Fresh look at our backyard

A neighbourhood policy never stands still. Diplomacy and dialogue can manage and, sometimes, resolve problems, but the friction of proximity always ensures that something or the other needs to be fixed, tweaked or altered. And so it has been with India and its neighbours.

Having gone through one cycle that featured everything from blockades, as in the case of Nepal, the Doklam confrontation, and the resolution of land and maritime boundaries with Bangladesh, the Modi government is now entering another, with newer issues, challenges and opportunities.

Modi’s first term began with a bang when he reached out to India’s neighbours, including Pakistan. But the ‘good neighbour’ policy began to falter. It first hit the shoals of Nepal, when an Indian move aimed at teaching Kathmandu a lesson lengthened into a five-month blockade that has had a long-term negative impact on our relations. Ties with Pakistan were next. Modi’s move to display his friendship with Nawaz Sharif on December 25, 2015, was torpedoed by the Pakistan army which unleashed its proxies to attack the Pathankot air base a week later.

Relations with the Maldives were already fraying when Modi took office, but the arrest of former President Mohammed Nasheed led to the cancellation of the PM’s visit as part of his four-nation Indian Ocean tour in March 2015, and a decline reversed only by President Yameen’s defeat in the 2018 general election. 

Relations with Sri Lanka saw an upturn with the defeat of Mahinda Rajapakse in the January 2015 elections. India reportedly played a role in organising the coalition to take on Rajapakse. But soon it became clear that his successor Maithripala Sirisena was not about to move Sri Lanka away from its close ties with China.

Bhutan and Bangladesh, however, remained close to India. Sheikh Hasina’s electoral ascendancy, achieved in the 2014 and 2018 general elections, has brought an era of peace and cooperation between the two countries, even if democracy in Bangladesh has had to pay the price. Doklam has created internal fissures in Bhutan, but its monarchy remains firmly aligned to India.

And then, of course, there is China. Here, too, there was turbulence. Xi and Modi’s reciprocal visits in 2014 and 2015 failed to achieve much. The result was a steady drift that ended with the confrontation in Doklam in 2017. It was only when the two sides realised how destabilising this could be that they drew back and decided to change course through a new dialogue mechanism of unstructured summits, begun in Wuhan in April 2018.  

By now it should be clear that India faces a long-term competition with China in our own South Asian and Indian Ocean Region (SA-IOR) backyard. This may once have been motivated by Beijing’s vulnerabilities in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Malacca dilemma and a desire to keep India in its place, it is now being driven by China’s economic expansion, one that needs newer and bigger markets, including India itself.

Poor policy choices and domestic turmoil have prevented India from unleashing its own economic transformation, one that would give it the wherewithal to compete with China. As a result, we are dependent on who wins an election, a Sirisena or a Rajapakse, a Solih or a Yameen, a Deuba or an Oli, rather than economic or military power that can shape the behaviour of our neighbours.

The challenge of Modi’s current cycle is not so much in the smaller neighbours, but the larger ones—China and Pakistan. Of these, the China track seems to be working well with the second Wuhan-type meeting scheduled in October. What India has to worry about is suffering collateral damage as the US-China trade and technology competition gathers pace.

That leaves Pakistan, easily the most difficult of India’s neighbourhood relationships. The election of Imran Khan provided an opportunity for a fresh start, but one which was frittered away by the BJP’s need to maintain a hostile posture towards Pakistan because of the coming general election. This received an unexpected boost with the Pulwama attack, something that the government exploited brilliantly to win the elections.

But now, New Delhi needs to step back and think. Pakistan has just worked its way back into the good graces of the US, by facilitating the putative Afghan settlement that could see the return of the Taliban into the Afghan mainstream. With its western strategic depth shaping up, Pakistan could either stir up trouble in J&K, or perhaps decide after its futile experience that there is little to be gained in that direction.

The signals are there. Pakistan has arrested Hafiz Saeed, closed down militant camps in POK, shut off the infiltration tap since the beginning of this year and removed Khalistani activists from its gurdwara committees. Not all of these are aimed at staving off the Damocles sword of the Financial Action Task Force and Donald Trump. But perhaps the penny has at last dropped into the minds of Pakistan’s deep state that the jihadi armies are past their ‘use by’ date.

The US has, of course, being pushing publicly and vociferously in this direction. But there are reasons to believe that so is Beijing. This is a delicate juncture for China. It is locked into what could be a life-and-death struggle with the US for markets, technology and influence. The last thing it would want is an India—which has already been shifting towards the US in the past five years—solidify its relationship with the US to the exclusion of China. As for Pakistan, this could well be its last chance.

