1.
No longer seeing eye to eye?
07.06.18
TH Opinion
At
his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last week, billed as a major
foreign policy statement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of India and the
U.S.’s “shared vision” of an open and secure Indo-Pacific region. Yet his words
differed so much from those of U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis, who spoke
at the same event, that it seemed clear that New Delhi and Washington no longer
see eye-to-eye on this issue, and several others as well.
Oceanic
gulf
INDO-PACIFIC A NATURAL OR A STRATEGIC REGION? To begin with, Mr.
Modi referred to the Indo-Pacific ,
a term coined by the U.S. for the Indian and Pacific Oceans region, as a
natural geographical region, not a strategic one, while Mr. Mattis called
the Indo-Pacific a “priority
theatre” and a “subset of [America’s] broader security strategy”
for his military command, now
renamed the Indo-Pacific Command.
RUSSIA AND CHINA FRIENDS OR FOES? While Mr. Modi referred to India’s good relations with the U.S., Russia and China
in equal measure, Mr.
Mattis vowed to counter China’s moves in the Indo-Pacific, and referred to the
U.S. National Defence Strategy released this January, which puts both China and Russia in its crosshairs as the world’s two
“revisionist powers” .
INDIA’S CHANGED POSTURE VIS A VIS CHINA: The divergence in their positions, admittedly, are due
more to a shift in New Delhi’s position over the past year than in the U.S.’s,
when Mr. Modi and President Donald Trump met at the White House. A year ago,
the Modi government seemed
clear in its intention to counter China’s growing clout in its neighbourhood,
especially post-Doklam, challenge the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and back
a Quadrilateral grouping of India, the U.S., Japan and Australia to maintain an
open Indo-Pacific.
Today, the Doklam issue has been
buried, the BRI isn’t as much a concern as before, and the government’s
non-confrontational attitude to the Maldives and Nepal indicates a softened
policy on China in the neighbourhood.
Meanwhile, Mr. Modi now essays a closer engagement with Chinese President Xi
Jinping and a relationship reset with China after the Wuhan meeting.
INDIA NOT KEEN ON MILITARISING QUAD: The Quad formation, which is holding its second official
meeting today in Singapore, has also been given short shrift. India rejected an Australian request to join maritime
exercises along with the U.S. and Japan this June, and Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba said quite plainly
last month that there was no
plan to “militarise” the Quad .
INDIA JOINS SCO: Contrast
this with India’s acceptance of military exercises with countries of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Russia-China led grouping it will
join this week in Qingdao, and one can understand some of the confusion in
Washington.
INDIA DEFIES DIKTATS ON IRAN/VENEZUELA: Pentagon officials, who had come to accept India’s
diffidence on signing outstanding India-U.S. foundational agreements, are now
left scratching their heads as India publicly enters the international arena in
the corner with Russia and China, while proclaiming its intention to continue
energy deals with Iran and Venezuela in defiance of American sanctions.
Era
of summits
INDIA’S SUMMITRY WITH RUSSIA/CHINA IN HIGH GEAR: In a world where summits between leaders have replaced
grand strategy, the optics are even clearer. Mr. Modi will have met Mr. Xi and
Russian President Vladimir Putin four-five times each by the end of the year,
if one counts informal and formal summits, as well as meetings at the SCO,
BRICS and G-20. In contrast, nearly half the year has gone in just scheduling
the upcoming 2+2 meet of Indian and U.S. Ministers of Defence and Foreign
Affairs.
FLASHPOINTS IN AREA OF TRADE AND COMMERCE: Trade protectionism is clearly the other big point of
divergence between India and the U.S., which have in recent months taken each
other to the World Trade Organisation on several issues. There has been a surge
in disputes between the two countries: on the new American steel and aluminium tariffs, the proposed cuts
in H1B professional visas and
cancellation of H4 spouse visas
, on India’s tariffs and resistance to U.S. exports of dairy
and pork products, on Indian price reductions on medical devices , and Reserve
Bank of India rules on data localisation on Indian servers for U.S. companies.
The row over Harley-Davidson motorcycles is a case in point, where what should have been a small
chink in the relationship has ended up denting the discourse quite seriously.
