Signing you in

It was an American diplomat, Dennis Kux, who famously termed the United States and India “estranged democracies” during the Cold War era. The historic India-US civil nuclear energy agreement, authored by President George Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was seen as converting them into “engaged democracies”. That honeymoon is not viewed any longer as having lasted more than a decade. President Donald Trump, it is widely believed, has downgraded a “strategic partnership”, what President Barack Obama called the “defining partnership of the 21st century”, to a purely transactional relationship.

The recent visit of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is being interpreted as an attempt to reduce the transactionalism and return to a more “strategic” relationship based on “geopolitical” convergence. However, it bears mentioning that even this “convergence” of interests is defined by transactionalism. The fact is that the so-called India-US strategic partnership was always based on a transactional foundation. Several quid pro quos defined the terms of negotiations of the nuclear deal. India’s willingness to sign on to “A New Framework for the US-India Defence Relationship” in June 2005 was the key that opened the door to negotiations on a nuclear deal.

The framework established a Defence Policy Group that would, as the agreement stated, “expand two-way defence trade between our countries. The United States and India will work to conclude defence transactions, not solely as ends in and of themselves, but as a means to strengthen our countries’ security, reinforce our strategic partnership, achieve greater interaction between our armed forces, and build greater understanding between our defence establishments.”

The intention was to secure an opening-up of the Indian defence market to US business, reducing India’s dependence on Russia. Going beyond this commitment, India was required to reduce dependence on oil imports from Iran and Venezuela. The US establishment drove a hard bargain that finally required a presidential veto to get the agreement signed. Credit must go to Bush for taking a long-term view of India’s economic rise and restricting the element of transactionalism in the partnership.

Bush viewed India’s rise as a global public good and in itself serving US strategic interests. Trump upended that perspective when he made the relationship mainly transactional. Whatever the rhetoric that now fills up new documents signed by the two governments, the fact is that the US establishment is no longer willing to give India a free pass.

This in itself is understandable. What has come to hurt the relationship is the fact that the US has taken steps unmindful of the consequences for India. The unilateral actions on the trade front, the support to Israel in destabilising the Gulf, pushing oil and gas prices up and reducing access to these, and the new relationship with Pakistan all have adverse geopolitical and geo-economic consequences for India.

The weaponisation of trade, finance and energy flows by the US, with its allies playing second fiddle, has deeply hurt Indian economic interests, impacting India’s economic rise, and as a consequence, its national security and global standing. Barely two years ago, the New Delhi establishment was celebrating India’s emergence as the world’s third-largest economy. As a consequence of both domestic and global developments, India has slipped back to the sixth rank.

While Indian political leadership and media celebrate the achievements of high-profile Indian Americans, it should be remembered that they are now increasingly American and less Indian. They have become an important part of the engine of American economic resurgence. As US Congressman Jim Himes put it candidly, Indian Americans are “a secret weapon for (American) economic growth”.

Second, people-to-people connect means little when larger geopolitical and national interests are in play and define Trump’s “America First” policy. Despite all the visible nationalism of overseas Indians, on display every time Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels abroad, non-resident Indians (NRIs) have become “non-returning Indians”. Moreover, the communalisation of the Indian diaspora and growing Western concerns about the direction of Indian domestic politics, with implications for minority rights, have also come to limit the so-called “soft power” of the diaspora.

It is time for Indian policymakers and analysts to come to terms with the reality of a fundamental shift away from the “strategic partnership”, which defined the move from “estrangement” to “engagement” at the turn of the century and in the first decade-and-a-half, to the more “what’s in it for me” transactionalism that has come to define a restrained relationship.

It is just as well that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar defined India’s approach to the new realities of the world as “multi-alignment”. The full meaning and implications of multi-alignment appear not to have sunk into the minds of analysts and media. If actions taken by both the US and China are hurting Indian economic interests, then Indian policy must be based on a recognition of this fact. Neither power is going to help build India as a third pole of the global economy.

Addressing the Constituent Assembly in December 1949, Jawaharlal Nehru famously said that India’s foreign policy would have to be defined by her economic policy and interests. The Modi government’s policy of atmanirbharta is defined by the same approach. India’s external relationships must once again give precedence to our national economic interests and not be defined only by concerns about defence and security.