Mukul Kesavan writes in the Guardian suggesting that Modi was
Blindsided by Trump,
The Americans might disagree. They would say Trump had made things clear in February. Thus this is a case of the Indians ignoring signals. Trump wants something big like getting to say'1.4 billion Indians will now be able to buy American food tariff free!'
They should also have understood that Quad was dead in the water because many of the humanitarian programs Biden had attached to it were anathema to Trump. However, since Trump gets credit for reviving it, he may not want to shut it down yet. Still, his refusal to attend the November summit in India sends a strong message. It now seems likely that India won't buy F-35s. It will tie-up once again with Russia. Apparently, F-35 were high maintenance and the US wouldn't allow technology transfer. Thus both national security and the interest of the agricultural sector trump the lure of expanded trade with the US.
Did Trump's relationship with Modi deteriorate? It appears there was a period when Modi was ducking Trumps calls. Why? Perhaps the Indians thought they were making enough concessions. They hoped Trump would understand that Modi no longer had a majority. After the farm protests in Punjab and Haryana during lockdown, no Indian politicians will risk angering the farmers. Trump, was not sympathetic. He knows India has a long history of protectionism. Moreover, he felt that by attacking Brazil and India he could take the wind out of the sails of BRICS. This may have the opposite effect but de-dollarization is easier said than done.
The question was whether India would comply on Russian oil. There was a brief pause and then India doubled down on it- presumably because it got a better price and there was no other deal on the table. The US would shrink its deficit with India as it was entitled to do. Indians needed to find other markets. Meanwhile, Modi took advantage of Trump's hostility to position himself as the champion of the Indian farmers. Then he completed the rapprochement with China which began last year and which Putin had been pushing for since 2021. Now Trump is saying Modi is his good friend and Modi is reciprocating with warm words. But fine words butter no parsnips.
Modi's handling of the contretemps was adroit from the Indian perspective. An American might say India was not serious about F-35s. Moreover, much of India's trade barriers represent pure 'rent seeking'. Thankfully, for the Indians, Lutnick & Navarro have ranted and raved rather than put their side of the case. Thus Modi gained face with Indian voters- i.e. the only people who matters to him. Did Trump do well with his own core supporters? Well enough. He got across the notion that India didn't matter. They buy Russian oil because they are poor. But this also means there isn't a attractive deal they can offer us. They have to shop at the thrift store.
Modi is learning hard lessons about India’s place in the new world order
India was always sceptical about US commitment to 'Quad' and the 'Indo-Pacific'. After Biden unilaterally ran away from Afghanistan, America's credibility in the region dwindled. There was a question whether American sanctions or tariffs could hold back China. The answer was no. But the other piece of bad news was that India simply could not do what Vietnam is doing. 'Make in India' is easier said than done.
New Delhi spent decades cosying up to the US.
Clinton & Bush made some effort to court India. The 123 Nuclear deal was the high-water mark of the relationship. Obama didn't greatly care about India. If Kamala had been elected she would have put the screws to India on Russian oil as Biden had begun to do. But she would also have tried to punish Putin more directly. A lot more could be done to disrupt the Kremlin's transport network.
The truth is, Washington doesn’t have allies outside the west – it has clients
Under Trump, Washington only has clients regardless where they are located. The problem with clients is that they can find a new patron.
When Donald Trump won his second term, India’s ruling elite must have been quietly pleased.
Kamala would have been under more pressure from the Islamist lobby. If you can't punish Israel, at least you can say nasty things about India. Trump is immune to such pressure. Also, there is the feeling that he gets bored quickly.
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s performative courting of King Donald, both in and out of office, suggested a special chemistry between these two titans of the hard right.
Sir Keith Starmer paid court to Trump and it paid off- perhaps because he offered him a second State Visit. Then lots of European leaders turned up to bend the knee to the Donald. Apparently, Trump had the hare-brained idea that Modi would like to meet the Pakistani Army Chief in the White House! The trick was how to say no to Trump without offending him. That seems to have been accomplished.
It must be said, Modi used to speak very warmly of Obama who visited India twice as President and came again after he left the White House. We don't know what Obama will say about Modi but we do know he was dismissive of Rahul.