When Mr. Trump announced to Harley executives and union representatives in
February last year that he would stop countries “taking advantage” of them, no
one in New Delhi paid much attention. Over the year, Mr. Trump grew more vocal
in this demand, including twice during meetings with Mr. Modi in Washington and
Manila, calling for India to scrap its 75-100% tariffs, given that the U.S.
imposes zero tariffs on the import of Indian Royal Enfield motorcycles. Mr.
Modi tried to accommodate U.S. concerns, and even called Mr. Trump on February
8 this year to tell him that tariffs were about to be cut to 50%. But after Mr.
Trump divulged the contents of their conversation publicly, trade talks were
driven into a rut. Officials in Washington still say that if India were to
slash its rates, it would see major benefits in other areas of commerce, while
officials in New Delhi say that with Mr. Trump having gone public with Mr.
Modi’s offer, it would be impossible to back down any further. In fact, a new
cess has taken tariffs back up to 70%.
US TARGETTING OF RUSSIA AND IRAN DETRIMENTAL FOR INDIA:
The biggest challenges to a common
India-U.S. vision are now emerging from the new U.S. law called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act
and the U.S.’s withdrawal from the
Iran nuclear deal with the threat of more secondary sanctions. Both
actions have a direct impact on India, given its high dependence on defence hardware from
Russia and its considerable energy interests in Iran. In particular, India’s
plans to acquire the Russian
S-400 missile system will
become the litmus test of whether India and the U.S. can resolve their
differences. Clearly the differences over a big ticket deal like this should
have been sorted out long before the decisions were made; yet there is no
indication that the Trump administration and the Modi government took each
other into confidence before doing so.
In
the face of sanctions
INDIA’S STAND CLEAR: Defence
Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s
avowal of the S-400 agreement,
and Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s
open defiance of U.S. sanctions on Russia, Iran and Venezuela at separate press conferences this month couldn’t have
helped.
It
also didn’t help that owing to Mr. Trump’s sudden decision to sack Rex
Tillerson as Secretary of State in March, the 2+2 meeting in April, which may
have clarified matters, was put off. The truth is, building a relationship with
the Trump administration in the past year has been tricky for both South Block
and the Indian Embassy in Washington, as more than 30 key administration
officials have quit or have been sacked — they have had to deal with three
National Security Advisers, two Chiefs of Staff, as well as two Secretaries of
State as interlocutors.
It
is equally clear that the India-U.S. equation isn’t balancing out quite the way
it did last year, when Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump first announced the idea of the
“2+2” dialogue. Ms. Swaraj, Ms. Sitharaman and their American counterparts have
their work cut out for them during their upcoming meeting in Washington on July
6. If a week is a long time in politics, in geopolitics today a year is an
eternity.
suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in
XXX
2.
The sanctions shadow
16.06.18
IT
2+2 DIALOGUE TO START BETWEEN USA AND INDIA; RUSSIA AN
IMPORTANT FACTOR TO CONSIDER: When
foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman travel
to Washington next month for the first of the annual '2+2' strategic dialogue
with their respective US counterparts Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis, they will
have Russia on their mind. Specifically, how to insulate Indias military
preparedness from the threat of US sanctions, which has hung a sword of
Damocles over the country's military ties with Russia.
CAATSA IMPOSES SANCTIONS ON IRAN, RUSSIA AND NORTH KOREA AS
WELL AS COUNTRIES BUYING ARMS FROM THEM: In
January, the US law CAATSA (Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions
Act) came into effect. The law imposes sanctions on Russia, North Korea and
Iran as well as countries buying arms from them.
SANCTIONS AFTER CRIMEA LIMITED ONLY TO RUSSIA; CAATSA
EXTENDS THEM TO BUYERS PROCURING FROM RUSSIA: A
senior government official says while the sanctions imposed after the Russian
annexation of Crimea in 2014 focused only on Russian firms, CAATSA shifts the
US attack to foreign countries doing business with all Russian military firms.
This has serious implications for India, one of Russia's largest defence
partners for nearly 50 years. It not only needs spare parts for warships,
fighter jets, radars and battle tanks that now make up nearly 60 per cent of
its weaponry, the sanctions
impact arms deals worth over $12 billion that the Indian armed forces are
seeking to counter China and Pakistan.
