(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading to the U.S. this week, where President Joe Biden’s administration will be rolling out the red, or perhaps more fittingly, saffron carpet, for him. Given all the concerns that the Biden administration has feigned about the so-called democratic slide in India, this is going to be a particularly flexible diplomatic asana for it.
I have been reading a ton of expert commentaries on India-U.S. ties over the last few weeks, and have found a new reasoning has come to dominate the narrative. The common theme is that this is a relationship that prioritises shared interests over shared values. The amended thought — a change from the previous one that married shared interests and values — stems from the rationale that the U.S. should not worry too much about what is happening inside India; instead, it must focus on its interest in building ties with India. Needless to say, this is an echo of the U.S. administration’s view, as most expert commentaries out of Washington D.C. tend to be.
How did we get here? What are those shared interests? More importantly, what are those values that are now apparently suddenly not shared?
First, the thought that the U.S. foreign policy is about promoting democracy or human rights is a shallow one. The readers of Political Line are more intelligent than to buy into the notion that U.S. policies abroad are crafted with any particular values in mind. But a constant drumbeat of ‘values’ had become an inevitable accompaniment to the U.S.-India duet, and U.S. foreign policy claims in general.
Such claims became unsustainable after Donald Trump showed the mirror to the U.S. ruling establishment in 2016. He so unsettled the original Washington Consensus that a mishmash of new pieties rustled up as strategy is now in circulation as a new Washington Consensus. At the heart of it is the protectionism that Trump championed and the endless foreign wars that Trump exposed. Soon after the Afghan war ended, a new war, which promises to be a long one, has been achieved.
The U.S. under Mr. Biden is erecting new walls of protectionism. It is distorting trade in a manner it would label disruption of order if other countries were to do it. Since the U.S. is doing it, there are other names to call this by; ‘de-risking’ is one such. But then we are not discussing the hypocrisy of politics — which country or politician is not charged with that! We are trying to understand why the U.S. has suddenly begun to de-emphasise its ‘values’ pitch.
The ‘values’ pitch of America abroad or at home was never strong, except to blind believers. What has changed in the recent years is the extent to which the U.S. ruling establishment — both Republicans and Democrats — have gone, to silence the domestic challenge against it. Donald Trump, the most formidable opposition candidate for the 2024 Presidential election is facing law enforcement, and been arrested. Rule of law? Well, when the rule of law applies selectively to opponents of the ruling party, should we not be calling it something else? So the Biden administration’s ground to question any other country on free trade, human rights (he has been as or more ruthless to undocumented migrants as Trump was), or democracy, is rather weak.
The U.S. government is on a moral low ground. Biden and his Democratic colleagues (and their Republican counterparts) run a politics built of collective paranoia, imagined internal enemies, targeting of political adversaries, rhetoric on external threats, and worship of the military and militarism as unquestionable. Media platforms and journalists that question this toxic orthodoxy are forced to pay a price. Perhaps they don’t want to call all this their new set of values.
In fact, friends of the U.S. have pointed out to it that they should be looking into the mirror first before judging the world. Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishanker said India too might have opinions about what is happening in the U.S. Some hypocrisy may be essential for all relations, but the over-the-top moralistic claims of the U.S. had become paradoxical in the light of the intolerance its ruling establishment shows to criticism of what it decides is national interest.
With the ‘values’ noise out the window, a more honest appraisal of shared interests becomes possible in India-U.S. ties. That is happening and there is increasing realisation, and acceptance in D.C. that India is not going to be a U.S. treaty ally in a hurry. And as Rahul Gandhi himself told his U.S. audiences: there is nothing much that divides the Indian political class on foreign policy unlike in the U.S. In fact, as I had written in my book on India-U.S. relations, Mr. Modi’s foreign policy can be termed strategic autonomy on steroids.
India-America ties are like a desi arranged marriage. There are of course some shared interests, a lot of shared hypocrisies, an audacity of hype — the band, the baraat, and some laboured love that happens over time. That is the Big Picture.
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