Biden’s Presidency: Impact on Indo-US ties
In this article, let us analyze how the Presidential term of the 46th President of United States will affect the Indo- US relations in the next few years, and what kind of diplomatic posture should India’s foreign policy uphold to keep its national interests at the top.
In early 2020, PM Modi had invited the then President Donald Trump to India in his home-state of Gujrat. The event was a massive grand welcome to the President. Before this, around September 2020, PM Modi visited Houston — that’s where the famous Howdy Modi event took place. So it was very clear that PM Modi had endorsed Donald Trump for the 2020 election. As BJP (Party in power at the Centre) is known to be a right wing conservative party in India, similarly the Trump’s Republican party is known to be a right wing conservative party as well. So it might naturally seem that they will complement each other, plus given the fact that Trump’s majority of geopolitical decisions worked out well for India (after a lot of hard work on diplomacy of course!). In my personal opinion, none of the two presidential candidates were a good option for India — but since India had got used to the incumbent president’s policies, India wanted to continue with it, hence the Trump endorsement.
However after the November 3rd election results, it is clear that Joe Biden is going to be the 46th President of United States. Now Joe Biden is a democrat. Democrats are known to be the leaning-liberalist-social political party.
Indo-US relations during Democrat Obama Presidency
Joe Biden happens to be the former vice-president under the Obama Presidential term. Now India’s relations with the US under the Obama presidency were fine but not that great. As per the Democrat’s past foreign policies, they did not have any solid interest in India, but only used it as a South-Asian geopolitical tool to counter-balance China. USA has also been historically supportive to Pakistan, providing them with huge aids which Pakistan then uses to spread cross-border terrorism and instability in India.
USA — a deep state
To understand Indo-US relations, lets also shortly talk about some long term American interests which the country never bargains on. For a country like United States, issues like Defence, Security and Climate change are subjects that are above party politics. They call these fixed National Interests - which could be understood as a permanent framework under which the country must run. This means that no matter which president comes from what political parties/idealogies, these American interests are going to be permanent.
Thus any US leaderships that comes has to maintain and follow up on these interests so that the US hegemony in world politics is permanent and secured. This makes them long term deep hidden interests of US, which is why it is also sometimes referred to as a Deep State. It is a known fact to India and other nations that US would work on priority towards these interests and hence other nations shape their foreign policy with US accordingly.
Trump Administration
The Trump administration began with his anti-immigration slogans targeting majorly India. He did this basically to gain political support of the American citizens. From a quick lesson on macro economics, it is simple to understand that if a country blocks hundreds of thousands of immigrants from working in the country, it is not going to help in economic recovery but will rather create unemployment and send jobs, innovations and investments to other countries. It is of course not a hidden fact from the Republican party, but being a conservative right wing party, they created the rhetoric to gain the political support.
In 2018, the US-China trade war begin, which had mostly a positive impact on the Indian economy. Due to the trade war, India also found many American investments such as Amazon, Walmart etc. come to India. But to prioritize domestic produce, India brought new e-commerce rules that hurt these US companies. To this USA reciprocated by terminating India’s special GSP status. In my understanding, USA under Trump administration always showcased strong diplomacy against India when it comes to trade. Consider the ‘Trade deal’ for instance which was spoken about for more than a year and India was dead serious to conclude it but Trump administration kept on lingering the matter. Trump on many occasions has called Modi ‘a hard negotiator’.
However when it comes to defense decisions, India displayed a strong will to not bend before US threats of sanctions and was eventually given multiple waivers to buy defense systems and weapons and oil from US sanctioned nations — Iran and Russia.
US-Pakistan relations and affects on India
In early 2018, Trump also suspended the $2 billion military aid to Pakistan, a decision strongly welcomed by India. But at the same time he also mentioned that US would want to have better relations with Pakistan.
So what kind of relation do US and Pakistan really have? To understand this lets see how US tries to involve itself everywhere, use nations against one another and control others. The US has control over Europe through NATO (every European country pays hefty sums of money to US to provide them military security — hence they depend on US). From 2001–2016, the US created havoc in middle east and now it has eyes on Asia. US looks at Russia and China as its biggest threat. From time-to-time the threat perception from these two countries goes up and down. Now as said earlier, US has historically used India to counter-balance China — but then how do they control India? This is where Pakistan comes.
The US is very much aware of the idea of Ghazwa-e-Hind promoted by former Pakistani Generals. On the surface, US says that it condemns Pakistan’s actions and time to time it suspends aid to Pakistan. But on a deeper level, USA knows that if tomorrow India goes out of line, then US needs Pakistan. The practice that US follows here is popularly known as sub-conventional warfare. It means that a conflict between two nations should be such that the conflict should not let them peacefully co-exist but at the same time the conflict should be less than war. It includes militancy, insurgency, proxy war and terrorism.
Indo-Pacific Idea
US acknowledgement under the trump administration of the Asia Pacific as Indo-Pacific is an important piece of diplomacy. The renaming indicates that India matters in America’s long term geo-strategic planning. It is an American move to include India in counter-balancing growing China’s power in the Indian and Pacific ocean. This is also an example of US self-interest but on the surface it looks as if India is on the top priority list.
Biden Administration
In USA politics, Republicans see China as rival while Democrats see Russia as rival.
Biden being a Democrat, we can expect to hear a sharp anti-Russian rhetoric. Russia would probably continue to be under sanctions. India being a close ally to Russia and its defense customer needs to watch-out for sanction threats itself for trading with Russia and must manage situations with soft diplomacy without taking any sides on US-Russia arguments.
China and Pakistan can expect a smooth ride, with a changed mood in US white house. Any kind of favorable change towards India’s enemy nations is bad news for India. The US-China trade war could come to an end, enabling rise of china further, which would have medium level consequences on Indian economy in short term. Democrats have been historically soft on Pakistan and the Biden administration might lift up the suspension on military aid.
On a personal note, I feel like USA is so smart that it gives the money and aid to Pakistan. Pakistan uses that money to launch proxy war against India. Because of this India ends up purchasing more defense equipment from USA!! It is just my theory and I don’t have any evidence to prove the same, but its a food for thought :)
With the left leaning-liberalist-socialist Joe Biden taking over in Jan 2021 as the new President of the USA, India (with a right wing conservative party at center) are bound to have more differences on number of issues, but that’s where diplomacy plays its part. When dealing with the US, India’s diplomacy strategy should be on the democratic ideological basis. India can use this to its advantage by under-taking aggressive diplomacy on social issues such as jobs, immigration and foreign investments.