ALL 3 ARMS OF MILITARY DEPENDENT ON RUSSIA FOR
MODERNISATION: The navy has
recently negotiated the lease of a second nuclear-powered
attack submarine from Russia for
$2 billion. The amount will pay for the lease and refit of a Russian navy
Akula-2 hull, which is to join the navy in the next decade to replace INS
Chakra, which was leased from Russia in 2008. The army needs
to urgently replace its ageing fleet of
Cheetah and Chetak helicopters with Kamov 226 light utility helicopters
, 140 of which will be manufactured
in India as a joint venture between Russian Helicopters and Hindustan Aeronautics
Limited (HAL). The Indian Air
Force wants five S-400 surface-to-air missile systems worth over Rs 40,000 crore from Russia to
significantly offset the disadvantages of its depleted fighter squadrons when
facing the air forces of China and Pakistan in case of a two-front war. Each
missile has a range of nearly 400 km. When deployed on the border, they can
cover vast reaches of Pakistan's airspace (the US-made Patriot PAC-3 missile
has a range of just 70 km).
S-400 TRIMUPH SURFACE TO AIR MISSILE SYSTEM WILL BE A TEST
CASE: All of these deals will see
significant currency transactions, which are likely to attract provisions of
CAATSA, but given Indias financial constraints, the deal for S-400 missiles
seems closest to the finish line. The S-400 contract is likely to be signed
when President Vladimir Putin visits India later this year for the 19th Annual
India-Russia bilateral summit. This one deal will thus be the test case of the
Indian government's ability to withstand United States sanctions, particularly
since the US regards this particular missile system with deep suspicion.
USA SAYS INTER-OPERABILITY WILL BE HAMPERED IF ANY PARTNER
PROCURES S-400: On May 28, Mac Thornberry,
chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told journalists in Delhi that
there is "a lot of concern in the US in both the administration and the
Congress" over the S-400 system. "And there is concern that any
country, and it is not just India that is looking at clearing it, but any
country that acquires that system
will complicate our ability to work out inter-operability," Thornberry said.
THE
WAY OUT
INDIA-USA MILITARY AND STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP HAS GROWN
MANIFOLD SINCE 2008: CAATSA
forces New Delhi to choose between strategic partners Russia and the US. A
decade since the signing of the landmark Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008, the
relationship has blossomed into a thriving arms partnership, with the United States becoming India's second-largest
arms partner . Both countries regularly
hold a series of military manoeuvres under the recently renamed 'Indo-Pacific
Command' and have shared common concerns over a rising China.
USA UNPREDICTABILITY AND UNILATERALISM DRIVING INDIA RUSSIA
CLOSE: Meanwhile, CAATSA and the
unpredictability of the Donald Trump administration have forced a subtle reset
in New Delhi and driving India and Russia closer.
INDIA STANDS FIRM IN ITS RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA: Even as the US gears up to counter a China-Russia axis,
New Delhi has reiterated its belief in a multi-polar world. On May 21, Prime
Minister Narendra Modi met Putin at an informal summit in Sochi, Russia. On May
29, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, a key figure in the India-Russia
relationship, got Pankaj Saran, India's ambassador to Russia, as his deputy
national security advisor. And on June 5, defence minister Sitharaman came out
with an emphatic endorsement. "In all our engagements with the United
States, we have clearly explained to them that India and Russia's defence
cooperation has been going on for a long time and that it is a time-tested
relationship. We have also mentioned that CAATSA cannot be impacting on
this," she said in New Delhi. Adds a senior defence official: "We are
not the Dominican Republic or Canada, we are India and we have conveyed our
concerns to the US administration."
KEY INDO-PACIFIC PLAYERS PROCURE FROM RUSSIA; CAATSA WONT BE
SEEN IN A POSITIVE LIGHT: "It
is quite obvious there is a division between the Trump Administration and the
US Congress, which is full of Russia baiters, on this issue," says G
Parthasarathy, former Indian High commissioner to Pakistan. "Amongst
the countries the US is targeting and looking for cooperation for its
Indo-Pacific strategy are Vietnam, Indonesia and India--all three vital for
achieving its aims. All three have placed orders for or looking forward to
doing this for more Russian weaponry. The
Americans will have to be told that not just the "Quad" but many who
share our views on Indo-Pacific will look at this action as not being
friendly."
