The downturn in India-U.S. relations has upset both the Indian strategic elite and a section of American foreign policy thinkers. They argue that two decades of efforts to improve India-U.S. ties have been undercut by U.S. President Donald Trump with his declaration of economic war on India.
Punitive tariffs have been accompanied by a deluge of insults on India as being a “dead economy.” Trump’s Trade Councillor Peter Navarro alleged that India is playing a “double game,” that the Russia-Ukraine war is “Modi’s war,” that India cheats the U.S. on trade, and so on.
India, for its part, has signaled that it is committed to strategic autonomy, will continue to purchase Russian oil, diversify its trade and security relations with others, and improve relations with China. However, India has also committed itself to continuing negotiations with the U.S. to decrease trade tariffs.
The opportunity for India to show its foreign policy options has come faster than the world expected.
The meeting between China’s President Xi Jinping, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Tianjin, China showcased a power projection and shift that reflected a “pivot to Asia” but from the region itself and minus the United States’ presence.
The meeting between Putin and Modi indicates that India-Russia relations are likely to go into higher gear. And Russia’s consumer market has been opened to Indian agricultural exports.
The bilateral meeting between Xi and Modi on the sidelines of the SCO confirms that a process of reset in Sino-Indian relations has been initiated even as major challenges remain.
The China-India reset is a process that follows from the 24th round of meetings between the special representatives of India and China, who reached a 10-point consensus on the boundary issue. This, therefore, is not a sudden turn. Many problems remain between the two; however, Trump’s actions have sped up the Sino-Indian rapprochement process.
The crucial questions are: How has India been able to face Trump’s tariffs and insults? Why is the SCO, a regional forum founded in 2001 and barely noticed internationally, now getting so much attention?
The reason is the great power shift with the comparative decline in U.S. power and the international system moving from a unipolar one to multipolarity.
The unipolar system emerged after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991, leaving the U.S. as the sole superpower. This period saw U.S. assertion in world politics, where it launched 251 military interventions worldwide between 1991-2022, conducted several wars, strengthened and expanded NATO (from 12 to 32 countries), and had the capacity to exercise economic and military power with little restraint or accountability.
This was also a period when the U.S. through its influence in multilateral institutions like the World Bank and IMF reordered the international economic system, shifted to neoliberal globalization and enforced market reforms and privatization reforms globally.
The goal was to financialize the world economy to increase profits of U.S./Western banks. Manufacturing was allowed to shift to countries with cheaper labor and lower standards of labor rights and lax environmental standards. These reforms increased the profitability of large transnational companies and U.S. banks. At the same time, the shift of manufacturing to China, Southeast Asian countries and India led to a de-industrialization of the U.S. and European countries.
Simultaneously, there was a rise in the industrialization and manufacturing capacity of China, and select countries of the Global South including ASEAN and India. China was the biggest beneficiary of this shift.
The U.S. now sees China as an economic “near peer” and a strategic competitor and “pacing challenge.” In other words, even while the U.S. is a global superpower, China is fast developing to parallel U.S. economic supremacy.
Simultaneously, Russia’s stabilization and the revival of its economy by leveraging oil revenues is seen as a threat in U.S. national security policy documents. The threat of NATO expansion to Ukraine despite Russian pleas against it since 2008 and the removal in 2014 of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovich that Putin described as a U.S.-backed coup prompted Russian aggression and war in Ukraine. Three years on, the war has shown that Russia’s military capacity has increased and its economy has been able to sustain the war. This is a challenge to the West and Trump wants to conclude the war before a Ukrainian defeat.
The coming together of the BRICS platform where the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have made moves to increase their trade and economic ties and trade in their local currencies has led many countries to want to join this formation. The Trump administration sees BRICS as a threat.
In sum, the U.S. empire is witnessing a comparative decline and an increase in threat perceptions.
Trump’s slogan of “Make America Great Again” is an effort to arrest this decline. But his use of punitive tariffs, attacks on migrant workers and cutting down U.S. administrative costs have not worked so far. Many economists and analysts believe that the U.S. is on an irreversible decline.
It is in this context that the getting together of Russia-India-China needs to be viewed. It would have been logical for Trump to keep the U.S. partnership with India intact. He, however, sees it differently and has managed to alienate India.
India is now looking to diversify its relations, increase trade with Russia and is on a path to reset relations with China. The multipolarity of the international system gave India this leverage.
The negotiations between India and the U.S. will continue. But the U.S. will have to accept India’s strategic autonomy, its relations with Russia and its multi-vector foreign policy that will continue to harbor good relations with multiple countries based on Indian national interest.
India may possibly reduce some tariffs and give some concessions to the U.S. by buying U.S. weapons or aircraft. But the terms of engagement between the U.S. and India have also seen a reset. Indo-U.S. relations may improve from their current low but the earlier trust has been lost.
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.