This week, Americans will once again be treated to the scenes of bonhomie that have come to mark a visit to the US by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: cheering crowds of Indian-Americans, leaders from both parties warming up From photo-ops, and a triumphant speech to a joint session of Congress, there is no doubt that Modi will declare that India and America have come closer than ever. Some joint programs will be announced. And most casual observers would conclude that all is well with the breath that has been described as the most important relationship of the 21st century.
In fact, all is not well. India has been conspicuously reluctant to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the expectation has fueled discontent in New Delhi that it should declare itself on the “side” of the West in the conflict. Meanwhile, the US foreign policy establishment has been on a wake up call of late. India’s reluctance to follow any US-led path A series of recent essays and op-eds have raised questions about the direction the India-US partnership is headed.
According to these pieces, some of the blame must be given to India’s “democratic backlash” under Modi, which has opened a gulf in values between the world’s two largest democracies.
That argument has fueled New Delhi’s resentment of America’s “lecture”. As far as India’s foreign policy elite is concerned, the price is a distraction: mutual concern about an aggressive and coercive China has brought New Delhi and Washington closer together and something else is needed to ensure that the relationship be more intimate. Whatever India’s attitude towards a free press or minority rights, its size and location ensure that it cannot be shunned by the US. On this point, not many American officials would disagree.
However, in practice, values matter. Having a shared set of organizing principles allows governments to trust each other – and thus make deals that last.
Before Modi came to power a decade ago, both American and Indian leaders believed exactly this – that shared values, even more than shared interests, determine a close relationship. Hopefully liberal democratic principles will keep us on the same page of history, moving bilateral relations beyond Cold War-era bitterness.
The historic deals made by US President George W. Bush and the then Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh were not transactional in nature. In fact, he represented a leap of faith on both sides. As one commentator put it at the time, choosing to strengthen ties with India, despite few immediate benefits for the US, was “one of the few foreign policy successes” of the Bush years, because India as a leader had become a major threat to India. evolve into a new role. free world.
The success came because Indian leaders believed that their country’s future lay with other liberal democracies and because the US wanted to enlist, in Bush’s words, “India’s leadership of the cause of freedom”.
This type of hope encourages you to make long term decisions. India opposed the Iraq War, did not send troops to Afghanistan, and was dissatisfied with America’s continued support for Pakistan. But it didn’t matter, because it seemed that the arc of history would bring us together.
Today’s low-hope, low-trust relationship limits the progress that both countries can make. The Quad – which also includes Japan and Australia – looks less and less likely to grow into the Indo-Pacific NATO that China fears. Both the US and India gain less from trading with each other than they did a decade ago.
There are certainly areas that are taking the relationship forward. Defense is one, investment is another.
Yet both require long-term commitments, which are difficult to make in an environment of eroding trust. While Indian decision-makers want American weapons, they balk at the prospect that their supplies may one day be cut off due to a breakdown in relations. If politics comes in the way of profit in future, American companies will not want to invest in India’s defense sector. And so the various deals that may be announced this week — India may begin co-production of GE jet engines, for example — are small compared to India’s potential needs.
The tension over values thus puts a severe strain on Indo-US relations. Unfortunately, the very thing we hoped would bring us together, our democratic traditions, is now driving us apart. It is impossible to imagine an American president applauding in New Delhi today for a speech about standing with “reformers and dissidents and civil society organizations” because “history is on their side.” Yet so was Bush in 2006.
It would be a mistake to end our search for shared values. When Modi’s predecessor addressed a joint session of Congress, he put it well: “There is a partnership based on principle and a partnership based on pragmatism. … We can begin a partnership that is based on principle as well as pragmatism. We support and enhance each other. Unless this generation of leaders remembers this fact, the US-India The partnership will continue to underperform.
Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, he is the author of “Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy”.
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Updated: June 21, 2023, 02:21 AM IST