USA EXECUTIVE BRANCH AWARE OF THE CHALLENGES CAATSA POSES ON
FOREIGN POLICY FRONT: The
United States was already conscious of the impact of CAATSA on partners like
India. Signing the bill into law last August, President Donald Trump raised
objections, terming it 'seriously flawed' because it limited the executive
branch's flexibility on foreign policy. On April 27, Mattis told a
Congressional hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee that a national
security waiver be urgently provided to India and other countries, which are
trying to turn away from Russian-sourced weapons, to avoid sanctions under
CAATSA.
US SENATE INSERTED 4 NEW CLAUSES IN CAATSA TO GIVE INDIA A
QUALIFIED EXEMPTION: Responding
to the request, the US
Senate this month inserted four new clauses under Section 1292 of the Act 'Enhancing Defense and Security
Cooperation with India' in
its defence budget passed last month. The new clauses empower the Trump administration to suspend CAATSA
sanctions, but it has to certify that India was reducing its dependency on Russia 'and has a desire to continue doing so', as Thornberry
told the media in New Delhi. The clauses are of the nature of describing
'limitations that hinder or slow (down) progress' in Indo-US ties, 'a
description of actions India is taking, or the actions the Secretary of Defense
or the Secretary of State believe India should take', to advance the
relationship with the United States, measures that can be taken by the United
States and India to improve interoperability. And, lastly, it also inserts a
clause 'progress in enabling agreements between
the United States and India'. The last reflects the US administration's
pique over India's slow progress in 'foundation agreements', such as LEMOA (Logistics
Exchange Memorandum of Agreement), signed in 2016 after nearly a decade. The
Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement ( BECA)
are yet to be signed.
USA WILL NEVER SHARE OR SELL ADVANCED MILITARY TECH; SOME
KEY EQUIPMENT CAN COME ONLY FROM RUSSIA; EXAMPLE INS ARIHANT THAT COMPLETED
INDIA’S NUCLEAR TRIAD: "It's
not just the S-400 deal, but India's strategic autonomy that is at stake,"
says Vice Admiral A.K. Singh (retired), a former commanding-in-chief, Eastern
Naval Command. "Hopefully, our leaders will realise we cannot break ties
with Russia. The United
States is the world leader in anti-submarine warfare, stealth technology and
drone technology, but
will never part with it or even sell it. There are certain technologies only
the Russians will give us."
With the 2016 commissioning of the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine
INS Arihant, India recently operationalised the third leg of its nuclear triad,
the ability to fire nuclear-tipped missiles from under the sea. This could not
have been done without considerable Russian assistance.
ON
THE GROUND
Meanwhile,
India and Russia
have moved away from US dollars and euros and now do business in rupees and
roubles. Agreements are being
re-drafted and new modes of payments being established between Indian and
Russian state-owned banks. Syndicate Bank, Vijaya Bank and the Indian Bank and
Sberbank of Russia have been designated to handle the rupee-rouble payments for
India to pay for Russian military purchases. The payments bypass SWIFT
transactions, which are routed through New York. The first contracts were
redrawn recently for the $208 million mid-life upgrade of a Russian-built Kilo
class submarine in Russia. But while these relatively minor deals might go
under the radar, it is the big-ticket items like the S-400 missile system that
have the potential to cause worry in South Block.
CLEAR MESSAGE SHOULD GO OUT TO USA THAT COERCION WILL
BACKFIRE : "We have to stand
firm while making payments arrangements, making it clear to the US that any
attempt to pressurise us on the score will only make us prefer exporters like
France, Germany and Israel, over US firms. We have to mobilize the Indian
community and other friends in the US to lobby on this. There are clearly many
in the Administration and Academia who share our views. The Secretaries of
State and Defence back us," says Parthasarathy.
A
waiver from the US administration will leave a strong negotiation lever in with
the US, which they can use to extract other concessions from India. Under
present circumstances, India's choices seem pretty limited.
xxx
Allies, interrupted
06.07.18 TH
There
are enough signs that relations between India and the United States have
suffered, with officials in both capitals now freely conceding that their
interests
are diverging.