The Tribune July 23, 2019

Strategic shift, maybe: Could Pakistan be on the cusp of deciding to become a normal state?

India-Pakistan relations stand at a cusp. Pakistan is approaching the sweet spot in Afghanistan where Taliban is set to join the mainstream. After being seen as the villain of the piece, Islamabad is being cast as a guarantor who will ensure that the country will no longer operate as a centre of global jihad. Earlier this month, Islamabad not only sacked pro-Khalistan leader Gopal Singh Chawla from the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (PSGPC), it also went along with India’s insistence that the pilgrims to Kartarpur be given permit free entry to the shrine. Not so well known is that Pakistani infiltration across the LoC into Jammu & Kashmir has virtually come down to zero in 2019. And this includes months in which melting ice actually facilitates it.

It would be easy to put this down to the post-Balakot effect. But taken together with other issues, it would suggest larger forces at play. One is certainly the US which has a major interest in exiting from Afghanistan and ensuring that its departure is not marred by an escalation of violence. This goal has lubricated Prime Minister Imran Khan’s path to Washington DC. Without US goodwill, Pakistan would not have gotten the $6 billion bailout that it recently received from the IMF. Even so, the sword of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) hangs over Islamabad demanding that it fulfil its action plan on money laundering and terror financing. In the last meeting in June, Pakistan managed to avoid being blacklisted. But it remains in the grey list and if it does not complete its action plan by October 2019, it faces being denied loans by a group of powerful countries including the US, China, UK, France, Germany and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

This has resulted in another salutary action by Pakistan – the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and 23 of his accomplices for terror financing and money laundering. This has hit its target in the US, where President Donald Trump believes that his administration’s pressure has led to the action. And finally, there is the Kulbhushan Jadhav verdict which has been hailed by both Khan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It offers the two countries a way out of an issue that retains the potential of poisoning their relationship. From the time he assumed office last year, Khan has the declared intention of seeking peace and dialogue with India. New Delhi was sceptical, in part because the ruling party found it electorally useful to maintain a hard line with Pakistan. Their instincts proved to be correct when the Pulwama terror attack and the Indian counter at Balakot provided an electoral bonanza. Now with the general election over, Modi’s team is in a better position to assess the combination of events we have outlined above. What they suggest is that Pakistan may be on the verge of that strategic shift towards becoming a normal state, one that does not use proxies and terrorists to fight wars with its neighbours.

We say “maybe”, because Pakistan has come to this point many times earlier and pulled back with incidents like the Mumbai attack of 2008 or the Kargil war of 1999 or the bombings of Indian facilities in Kabul. But this time, it is being led by a prime minister who is much more in tune with the army than his predecessors. More important, the pressure for change is coming not just from the dire condition of the Pakistan economy, but also countries like China and the US. New Delhi would be well advised to look at the situation with an open mind or risk being left out of the flow, as in the case of Afghanistan. Modi has articulated a vision of a $5 trillion economy by 2024. You can be sure we will not be there by the designated date, as long as the India-Pakistan relationship remains as toxic as it is today.
Times of India July 20, 2019

At Each Other's Throats, US and China Defy Pragmatism and Compromise

Early in July, some 95 well known China watchers, academics, former officials, economists, including M. Taylor Favel, Michael D. Swaine, J. Stapleton Roy, Susan A. Thornton and Ezra Vogel wrote an open letter to President Donald Trump and the US Congress expressing their concern over “the growing deterioration in US relations with China” and their belief that US behaviour was majorly contributing to this situation.

This has triggered a debate in policy-making and academic circles over America’s China policy. Neil Bush, son of former President George H.W. Bush criticised the “America first” style of the Trump Administration which he said should stop regarding China as an existential threat.

Well known journalist John Pomfret argued that there is no need for the US to return to its gentler policy.

The letter put forward seven propositions:

1) That China’s “troubling behaviour” — greater domestic repression, increased state control over private firms, failure to live up to trade commitments and its aggressive foreign policy — raised serious challenges for the world. They did warrant “a firm and effective” US response, but the “current approach to China is fundamentally counterproductive.”

2) That China was not an “economic enemy” or an “ existential national security threat” . And that many Chinese officials understood that “a moderate, pragmatic and genuinely cooperative approach with the West served Chia’s interests.” If anything Washington’s adversarial approach weakened the influence of those officials.

