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United News of India
22-05-2025
- Politics
- United News of India
FS Misri in Japan, meets top officials; both sides reaffirm determination to fight terrorism
New Delhi, May 22 (UNI) Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri today visited Japan during which he met with his Japanese counterpart Vice Foreign Minister Takehiro Funakoshi, the National Security Advisor Masataka Okano, besides other top officials. The two sides reiterated the shared determination to fight terrorism. During his meeting with his counterpart Vice Foreign Minister Takehiro Funakoshi, the two sides reviewed the salient issues in the multi-dimensional bilateral ties between India and Japan, including political relations, defence and security, economic cooperation and people to people exchanges. They also exchanged views on issues of topical importance, a statement said. Foreign Secretary also met with National Security Advisor of Japan, Masataka Okano, and with Senior Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Hiroyuki Namazu to discuss regional and international issues of mutual interest. During the visit, Foreign Secretary delivered the spotlight address at the 2nd edition of the Raisina Tokyo Dialogue, organised by the Observer Research Foundation, ORF America, Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of Corporate Executives). Foreign Secretary's visit was in continuation of the regular high-level contacts between the two sides in an effort to further deepen the India-Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership. He appreciated the support to and solidarity with India demonstrated by the government and the people of Japan following the terrorist attack in Pahalgam. Foreign Secretary's visit and his meetings today provided yet another opportunity to reflect on and reaffirm the two countries' shared determination to fight terrorism in all forms and manifestations as well as the support infrastructure behind acts of terror. The FS' visit to Tokyo comes as an all-party delegation is in Japan as part of India's global outreach against terrorism. UNI RN
Hindustan Times
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Why Donald Trump is getting India and Pakistan wrong :Biden ex-aide Lindsey Ford
U.S. President Donald Trump took South Asian geopolitics by storm when he announced a ceasefire between India & Pakistan following Operation Sindoor. In this video, Hindustan Times' Shashank Mattoo sat down for an interview with Lindsey Ford, Senior Fellow at ORF America, to analyse the move by Trump. Ford, previously served as one of President Joe Biden's top officials on South Asia, spoke about the need for the Trump administration to provide partners like India greater clarity about its place in America's foreign policy. Ford also spoke about America's role in managing the India-Pakistan crises and the future of the India-US relationship.
Hindustan Times
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Ex-Biden official questions U.S mediation and messaging in India-Pak conflict
Amid brewing controversy over the Trump administration's role in brokering an India-Pakistan ceasefire, HT sat down for an interview with Lindsey Ford, Senior Fellow at ORF America. Ford - who previously served as one of President Joe Biden's top officials on South Asia - spoke about the need for the Trump administration to provide partners like India greater clarity about its place in America's foreign policy. Ford also spoke about America's role in managing India-Pakistan crises and the future of the India-US relationship. Could you tell us a little bit about how you saw the recent crisis between India and Pakistan? Was this unprecedented? A couple of things stood out to me in this most recent crisis. One was the geographic scope of the cross-border attacks on both sides which were so much deeper into Pakistan and into India than we had seen in previous attacks. This certainly raises the risk of a broader conflict or escalation. And the second, which has been commented on, is the role that new technologies played in this the use of unmanned systems certainly can lower the risk of immediate loss of life for military personnel, I think it also raises risks of greater escalation, because there is that reduced loss of life potential and because you can have probing that unmanned systems can do on either side of the border, that can also sometimes raise the risk of miscalculations. So I think something I'll be watching closely is just how much we continue to see the use of unmanned systems across the LOC (Line of Control) and what that means for the stability in both India and Pakistan. There's been a lot of talk about the exact role the Trump administration played in brokering the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Could you give us your sense of how vital a role the United States played? I'm not going to speak for the Trump administration or for the Indian government. But in general, in diplomacy, and especially when you are a friend, I think that it not only matters what you say, it matters how and when you say it. And I think that there were some unfortunate instances across this crisis in terms of U.S. messaging. So certainly Vice President Vance's comments at the beginning of the crisis that essentially, you know, I hope they work it out, it's none of our business, is not the way that the United States has typically handled these issues. And the reason for that is clear. Were there to be a huge conventional conflict, even a nuclear conflict in South Asia, it would matter for the United States, for citizens that we have on the ground and it would matter, frankly, for the rest of the region. And so while I do not think that the U.S. role is to mediate, I do think that the United States, as a friend, has an interest in having conversations with India, and also seeing if we could get Islamabad to pick up the phone. Now, on the back end of this, what's particularly important is, again, it matters when you say things. And I do not think it is the U.S. place to essentially, in the aftermath of a crisis like this, spike the football, as we like to say in the United States, and put ourselves at the centre of the story. Because it is a story between India and Pakistan. And I think it is up to India to say what they want to say about how the crisis was resolved. We've seen a growing political controversy about the role that the Trump administration has played, including announcing the ceasefire before even the Indian and Pakistani governments. Opposition parties have taken up the issue as well. Do you see this as something that damages trust between India and the United States? I think it certainly doesn't help the bilateral relationship right now, because the United States has made a lot of effort over the last several years, especially when we look at our defence and security relationship, to build trust on a number of fronts, whether that's signing foundational agreements, or some of the defence sales that have been underway. And so something like this, where it perhaps implies that the United States is not willing as a friend to understand when India might want to lead, is unfortunate. That being said, we have a big and long-standing relationship, and I believe that we can move through this moment. There's a narrative that's been building up about the Trump administration in India. We saw a lot of controversy over the deportation of illegal Indian migrants from the US, over reciprocal tariffs and now about the Trump administration's role in mediating the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. A lot of people are asking if this is really an administration that India can partner with. Could you address those concerns? I