From
the U.S. side, policy decisions by President Donald Trump to walk out of the
multilateral
nuclear deal with Iran, and the
U.S. Congress’s CAATSA
law sanctioning Iran and Russia
have set up an inevitable conflict.
Mr.
Trump’s insistence on tough sanctions against all those continuing to engage with Iran
and Russia limits India’s options on energy security and defence procurement.
During
her visit last week, Nikki Haley, the U.S. envoy to the UN, told India to
“revise” its
relationship with Iran; this
line is expected to be reiterated by U.S. interlocutors in the coming days.
Added
to this confrontation is the U.S.’s tough policy on trade tariffs, applied to ally and adversary alike, including
India.
For
its part, the Narendra Modi government has taken a policy turn away from four
years of a pro-U.S. tilt. Mr. Modi’s speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue last
month, in which he invoked the long-lapsed phrase “strategic autonomy”, set at
rest any doubt that there is a reset in his foreign policy. Since January, he has personally reached out to
the Chinese and Russian Presidents in informal summits, and invited the Iranian
President to Delhi.
At
variance with the U.S. position on limiting engagement with these very
countries, India
promised to raise oil imports from Iran this year, committed to far greater engagement on the
Chabahar
port project and oilfields in
Iran, while negotiating a $5.5 billion deal with Russia for the S-400 Triumf
missile systems. These will
trigger U.S. sanctions unless the two countries reach a compromise.
What
is more troubling for bilateral ties is that despite the obvious problems, the
political will to address these issues is now considerably diminished. In
contrast to his meetings with the Russian and Chinese leaderships, Mr. Modi has
had little contact with Mr. Trump since their meeting in Manila last November,
which by all accounts did not go well.
Now,
the postponement
of the Indian Foreign and Defence Ministers’ “2+2” dialogue with their U.S. counterparts has denied the
governments a chance to gather together the fraying bilateral threads. It is
imperative that the dialogue be quickly rescheduled. While the U.S. has
traditionally applied pressure on its allies to limit their engagement with
countries it considers to be threats to the international order, the manner in
which deadlines have been publicly issued by the State Department twice this
week will only make its demands more difficult for India to even consider.
India
must now decide how best to deal with the ultimatums, with U.S. sanctions kicking
in by November. The clock is ticking on the relationship.
xxx
The bilateral limits of hype
04.07.18 TH
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump have both built their politics on the
promise of making their countries great again. Placing India and the U.S.,
respectively, as leaders on the world stage is the stated objective of their
foreign policy. The project of regaining national glory is based on another
assumption that they inherited a mess from their respective predecessors. Yet another
shared trait is their love for spectacle over meticulous, prolonged and often
frustrating pursuit of strategic goals.
Theatre as strategy
The postponement of the
India-U.S. 2+2 dialogue between the Foreign and Defence Ministers of both
countries, that had been scheduled for this week, has to be understood in the
context of the similar personality traits of Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi. Hugging
Mr. Trump may be a good spectacle for Mr. Modi, but the same may not be true
for the former. Mr. Trump has set his eyes on spectacles that suit him. Mr.
Trump, still basking in the denuclearisation deal that he’s said to have struck
with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, is now looking forward to the next big event: a
summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. His every move on the
global stage enrages his domestic political opponents and the professional
strategic community alike and he is happy, as this keeps his political base
constantly on the boil.
North Korea, Syria,
Afghanistan, trade deficit, and all global challenges before America are the
faults of his predecessors, he repeatedly tells supporters. Most recently, at
the G7 summit in Canada in June, he declared: “I blame our past leaders for
allowing this to happen (trade deficits)…You can go back 50 years, frankly.”
Such rhetoric may sound familiar to Indians. In Mr. Trump’s war on the legacy
of all Presidents before him, India is on the wrong side. The remarkable growth
in India-U.S. relations since the turn of the century had been nurtured by
three U.S. Presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, two
Democrats and one Republican who have all been the target of Mr. Trump’s ire.
India neither promises him the opportunity of a spectacle nor offers the
grounds for destructing the legacy of a predecessor. So he told Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo to deal with North Korea and Russia, and 2+2 with India could
wait. “Nobody wakes up in DC daily thinking of India,” says a former U.S.
ambassador to India, pointing out that 16 months into the new administration,
there is no Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia in the
State Department.