As Trump set about remaking global trade and geopolitics by weaponising tariffs, India got into trade negotiations with the US early. New Delhi accepted that negotiations would be difficult, given its red lines on agricultural and dairy products.
It was vital that Modi convey this message to the farmers. He used his Independence day speech to do so. Good for him. The problem is that Arvind Kejriwal is attacking Modi for not retaliating against Trump and for temporarily removing cotton duties because of a fall in Indian supply.
Yet it was optimistic about getting a deal commensurate with India’s economic heft – and strategic value to the US as a counterweight to China.
There is no counterweight to China. They are taking the lead, or closing the gap, in various technologies.
Instead, Trump first slapped India, in April, with a 25% tariff that in itself exceeded the rate levied on most US allies. This has now doubled to 50%, as punishment for India for buying, refining and exporting Russian oil during that country’s war on Ukraine. This tariff rate will make all nonexempt Indian exports to the US uncompetitive.
I suppose Indian shrimp will go to China instead. This is 'trade diversion'. The problem for Trump is that if he keeps up his trade war, American inflation could rise by 5 percent and exports might fall by 17 percent. The economy would shrink. By contrast, there would be deflation in China and maybe a 5 percent fall in exports. This means that Trump could love his majority in Congress next November. He would be a sitting duck. Thus he needs a deal with China though he can continue to punish Brazil, India, South Africa etc. because they have less capacity to retaliate. Still, Modi may change his mind about de-dollarization which he previously opposed within BRICS. He is skipping their virtual summit probably because he still hopes Trump will relent.
Modi’s much-touted special relationship with Trump now looks risible.
Trump has walked back his remarks about losing India to China. He says ' he will always be friends with Modi”, adding that “India and the United States have a special relationship. “There is nothing to worry about,” he said.
This does not mean India has abandoned non-alignment. It has an even more special relationship with Russia just as Pakistan does with China.
And it wasn’t just the tariffs. India’s short war with Pakistan after the Pahalgam terrorist atrocity in April saw Trump, and his vice-president JD Vance, treat India and Pakistan as squabbling south Asian neighbours that had to be brought to order by US intervention.
India has already resisted American meddling in such matters. There is great continuity in its diplomacy.
Trump’s insistence that his telephoned threats had forced India and Pakistan to stop fighting seemed to bracket India and Pakistan as unruly nuisances, a humiliating equivalence that India felt duty-bound to repudiate.
If Modi had affirmed that Trump had played a role, he would have been required by Parliament to produce evidence of it. The question would have arisen as to whether India had abandoned its long held opposition to foreign meddling in its relationships with its neighbours.
It has since been suggested that the real trigger for the 50% tariff was India denying Trump, desperate for a Nobel peace prize, credit for peacemaking.
That is the narrative which most favours Modi. It would be truer to say that America, regardless of who was President, would have tried to squeeze India on the Russian oil issue. The difference between Biden and Trump is that the former was more viscerally anti-Putin. Sadly, there seems no early end in sight to the Ukraine war. Europe is saying they will send troops after the war and Putin is saying, in that case, the war won't end.
Trump made it clear that this was a punishment beating.
He put the squeeze on India but they doubled down on Russia. He is also inflicting high tariffs on Brazil, demanding Bolsanaro be released but if Lula wasn't released when his party was in power, how can a man accused of trying to stage a coup be released? Only a Brazilian court can decide Bolsonaro's fate. Will Trump's attacks on India and Brazil strengthen BRICS and cause an increase in 'de-dollarization'? I suppose it is China which will decide.
He dismissed India as a “dead economy” while his chief trade adviser, Peter Navarro, accused India of war profiteering by buying discounted Russian oil. He even described the Ukrainian conflict as “Modi’s war”.
He blamed Indian Brahmins- Mukul Kesavan is one such- for the woes of Ukraine. The Commerce Secretary, too, had mean things to say about India. Now Trump seems to have reversed course, they look foolish.
This mortifying breakdown of relations has discredited Modi’s decade-long effort to play the well-connected world statesman.
