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Hesitations historic and present

The drivers of the India-US relationship have stalled

Bs_logoIndia-US relationship, partnership, partners
Illustration: Ajay Mohanty
Mihir S Sharma
6 min read Last Updated : Jun 18 2023 | 10:14 PM IST
It is a fact that hardly needs to be stated that relations between India and the United States have progressed greatly in the past two decades. In 2016, addressing a joint session of Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the bilateral relationship had overcome “the hesitations of history”, and “turned barriers into bridges of partnership”. But, as we await another such speech, have new hesitations emerged? And, if so, are new barriers in the path of India-US engagement the same as those in the past, or new ones?

Since ties first achieved an apparently unstoppable momentum, back when George W Bush was in the White House, both India and the United States have changed.

The US of 2003 is not the same as the America of 2023. While bruised by 9/11, it was still convinced of its power to remake the world. The country that Joe Biden leads is far more suspicious, and far less outward-looking. Two decades of economic crisis, racial tension, botched wars and attempted domestic insurrections have transformed it. It has little that it wants to offer, and its famed self-confidence is hard to discern.

India, meanwhile, is convinced of the inevitability of its rise. It is determined to occupy the place in world affairs that it believes it deserves. But, unlike in the 2000s, it also seems to think that a closer relationship with the West would inevitably come at the price of a multipolar world and thus of India’s chance of global leadership. There is a palpable sense that the US has less to offer us than it did.

These new self-conceptions, when put together, lie at the heart of a slowing and indeed increasingly stagnant relationship. On some metrics, certainly, there continues to be progress: For example, co-operation on intelligence and in certain frontier technologies. But, in the past, such progress would be seen as proof of concept for wider and deeper co-operation; today, they seem to be standalone achievements.

The two great drivers of the India-US relationship in the past were the possibility of shared profits through economic integration, and the closeness born of people-to-people links, particularly through the Indian diaspora. These now operate very differently than before.

In the 2000s, India saw itself and was seen as a possible destination for, among others, large US manufacturers. The possibility of US investment into multiple productive sectors of the economy was a welcome prospect. Today, investment is seen as much more of a double-edged sword — partly because the Indian sectors that are of greatest interest to US sectors, including technology and retail, have a very different political economy than manufacturing. Technology is seen as extractive, and American “big tech” companies are not exactly India’s favourite guests. Retail, particularly e-retail, is considered to be in direct competition with small retailers. Thus the two sectors that would most sincerely argue for closer economic ties are hamstrung in terms of their political access.
 
The Indian diaspora, meanwhile, takes India’s emergent global leadership for granted. Its primary payoff from the prime minister’s current trip, for example, will be a reminder of India’s status — and, therefore, a boost to their own self-worth. In the past, Indian-American activism and the diaspora’s increasing political salience allowed it to push for the normalisation of the India-US relationship. That has already been achieved. And so the plain fact is that, today, Indian-American activism when it comes to the bilateral relationship is not focused on any particular goal. Nor are prominent Indian-American politicians, with one or two exceptions, exceptional advocates for closer ties.

Which leaves only the long-term strategic logic for closeness between India and the US: A shared concern that the rise of China will not be peaceful but disruptive. The dominance of the China factor in relations today can sometimes obscure the fact that it has not always been thus. In fact, in the past, it was another strategic discourse altogether that underlay growing our closeness.

Twenty years ago, it was concern about Islamist terrorism that bound us together. Manmohan Singh, when he addressed a joint session of Congress, stressed that we were both open societies and thus equally at threat from terrorism.

India and the US took divergent approaches to that shared threat, particularly with regard to Pakistan. Washington became dependent on the goodwill of the generals in Rawalpindi to keep supply lines open to their war in Afghanistan. India, meanwhile, saw those same generals as irredeemably implicated in terror networks as sponsors and financiers. Over time, agreement over terrorism gave way to disagreement and division over the treatment of Pakistan, and, finally, over the sudden and amoral US abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban.

The strategic closeness over China has similar weaknesses. The US is slowly waking up to the realisation that India will likely do nothing if China eventually moves on Taiwan. It is even being questioned as to whether there will be, in the event of such an invasion, any rhetorical support for a fellow democracy, given our muted response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some Indian policy makers point out that the US public reaction to Chinese pressure on the borders was also muted. This is, however, not an entirely fair comparison — particularly given what has now been widely reported about how intelligence originating from the US has in recent times provided vital support for the Indian army on the Line of Actual Control.

Behind the pomp and ceremony of a state visit, therefore, there are very crucial questions to be asked about the real driver of India-US relations. Momentum will carry them forward for some time. But, in the absence of an economic, people-driven or strategic motive for closer integration of our two countries, militaries and economies, we may well be looking at a decade or more of real stagnation or even back-sliding. The hesitations of history may be, well, history. But the present has brought enough hesitations of its own.

The writer is director, Centre for the Economy and Growth, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

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