3) US efforts to treat China as an enemy and decouple it from the global economy would damage the US international role and reputation. The US could not slow China’s rise “without damaging itself.”

4) The notion that Beijing would replace the US “as the global leader is exaggerated.” It was not clear whether China thought such a role was “necessary of feasible.” The best response to China was to work with allies and partners to create a more open and prosperous world in which China also had  chance to participate.

5) The US was unlikely to maintain its pre-eminence in the Western Pacific. Reasserting full-spectrum military dominance upto China’s borders was not  workable proposition, a better option was to work with allies, maintain “a defensive oriented , area denial capabilities and the ability to frustrate attacks on US or allied territory.”

6) The signatories acknowledged that while Beijing was seeking to weaken the role of western democratic norms in the global order, it was not seeking to “overturn vital economic and other components of that order”. A zero-sum approach towards China’s role, would only encourage China to disengage from the system and “sponsor a divided global order.”

7) A successful US approach “must focus on creating enduring coalitions” and a “realistic appraisal of Chinese perceptions, interests, goals and behaviour”.

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with China’s President Xi Jinping at the start of their bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

In response, as it were, the website SinoInsider, run by a group of China experts of Chinese or Taiwanese origin,  came up with a counter view. In their open letter to the president they said that it was important for the Trump administration to stay the course and confront “China’s totalitarian expansionism.”  Their central point was that while China was not an enemy of the US, the Communist Party of China (CPC)  most certainly was.

They attacked the “subversive behaviour” of the CPC and said that the Trump administration’s approach had “effectively curbed and even rolled back the CPC’s steady erosion of the global order.”

The history of the CPC indicated that its eventual goal is not co-existence, but domination.

In their view, the Trump administration’s strategies had created conditions that could bring about “tremendous positive change in China for the Chinese people, the US and the world.” In their view, the current US-China conflict was not just a trade or tech war, “but a critical battle of ideology, value systems and morality.”

Not surprisingly, the open letter was praised by China. The Global Times cited an expert to argue that the difference between the letter and the Trump administration’s approach to China was that while the former viewed “China as a competitor, the latter views China as a pure enemy.” While the former advocated “legal and rational” competition, the latter used “reckless, sometimes even illegal methods, to contain China’s developments.”

In response to a question, the official spokesman Geng Shuang said that “we commend the rational and objective views in it.” He went on to elucidate that China and the US were not enemies, cooperation was the only way forward and that China believed that US-China relations would get back on to an even keel. He said that in his view, “objective, rational and pragmatic” voices would eventually prevail “over paranoid, fanatic and zero-sum game views.”

Certainly, the Trump administration’s handling of China has been impetuous and self-defeating. This was manifest in the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership that led to the loss of American leverage over China. The handling of the tariff issue, too, seems to be more of a soap opera than a serious negotiation.

Maligning Huawei and scientists and researchers of Chinese origin without offering any substantive proof has been another issue. Perhaps the most pernicious tendency has been to take a unilateral approach, ignoring friends and allies.

At the same time, it is difficult to ignore the patterns of Chinese behaviour since the financial crisis of 2008. Whether it was the Sino-Indian border, the South China Sea or the Diayou/Senkaku islands, we have seen greater Chinese assertiveness. The Uighur saga is still playing itself out with a million people put in re-education camps. The difficulties in Hong Kong are a manifestation of this changed situation. It is true that in the wake of the economic crisis, there was a sharp surge as China’s relative power grew, manifested in both economic and military terms. But where it may have been useful for Beijing to encourage strategic trust, it has instead only invoked a sense of unease and even fear.

The debate is likely to remain in the sphere of the media and academics. The Trump administration doesn’t really take expert advice on anything. There are important truths in both points of view, but the trick till now is in them being able to co-exist. However, recent trends suggest a tendency towards brinksmanship defying pragmatism and compromise.

The Wire July 15, 2019

Apprehensions in the Valley

A short visit to the Valley reveals that the sense of alienation is so total now that even provocations — the arbitrary five-hour ban on traffic on the main highway leading into the Valley for the duration of the Amarnath yatra — has raised only token protest. On paper, the situation is better than the past two years with surface calm and no hartals and stone-pelting.

Officials say that there is a distinct downturn of Pakistani activity and camps have been closed even in the POK area. There are signals that Islamabad and Rawalpindi (they are now joined at the hip) want to resume the dialogue that was rudely interrupted in 2007 with the collapse of the Musharraf presidency. 

