The NY Times reports: “for three decades, successive American presidents have invested enormous diplomatic capital to cultivate a friendship with India:”
Bill Clinton, who laid the foundations of the modern U.S.-India partnership, called the two democracies “natural allies.” George W. Bush described them as “brothers in the cause of human liberty.” Barack Obama and Joe Biden both cast the relationship as one of the defining global compacts of this century.
To Washington, India was a vast emerging market, a potential counterweight to China, a key partner in maintaining Indo-Pacific security and a rising power whose democratic identity would bolster a rules-based international order. For its part, India — mistrustful of the West after nearly a century of British colonial rule — shed its Cold War suspicion of Washington, which had armed and financed its archnemesis Pakistan for decades, and moved steadily closer to the United States.
It took Donald Trump one summer to obliterate these gains.
You won’t believe why he did it:
In May, he claimed credit for ending a brief military conflict between India and Pakistan. This incensed India, which regards its dispute with Pakistan as strictly bilateral, and humiliated Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had touted his closeness to “my friend Donald Trump.” Mr. Trump proceeded to have lunch at the White House with Gen. Syed Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief and former head of the country’s spy agency, which the United States has accused of supporting international terrorist groups. He also called India’s economy “dead” and imposed punishing 50 percent tariffs on Indian imports to the United States.
He’s a schoolyard bully who demands that everyone in his orbit succumb to his petty needs or risk being on his bad side. He has no respect for the internal political needs of any foreign leader. He wanted India to help him get the Nobel Prize and demanded that they bow down if they didn’t want to be publicly insulted and hit with massive tariffs.
In the process Trump united all the political factions in India which had all apparently believed Trump’s fatuous claims of being a “good friend” to Mr Modi, something which had been decisive in bolstering Modi’s own cult of personality. Modi even endorsed Trump in 2020.
Biden, being an adult with a sophisticated understanding of how the world works, overlooked that and attempted to keep the relationship functional but when Trump won, “the Indian leader’s supporters believed that Mr. Trump, rather than lecture New Delhi, would squeeze the country’s enemies and accelerate India’s rise.”
Ooops.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Mr. Trump has jeopardized the bilateral relationship and dismantled, almost overnight, Mr. Modi’s meticulously crafted image as a globally venerated statesman — something his rivals in the Indian political opposition have been unable to do.
The United States is India’s largest trading partner, and the tariffs are expected to devastate businesses across a range of sectors, causing factory closings, job losses and slower growth.
Mr. Trump at first applied a 25 percent tariff on Aug. 1 as part of his global assault on U.S. trading partners. Days later, he announced an additional 25 percent levy to punish India for buying Russian oil. The latter outraged and puzzled Indians — it was Washington, after all, that had initially encouraged India to purchase Russian oil to help stabilize global prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China, which imports more Russian oil, and Europe, whose overall trade with Russia is larger than India’s, have not been penalized for that.
He has no idea what he’s doing other than causing chaos under the assumption that everyone will eventually bend to his will because he’s omnipotent and unassailable.
India knows now that even if they lick Trump’s boots so the U.S. will remain a strategic partner against China in order to protect its trade and security, they have no way of knowing if it’s going to last. Trump might be french kissing Xi Jinping at any moment. (It sure seems as though he’s giving the green light to take Taiwan whenever he wants…) So they’re hedging their bets now:
This weekend Mr. Modi is making his first visit to China in seven years for a regional summit, where President Xi Jinping will personally welcome both him and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The Indian and Chinese armies clashed on their disputed border in 2020, and this visit is a potentially momentous opportunity to reset India-China relations, finesse lingering disputes over their border, trade and regional security, and — for China — to begin drawing India away from Washington’s orbit.
Modi is a lot like Trump and placed a big bet on his personal relationship with him. He should have known better. He may very well eventually see that its in his interest to give Trump what he wants which is to bend the knee. But whatever trust had been built up between the two countries over time is gone. Egomaniac demagogues FTW.
Update —
Reports from the meeting between Xi and Modi are really something:
Mutual trust and respect must guide India-China relations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Chinese President Xi Jinping as the two leaders met on the sidelines of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in China’s port city of Tianjin on Sunday.
The closely watched bilateral began with a firm handshake, signalling the next step in rapprochement between the two long-time rivals while also sending a message to US President Donald Trump, whose tariff offensive has soured Washington’s ties with both New Delhi and Beijing.
During the hour-long meeting, PM Modi underlined recent progress in bilateral ties, from an agreement between special representatives on the border standoff, to the resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and the restoration of direct flights between the two countries.
[…]
Seven years have passed since PM Modi last set foot in China. His last trip, to Wuhan in 2018, followed the tense Doklam standoff. This time, the focus is on economic and strategic alignment as the two Asian powers navigate the turbulence caused by Trump’s tariff barrage.
In recent days, China has unequivocally condemned the punishing 50 per cent tariffs on Indian exports, saying it “firmly stands with India” and denounced the US as a “bully”.
The US and China have an uneasy tariff truce in place after Trump delayed the reinstatement of sky-high tariffs on Beijing by another 90 days amid ongoing negotiations.
Beijing was further piqued when, earlier this week, Trump threatened 200 per cent tariffs if it curbed exports of rare-earth magnets to the US.
PM Modi is also scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tianjin on Monday, the first huddle between the two leaders since the US doubled tariffs on Indian goods to 50 per cent over New Delhi’s refusal to stop buying Russian oil.
Yeah. Trump is a brilliant world leader. Have you heard his uncle taught at MIT?