think one of the things that makes the US-India relationship unique and wonderful, but also incredibly complicated to manage, is just the breadth of issues that we work on with each other. And that tends to create more potential on a day-to-day basis for things to happen that may make one or the other of us feel frustrated. And I think that certainly in the first few months of the Trump administration, it has been a more erratic approach to foreign policy as a whole. There is no doubt. And that has created bumps and hiccups in the US-India relationship. I do think that if the administration can be more regulated about their messaging, and more consistent in their approach, that there is still an opportunity on issues like trade and foreign policy for the United States and India to do much more together over the next few years. But again, I think the main issue here is discipline, both on policymaking and on messaging. That's something that President Trump has not always done well. I hope that they can turn the corner on that in the coming months. There's also the question of America re-hyphenating India and Pakistan after the latest crisis between the two countries. Does Washington intend to treat India and Pakistan on equal footing now? We saw President Trump in his first term talk about the idea of mediating regarding Kashmir. And then people around him explained why that was not a wise idea. And he walked away from that idea. I think you will see that again. My reaction to this is that it is more of the president shooting from the hip than it necessarily reflects a well thought out shift in U.S foreign policy. The reality is that the number one issue the United States government is focused on our foreign policy right now is how to deal with China. And in that sense, I think that the United States and India have both a lot of shared interests and a lot to work on together. And because of that, it's hard for me to imagine shifting back to sort of a hyphenated approach that we might have used in the past in South Asia. In the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, you've argued for closer defence cooperation between India and America. What specifically did you have in mind? I think there's a number of questions from a defence perspective for both the United States and India. One, the greater use of both manned aircraft but unmanned systems as well raises real questions about what India's military doctrine looks like and how that may need to evolve. You know, a conflict against Pakistan is one thing, but were there to be a conflict for the United States, for India, with Beijing, it would be far more complex. And so, there are real conversations we could be having on both sides about how to fight a 21st century battle, what that means for training that you need to have for your troops, and how the U.S. and India can work on that training together. I also think, quite frankly, there's certainly been a debate within India about Air Force modernisation. While I'm not going to presume to tell the Indian Air Force where they need to go, thinking about fifth-gen technologies, sixth-gen fighters as well as how you create collaborative systems between unmanned systems and advanced stealth technologies. That's something that I think the United States and India can have a lot more of a conversation on. You mentioned China is really the pacing challenge for India and America in the Indo-Pacific. But again, there are some concerns in India that we haven't really been able to see what Washington's policy is going to be on China with this administration. Could you shed some light on that? I think the reality, getting back to my point on message discipline again, is we have seen some mixed signals out of the Trump administration. Admittedly, it is still early days. I think in the first Trump term, it took a little bit of time for them to cohere around what their China strategy was going to look like. What we have heard, at least, reported in the press about the Trump administration's interim defence strategy is that it is very squarely focused on how to counter Beijing militarily. I think we are likely to see some ongoing new export controls that would impact what can be exported and shared technologically with Beijing. All of that's pretty consistent with where the Trump administration was in its first term. But again, the talk on trade has been a little confusing. I think a lot of us are waiting to see if they do land back in a place that looks like Trump's first administration, which I think would be pretty similar to where we were in the Biden administration, or if they go in a somewhat different direction. I was wondering if you could help us unpack what Donald Trump said to Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple in Qatar, where he basically asked Apple to not expand as much into India. For the Biden administration, looking for opportunities to increase domestic manufacturing, and in some cases to bring manufacturing that was overseas back home, was absolutely something that we were focused on. But you also have to be realistic about the economics of all of this. And that doesn't actually work for all components and all technologies that we're talking about. And the iPhone is a great example of that, because if iPhones were manufactured in the United States, they would cost so much money that no one would buy them. And so I think in the Biden administration, that's why we really tried to think about this as both. It was about enhancing domestic manufacturing and where we can't and where it doesn't make sense to build it in the United States, then we want people building it in like-minded countries and not in China. And so that's where, for us, that iPhone increase in manufacturing in India is directly taking away from what had been an enormous amount of manufacturing in Beijing. And strategically, that made good it didn't have to be a zero-sum environment that meant it was necessarily depriving the United States. Q. My last question to you. Under the Biden Administration, India had a sense of where it stood in Washington when it came to big questions like China, trade and technology. With the Trump administration, that seems to be less clear. Your view? In the Biden administration, we were incredibly clear about not just our Indo-Pacific strategy, but the role that India played within that strategy. We made very clear that we thought that this was a partnership that was central to what we wanted to do in the Indo-Pacific and globally. We thought that for the United States and India, this was going to be probably one of the most important partnerships for both of us in the next 50 years, and it mattered to get it right. That's why we spent so much time investing in this partnership. Sometimes that meant we disagreed on things, but we could talk about that as friends. But more often than not, we saw a lot of opportunities to build this partnership in the future. What I think is unfortunate, to be honest, about where we are, and frankly, much of what we're having to talk about in this conversation, is that the Trump administration actually came out of the gate quite strong when it came to the India relationship. PM Modi came very early to America, you had a Quad meeting the first day of the administration, and right off the bat, they started working on a trade agreement. All of those are very positive things. I think what this reflects is beyond just the president or even the executive branch. It reflects the support that there is for this partnership right now in Congress and among the American people. I think that is still true. I think this administration is going to have to do much better about clearly articulating that so our partners don't wonder where they stand.