That effort paid off. This is a guy who was denied a visa by the US and some European countries. He was subsequently welcomed by Obama, Trump, Biden & then Trump again. He is a well-connected statesman. But what matters is what Indian farmers think of him. They will kick him out if they think he will abandon them so as to suck up to some White dude.
The energetic hugging and over-the-top bonhomie that characterised his photo ops with world leaders seem gauche in retrospect.
To Kesavan. But Putin & Xi seem happy enough to see him. Oddly, BoJo- the aristocratic former PM- has only nice things to say about Modi.
But it would be a mistake to think of this turn in Indo-US relations purely in terms of a powerful individuals.
Then don't do so. There was a question as to whether Trump would support Quad. I think he sees that it is too late to do so. He says Xi has patience. He won't take Taiwan while Trump is in the White House.
Large countries such as India have geopolitical moorings that aren’t easily loosened.
e.g. friendship with Moscow
Non-alignment – India’s cold-war-era positioning as
a Socialist country with a defence pact with the Soviet Union
neither capitalist nor communist – isn’t a fashionable term in Modi’s India because of its Nehruvian antecedents,
India feels alienated by the strong anti-Israel rhetoric.
but his foreign policy has tried to maintain India’s freedom of action in a multipolar world.
Just like every other PM.
Non-alignment might now fly under the flag of “strategic autonomy” but its aim is not dissimilar. India’s ability to buy Russian oil, refine it and re-export it to Europe with the tacit blessing of the Biden administration was, until recently, seen as an example of this bloc-straddling suppleness.
There was no tacit blessing. Biden increased sanctions just before leaving office. Trump may have thought he could end the Ukraine war before having to take up the matter again.
What changed was that over the past quarter of a century, India’s political class began to see the US as the country’s natural partner.
The 'political class' has changed over that period. It is said that Indian diplomats muted their suspicion of America after Sujatha Singh resigned as Foreign Secretary in 2014. It is also true that there seemed more possibility of supply chains shifting to India. But there are other low cost countries which better infrastructure. Also, the more you trade, the more vulnerable you are- at least in the short run.
It was the main destination of India’s exports
India needs to export more to China. The good news is that they like shrimp. Hopefully, they also like shiny shiny diamonds.
and also the aspirational destination for the children of its ruling elite.
Modi has no kids. Amit Shah isn't trying to get his son a Green Card.
Since the time of Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh,
who did have a daughter in the US
who signed the Indo-US nuclear deal, India has tilted towards Washington.
That was a unipolar world. But the US could do favours to Manmohan- e.g. ban Modi- and this was appreciated by the UPA.
The Quad, a grouping of four countries – Japan, Australia, the US and India – designed to foil China’s designs in the Indo-Pacific, was widely read as a sign of this westward tilt.
It is dead in the water. Japan has got a 15 percent deal from Trump. Maybe India too will benefit if his generous mood lasts.
This tilt has led to a curious unbalancing of India’s foreign policy.
Mukul is telling us that Manmohan cultivated strong ties with America. Modi too was friendly. But the global picture was changing. China can't be contained. India has to find ways of selling more to China so as to cover the trade deficit with them.
Its feet firmly planted in strategic autonomy, India has leaned towards the US to get close and personal, via alliances that aren’t quite alliances, and vibes that aren’t matched by substance.
It is a friendly country. Nothing wrong with that.
India’s policymakers under Modi assumed that India’s aggregate economic heft and its growth rate had elevated it to the world’s top table.
It is in top four largest economies but is still very poor. Its task must be to raise productivity.
The fact is, India isn’t rich enough or white enough or English-speaking enough to be a charter member of either the west or the anglophone world.
Trump isn't demanding that India become the 52nd state after Canada surrenders. India has never been part of the 'West'. Ten percent of the population may speak some English. But we are by no means 'anglophone'.
Modi’s mandarins forgot that – outside the charmed circle of the west
or within it. NATO's article 5 may mean nothing more than that, if you are attacked, Trump will send thoughts and prayers.
– the US doesn’t have allies, it has clients.
Unless he wants to annex your country- e.g. Canada or Greenland.
Trump’s decision to further raise tariffs on India out of resentment was a reminder that US presidents have often seen India as either a supplicant or a nuisance or both.
LBJ may have seen it as a supplicant. Nixon may have seen it as a nuisance. But that was a long time ago.