But this could well be deceptive calm, akin to the situation on the eve of the Burhan Wani killing in 2016 that triggered mass protests and an upsurge of insurgency. But in this case, it means the new Home Minister Amit Shah seems to be in a different mood, laid out in two successive speeches at the end of June, which indicated that the man, whose administrative experience has been limited to Gujarat, was remarkably ill-equipped to deal with the complexity of a country like India. He spoke about the need to separate the people of the Valley from political parties being run by family elites. Just how he intended to bring this about was less clear, though the talk about panchayati raj had a touch of Gen Ayub Khan’s ‘basic democracy’ about it. Of course, the bottom line was that the government will continue its hardline approach to eliminate the insurgency or ‘terrorism’, as he characterised it.

Equally, he criticised Nehru for the ceasefire of December 1948. But had India actually recaptured the entire state, this would have today meant an addition of 4.5 million, mainly Muslim residents of ‘Azad Kashmir’ and Gilgit-Baltistan into the 12.5 million current population of J&K. The proportion of Muslims in the state could have risen to more than 77 per cent (it is currently around 68 per cent). Whether the BJP would really have been happy about that outcome is something we can speculate on.   

But what has generated disquiet in the Valley was the reference to Article 370 that the Home Minister ominously underlined was ‘temporary in nature’. It is no secret that as a political party, the BJP, and its predecessor, the Jana Sangh, have vehemently opposed the provision in the Constitution. Their slogan— Ek Vidhan, ek Pradhan, ek Nishan (one Constitution, one leader and one symbol) — was raised to protest the special status given to J&K. The reality today is that most of the special provisions that really mattered have been eroded. Today, J&K is even more closely held by New Delhi than any of the other larger states. True, there are still unique provisions in the state’s Constitution but these are more by way of being irritants, rather than obstacles to national policy.

By attacking Article 370, the BJP wants even the fig leaf that covers J&K’s nakedness to be stripped away. And that is why Amit Shah’s comment in Parliament has deepened the gloom in the Valley. Some, including police officers posted in the state, are openly talking about the need to take up an entirely new ‘assimilation approach’. This sounds chillingly like what China is attempting in Xinjiang. Just what ‘assimilating’ 7 million Valley residents into the Indian state would involve is difficult to imagine. Presumably, detention camps, mass re-education classes, perhaps even the dreaded Chinese laogai, or thought reform through labour.

The current situation is serious because of the unrelenting negative narrative. In the hype of Balakot, we have forgotten that it was triggered by Adil Ahmad Dar, a local suicide bomber. Forgotten, too, is the rise of allegations of torture by the security forces and the death in custody of a schoolteacher, Rizwan Asad Pandit, in May.

The sense of alienation has kept afloat the local sentiment for militancy which is presently limited because obtaining arms and ammunition is no longer as easy as it was in the 1990s. But the human material is there and if it gets the right combination of incendiary materials, it can be re-lit and explode. Equally dangerous is the fact that those ready to take up arms are no longer talking about azadi or Pakistan — they are fighting for Allah, faith and jihad.

The militancy has now become a South Kashmir phenomenon, as against its northern Valley orientation in the past. It is not surprising that the Pakistani support efforts have been focusing on trying to expand it in Poonch and Kishtwar as well.  

Home Minister Shah comes from a political background that is not particularly well-inclined towards Muslims. But even so, his moves may only be tactical. If so, they are misdirected. Parties like the NC and PDP have done signal service to the country in bringing back Kashmir from the brink.

 If the government wants to halt the slide in J&K, it may be a good idea for Shah or the Prime Minister himself to make a public announcement that they do not intend to touch the ‘temporary’ Article 370, or 35A. If the government is serious about bringing about economic transformation, it should understand that that will not happen as long as long as there is no peace and tranquility in the country and its periphery.

The Tribune July 9, 2019

Decisions on US-India Issues Will Not Be Taken by the Pompeos and the Jaishankars

Has all the carefully articulated and sensibly structured outcome of the Pompeo-Jaishankar meeting gone up in smoke after a Donald Trump tweet demanding that India withdraw the tariffs it has recently imposed on US goods?

Donald J. Trump

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I look forward to speaking with Prime Minister Modi about the fact that India, for years having put very high Tariffs against the United States, just recently increased the Tariffs even further. This is unacceptable and the Tariffs must be withdrawn!

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Difficult to say. It is quite possible that President Trump and US secretary of state Mike Pompeo are playing “good cop-bad cop” with a view of pushing India down the road they want us to take.

But what’s clear is that the decisions on issues between India and the US will not be taken by the Pompeos and the Jaishankars, but at the level of their principals – Prime Minister Modi and President Trump.