Impact on ties
To buttress one’s own
claim to be a trailblazer by denying the achievements of predecessors may be
good political tactics for these leaders, but trying to wish away history
itself is not a sustainable strategy. Against the backdrop of a programmatic
negation of history in both countries, Mr. Trump’s bursts of unhinged rhetoric
against China and Pakistan lend themselves to easy and convenient
interpretations by supporters of improved U.S.-India ties as moments of
enlightenment for the U.S., even as turning points.
But Mr. Trump cannot undo
all the legacy with a magic tweet. U.S. relations with Pakistan and China took
shape during the Cold War. Pakistan might be the longest ally of the U.S. after
the U.K., first in the fight against communism, and then in the fight against
terror that was created in the first fight. China used the Cold War to its own
advantage in its ties with the U.S.
China today threatens the
dominance of the U.S., but the America’s security establishment and political
elite are obsessed with Russia. India gets caught in that internal American
fight too, such as in the case of an American law that now requires the
President to impose sanctions on any country that has significant security
relations with Russia.
Mr. Trump sees the
challenges posed by China, but not in a manner helpful for India. For, India
and China are in the same basket for Mr. Trump on many issues that agitate him.
He has repeatedly mentioned India and China in the same breath as countries
that duped his predecessors on climate and trade deals. His administration
considers India and China as violators of intellectual property laws, as
countries that put barriers to trade and subsidise exports and use state power
to control markets. The nationalists in the Trump administration, including
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and
White House National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro are all gunning for
China, and India is in the same firing line. Many Americans who think that
China took the U.S. for a ride — many Democrats among them — suspect that India
is trying to do the same thing.
But there are two
constituencies in the U.S. that promote India against China: the Pentagon and
the U.S. arms industry. This works to India’s favour. While the Obama
administration could not overcome State Department objections to offer India
even unarmed drones, the Trump administration has done so, offering armed
drones. Here, Mr. Trump is not guided by any grand theories of ‘rule-based
order’, etc. that professional strategists talk about, but by the opportunity
to sell.
Given Mr. Trump’s views on
trade, American companies that used to argue China’s case are now guarded in
their approach. Still, companies such as General Motors and Ford have come out
against a trade war with China. This has implications for India too. American
companies that eye the Indian market are allies in the pushback against Mr.
Trump’s nationalist trade policies. Mr. Modi has realised this dynamic that
puts India and China in the same corner in Mr. Trump’s perspective — and that
significantly explains his Wuhan summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the
third big leader who is gaming for the glory of his country.
War against legacy
The enlightenment that Mr.
Trump purportedly brought on America’s Af-Pak policy also appears to have been
short-lived. If one looks at the tough messages from Nikki Haley, U.S.
Ambassador to the UN, in New Delhi recently on Pakistan and Iran, it is clear
where the political priorities of the Trump administration lies. Here again,
Mr. Trump is determined to gut his predecessor’s legacy, a key component of
which was rapprochement with Iran. The war in Afghanistan is the worst optics
for Mr. Trump’s showman politics, and his administration’s approach has been to
sweep it under the carpet. The Pentagon has restricted release of data on the
war but a report last month paints a picture of a deteriorating situation. The
U.S.’s ability to arm-twist Pakistan has been limited anyway, and Mr. Trump’s
determination to turn the screws on Iran makes it tougher. National Security
Adviser John Bolton, who had advocated bombing Iran, believes that a hardline policy
against Pakistan is not desirable.
All told, Mr. Trump might
accept Mr. Modi’s invitation to be the chief guest at the 2019 Republic Day
parade just ahead of the Lok Sabha campaign, triggering another round of
commentary on their ‘body language’ and ‘chemistry’. A series of significant
defence purchases and agreements could be concluded in coming months. But
India-U.S. relations will be better off without hype and grand theories, often
encouraged by the government. Otherwise, every rescheduling of a meeting will
be interpreted as the collapse of ties. Similarly, avoiding the hyperbole could
help manage India’s troubles with Pakistan and China better. The U.S. has
overlapping interests with China, and India has overlapping interests with
both. The trouble with big-chest, small-heart hyper-nationalism in foreign
policy is that it also causes short sightedness. The audacity of hype has its
limits.
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