to have a bilateral meeting with Trump in Alaska on August 15 but Ukraine and the Europeans are not invited. Meanwhile, secondary sanctions on Russia's oil exports have been introduced and India (collateral damage) will attract a 25% penalty, an incremental tariff on exports to the US, effective August 27.
However, the India-Pakistan crisis is perhaps where Trump feels let down by his 'great friend Modi'. India was upset at Trump pre-empting the ceasefire announcement on May 10 and claiming credit that it was a 'US-brokered ceasefire'. Since then, he has repeated the claim more than 25 times adding how he prevented a nuclear war, and he employed the threat of cutting trade if they continued. Each time, it was denied by Indian foreign office and military officials, and most recently by the external affairs minister S Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh, in Parliament.
Meanwhile, Pakistan was quick to thank Trump for his positive role and expressed the hope that he could remain engaged and mediate on Kashmir, while nominating him for the Nobel Peace prize. Encouraged by Pakistan, Trump invited Modi to the White House on June 18 on his way back from the G-7 meeting in Canada but was turned down. Trump was presumably trying to set up a meeting with Pakistan army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, who was invited to lunch the same day. With so much happening, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture.
Relations between States are governed by national interests and patient negotiations. Good ties between leaders can help but cannot be the principal driver. That's why neither Modi nor Trump is going to pick up the phone to resolve their misunderstanding.
The end of the Cold War provided the impetus for the shift in India-US relations when President George H W Bush (41) and PM PV Narasimha Rao took the initiative in 1992 to initiate a dialogue on nuclear issues and the first baby steps for defence cooperation were taken. Gradually, despite ups and downs, and changes in governments in both countries, the positive trajectory continued and a bipartisan consensus based on mutual trust and converging interests evolved. If the nuclear tests in 1998 marked a low point, the Strobe Talbott-Jaswant Singh dialogue, and the positive US intervention in 1999 during the Kargil conflict restored trust. The story was repeated after the attack on Indian Parliament in 2001 and during Balakot, when the US facilitated the quick release of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman from Pakistani custody.
There is a difference between backchannel diplomacy and public diplomacy. While Trump has a fondness for TruthSocial, India's geography dictates prudence. The US is larger than Trump just as India is larger than Modi, and there is life after Trump and there is life after Modi. This becomes clearer if interests are given primacy as foreign policy drivers. It also helps avoid the trap of believing one's own propaganda. The simple question is: Is it in India's national interest to sustain relations with the US. The answer should be obvious.
Rakesh Sood was ambassador to Afghanistan, Nepal, and France, and served as PM's Special Envoy on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. The views expressed are personal.
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