On the other hand, it could also signal that of all the irritants that have emerged in Indo-US relations – the S-400 deal, Iran, data localisation, tariffs – the one closest to the president’s heart remains tariffs. Trump has, to the bafflement of Indians, visited the issue several times in the past. Recall his demand for a lowering of tariffs on Harley Davidson motorcycles

External affairs minister S. Jaishankar noted that both sides now had a “better understanding of each other’s concerns” on issues like trade, energy, defence, investment concerns, people to people contacts, the issues relating to Iran and Afghanistan.

What we have heard from Pompeo, are his priorities, not his president’s. In an interview with the Times of India, Pompeo spoke of the challenges on trade and the S-400 deals. He said “We will work through those,” suggesting that there could be some negotiated settlement on both the issues.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugging US President Donald Trump in 2017. Image: Reuters

Data localisation and excluding China

Equally interesting was his response on the issue of data localisation, where he suggested that the two countries will try and arrive at a technical fix that could meet India’s “law enforcement” needs.

This issue is connected with another Pompeo project – blocking China from becoming a dominant player in the world’s digital economy. The first and urgent step here is to block the spread of Huawei’s 5G technology. The eventual goal is a technosphere that excludes China in terms of moving, saving, handling and protecting data.

Also Read: Iran Slams Pompeo’s Remarks in Delhi, Accuses US of ‘Pushing for Instability’

India was able to navigate the Cold War period because the US and Soviet Union were indeed autonomous spheres – they had their own standards for products, their own protocols and procedures and there was little trade between the two blocs.

In the current period, we are in a situation where China and the US are closely entangled and the process of decoupling that the US wants to bring can be a messy and expensive affair, not just for India, but other parts of the world.

The vexed issue with India is not just about tariffs and reducing the trade imbalance. The US wants greater market access for its agricultural goods, dairy products, medical devices, IT and communication products. But many of these are sensitive in India because they would be deeply unpopular among farmers, the IT industry and ordinary consumers. It is possible that Trump sees India as a good replacement fit for what his base back home is losing with regard to China in the area of agriculture and dairy products.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo with external affairs minister S. Jaishankar. Photo: Twitter/Raveesh Kumar

Defence cooperation with the US

We did not hear much about the S-400 from Pompeo. Maybe he has clearly heard Jaishankar’s comment that India’s position would be guided by its national interest and that “it is important to display trust and confidence in each other” if India and the US want to make defence cooperation a going concern. Pompeo’s remarks suggest that the US has little option but to stand and watch as India goes ahead with the deal.

But we have not heard the last of it. The ambitious US goal is to completely detatch India from its ex-Soviet connection and link it to its own military industrial complex. Another approach towards the same goal is to emphasise the importance of interoperability of Indian and US military forces.

As for Iran, Pompeo conveniently shifted the blame on Tehran, as if the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear programme never existed and the US had never signed up to it. It is one thing to claim that the US is playing a huge role in India’s energy security, and quite another to prevent India from accessing hydrocarbons from the cheapest and most proximate source – Iran. As for India, it may have stopped importing oil from Iran under US pressure, but it certainly does not view Tehran as an international outlaw and a threat to regional peace.

Also Read: Let’s Speak out Strongly in Favour of Religious Freedom: Mike Pompeo in Delhi

The value of the relationship

What is clear is that both sides have a healthy appreciation of the value of the relationship to them, though both sometimes privately question it and accuse the other side of not delivering. Pompeo put it directly when he said that “not only is the US important to India, but India is very important to the US”.

In line with this, both sides are interested in resolving issues, rather than precipitating crises. However, Trump has his own agenda and his own timetable. This adds uncertainty to the efforts of the ministers of both sides to smoothen things.

Washington’s approach to New Delhi is certainly advantageous and useful for India. As we have seen in the last five years, besides direct gains, benefits also flow from US allies and friends like Saudi Arabia, Japan and UAE. The challenge for India is to be able to effectively exploit the US connection without compromising its vital interests. The real problem begins when you realize that this country, which still lacks a written National Security Strategy (NSS), has no common understanding of what those are.

The Wire June 27, 2019

India-US Relationship: Pragmatic Cooperation the Way Ahead?

If people expected some fireworks after the meeting between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, they would have been disappointed. Though this was billed as some kind of a make or break meeting, it turned out to have a practical and sensible outcome.