Pundits argue that Trump is a maverick, that the Indo-US relationship is too important both economically and geopolitically for this froideur to last.
One may equally say the opposite. India has weathered tougher US sanctions in the past. But India is of no very great interest to America. The relationship is too insignificant to spend political capital on.
It’s much more likely that Trump is ahead of the curve, that he is saying out loud what other western leaders are still too constrained by liberal convention to utter.
BoJo was constrained by liberal convention. That is why he spoke so highly of Modi and India. The UK has a trade deal with India. That appears worth having.
Western benevolence has always been predicated on western hegemony.
Eastern benevolence is predicated on surrendering- right?
Once the climate crisis and China’s rise made it clear that the west’s supremacy wasn’t future-proofed;
The climate crisis is immaterial. Everybody is affected by it. China's rise is a different story. In purchasing power parity terms they are bigger than the US. Can they overtake on nominal GDP? That would require substantial dollar devaluation. Would that be desirable for China?
once the promise of steady economic growth, the modern measure of secular progress, became unredeemable,
as happened in Japan? But they seem quite happy with improving quality of life.
western centrists began to secede from the world order they had created in their pomp.
Not really. They got a lot more immigrants. Will this create a backlash? Might the Far Right take power? I don't think so. Cracking down on migration is not the same thing as sending foreigners to concentration camps.
Gaza is the sum of this secession.
No it isn't. Israel evacuated the place but then had to go back in. God alone knows how they will get out of it.
The WTO, overseas aid, due process for asylum seekers, international humanitarian law, the UN system – the whole postwar order built by the west and led by the US – is being cast aside as rich countries circle their wagons against a needy, unruly world.
Poor countries may do so as well. Pakistan and Iran have been expelling Afghans. But Bhutan got rid of a lot of its Nepalese origin people.
This has led to the near-simultaneous rise of agenda-setting far-right parties
like the Tory party or the Republican party.
in western countries. Trump-like and Trump-lite demagogues have become inevitable.
There is no one quite like Trump. He is sui generis.
Nigel Farage,
Who can't keep his own house in order whereas Trump commands his party
Jordan Bardella,
who is of partially Algerian heritage
Alice Weidel,
a lesbian economist opposed to the euro. She fired an aide who attended a meeting where forcible deportation was discussed.
Viktor Orbán
who was mainstream not so long ago. He now faces a young challenger who formerly belonged to his own party
are living proof that Trump’s mix of nativism and protectionism is the reality that India and non-western countries more generally will have to contend with for the foreseeable future.
India has always had both. It is only recently that rules regarding foreign ownership of Indian businesses have been relaxed.
(One of the revelations of Trump’s second term has been the willingness of European leaders to abase themselves to propitiate the US.)
That may not last. Europe may grow a spine.
For all the liberal hand-wringing about Trump’s crudities, where he leads, the European political class will follow.
Which is why people like Merz and Starmer are in power- right?
Trump’s tariffs aren’t whims, they are portents. They are bricks in the wall that the west is building to fortify its compound.
Pushing back against migration is linked to 'fortification'. The problem with tariffs is you may be importing 'stagflation'- as India discovered to its great cost in the Sixties and Seventies.
Modi, like Indian prime ministers before him, is learning that geography can’t be transcended, that non-alignment isn’t a choice – it is a necessity.
No. It is a choice. Any country is welcome to align itself with any other. Look at Kuwait. They have 'transcended geography'.
India’s place in the world will often present it with grim, constrained choices.
That is the nature of choice.
It can’t square up to the US, as China does, as an equal.
Why would it want to? The Americans aren't losing sleep that India will challenge their navy in the Indian ocean.
Nor can it kowtow to Trump as the EU has, like a client looking for protection.
NATO countries are dependent to some degree on the US. That may change with the formation of an EU Army.
India will continue to walk a tightrope, teetering this way then that, as it negotiates a hostile world under the watchful eyes of its vulnerable people.
No. Foreign policy doesn't greatly matter to Indians. What makes it 'vulnerable' is low productivity. To achieve more, you have to learn to work harder or to work smarter. Nobody can come and do your work for you and then pat you on the back.
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