Both sides agreed that they had differences and that they needed to work out ways of managing them. As Jaishankar noted, “great friends are bound to have differences.” But what marks the quality of the relationship, he added, was the ability of the two sides to deal with them.

There is every indication from the press briefing that the two sides have understood this.

Trade, Sanctions, H1B Visa & More

Perhaps the most ticklish issue was that of the Russian S-400 system which the US says India should not buy, threatening sanctions if we do so. But the other problems were no less daunting.

The US had ended trade concessions to India at the beginning of this month and in retaliation, India finally implemented tariffs it had been threatening to impose for the past year on 28 US items.

A third issue pertained to a decision India had already taken, to cut off oil purchases from Iran. There were also a clutch of other issues – the H1B visa, the issue of restrictions on e-commerce and caps on the prices of US-origin medical devices.

It is unlikely that the two sides would have resolved all their issues in the space of a single meeting between the two foreign ministers.

Also Read : ‘Iran Largest Terror Sponsor’: Pompeo at Briefing With Jaishankar

What was important, however, was the timing of the Pompeo-Jaishankar talks, just a couple of days before the meeting of their principals – President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet at the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka.

It is significant that the two leaders have not met each other for some 18 months. This is perhaps the major reason why so many problems accumulated and an impression gained ground that the US-India relationship was in trouble.

In this era of centralisation of power by leaders, such summits are important, because they are often the occasion of the resolution of many issues that appear intractable.

Below the level of principals, of course, there have been a number of meetings. The most prominent was the ‘2+2’ dialogue between the foreign and defence ministers of the two countries last September.

While a number of practical issues and ongoing cooperation moved up a couple of notches, the substantive ones were not taken up.

Significantly, there is no formal dialogue at the ministerial level on trade and it is not surprising that trade issues are the ones that seem to have gained salience in recent times.

Also Read : Pompeo Meeting Jaishankar: What’s On The Table For India & US?

In fact, perhaps the time has come when the ‘2+2’ should become a ‘3+3’ with the addition of the commerce ministers.

It is unlikely that the two sides will be gauche enough to put out any sharp differences that emerged in the talks. In any case, whatever Pompeo and Jaishankar discussed would be subject to approval or veto by their principals who will now meet in Osaka.

‘India to Be Guided By Its Own Interest’

It is significant that Jaishankar noted that India would be guided by its own interests when it comes to purchasing defence systems from Russia.

“We have relationships with several countries, many of which are of some standing. They have a history. We will do what is in our national interest,” he said.

His remark, that “It is important to display trust and confidence in each other if we want this (defence cooperation) to grow” is a signal to the US that it should not hold the larger defence relationship hostage to this issue.

In the case of Turkey, the Americans have practical worries that secrets of their F-35 would be compromised if the Turks acquire the S-400. In the case of India, there are no such immediate concerns. The US goal seems to be a long term one, of weaning away India from its Russian defence connection.

But things are not that simple. The Russians may be the base of the Indian defence equipment pyramid, but they are also the apex. In other words, they provide or help us develop weapons and platforms for our strategic use. This has included the cross-section of our strategic missiles, the SSBN Arihant, and the Brahmos system.

In the next ten years, they could be helping us develop nuclear attack submarines, the Brahmos-2 hypersonic missile, besides leasing us nuclear attack submarines. These are things the Americans will not touch with a barge-pole.

Of course, as the US says these days, we are natural strategic partners, “profoundly intertwined” and the bonds between us are “unbreakable.” But the US is generally known as a fickle friend and being the global hegemon, what it says and does is what matters.

Pompeo’s call for India and the US, to “stand up for religious freedom”, were not idle remarks.

They contained within them the warning that when the US wants to fix you, it has many instruments to do so – human rights, religious freedom, nuclear proliferation,  IPR issues, trade issues, to name but a few and obvious ones.

Given the growing economic and military gap between India and China, we need the US to maintain a balance vis-à-vis Beijing in South Asia.

Likewise, the US needs us to offset Beijing’s growing attraction in the Indo-Pacific region. But neither the US nor India should assume that the other’s need is so great that they have no other options.

The way to go is practical and pragmatic cooperation. And that seemed to be the message of the Pompeo-Jaishankar meeting.

India stands at a sweet spot geopolitically. The world’s foremost power, the US, is keen on close relations with us. This is a huge opportunity which, if exploited effectively, can help us accelerate our economic transformation – the only rational goal Indian foreign policy can and should have.

China and Pakistan have been there and derived huge benefits. Our time has come, provided we can figure out how to play the Americans, rather than have them play us.

Quint June 27, 2019