New chapter in India-US relations under Biden

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New chapter in India-US relations under Biden

Sunday, 21 March 2021 | Manan Dwivedi

New chapter in India-US relations under Biden

The global media has placed the agenda upright and has aptly covered the slew of executive orders signed by US President Joe Biden on the first day of his Presidency.

The “Make America Great” again agenda of former President Donald Trump could not prop him up as a successful candidate as his mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis seemingly did him in if one adheres to the casus belli of a section of American observers.

Still, what seemed akin to being a diplomatic tour de force for Prime Minister Narendra Modi vis-a-vis his American counterpart might turn into a stringent and stern tight ropewalk during the Presidency of Biden. President Trump emphatically declared Modi to be the “true friend” of his during his various negotiations and summitries ranging from the razzmatazz of Howdy Modi in Houston, Texas, to the summitry at the Motera stadium in Ahmedabad.

The blitz of the Trump-Modi tango might have been cut short by the mathematics of plain-Jane electoralism in the American homeland but the show must go on, as they contend!

New Delhi is also much relieved with the immigration related executive orders promulgated by President Biden which improve the numerical health of the Indian nationals to reach the shores of the United States as legal immigrants.

Seemingly, it might seem like an early bird call but, still, the India America camaraderie along with the insistence on Malabar naval exercises might be good and pious indicators of the larger feel of the India-America relations which have often been referred to as “a special relationship,” since the recent past.

President Biden and the quintessential pet peeve of the traditional Democrats have always been centered on to the narrative of human rights. The American and the Democrat standpoint on Kashmir, the abrogation of Article 370 and the farmers’ agitation in India, have raised disgruntled voices and referee calls from the US.

This American standpoint will appear as a grave challenge for the New Delhi denomination where-in India will have to up the ante against its adversarial nation states and several other international actors by attaining the supporting voice of the Americans.

Still, the talk of the “demos”, which has been promptly put down and relegated to the backburner by a few IR observers, has made a comeback with the “value commonality” between New Delhi and Washington. A White House release significantly briefs us about the Biden tango with India in next four years, to unfold before our eyes. The release contends, “The President underscored his desire to defend democratic institutions and norms around the world and noted that a shared commitment to democratic values is the bedrock of the US-India relationship.”

What needs to be ebulliently underscored, is, the fact that the shared value argument is welcome in the India-US narrative with the traditionalists in the Democrats seated in the Capitol Hill making a grand comeback and delivering a blow to the neutrally aligned nay sayers in the establishment in the United States.

President Biden, formerly as the Vice President of the United States and being the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has, always stood by the Indian diaspora. President Biden’s releases inform us that diversity and communities’ empowerment will be the new motto of the new White House dispensation.

The Biden release contends, “Biden will work in partnership with these communities; celebrate their extraordinary contributions to America’s success, prosperity, and safety; listen to Indian Americans’ needs; and put in place policies that address their priorities. Indian Americans, like all Americans, are deeply invested in the core elements of our future — education, access to high-quality, affordable health care, addressing the climate crisis, and reforming and modernising our immigration system in a way that aligns with our values.”

One “elemental” is there for the reckoning that former President Trump’s role play with China ranged from getting his daughter sing for Xi Xingpin to announcing a full-fledged and lethal trade contest with China. Such an approach often enraged and confused both the liberal and rightwing observers of US foreign policy in the context of Beijing.

Still, New Delhi depended on the American succour on the border standoff and stealthy aggressions of China at conflict hot spots ranging from Doklam to Pangong lake. The American beneficence in the light of the hegemonic and interventionist tirade of the People’s Liberation Army has been a crucial win-win component of India’s foreign policy which makes us anticipate dearly about President Biden’s policy on India and China.

The American intransigence for Beijing is the need of the hour in a post-Trump era of ruminations and foreign policy making.  It is this stand of the future pertaining to the US foreign policy, which, needs to be understood and deciphered by an immediate response by New Delhi and other affected nation state actors in the Asia Pacific.

Still, the immediate American reticence on curtailing the 25 per cent tariffs on all Chinese imports, along with the stress on rebuilding alliances and coalitions with a new, “Let’s Re-engage” policy, needs to be welcomed by India.

What is being feared is that this policy statement arising from the White House pulpit need not turn into unwelcome interventionism by former Presidents in the nineties.

Quite significantly, Joseph Nye Junior in his recent work, “Do Morals Matter: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump,” has noted the change in strumming between the various Democrat and Republican Presidencies in the political firmament in the United States of America. 

Joseph Nye Jr stresses, “Wilson was a liberal idealist but he did not practice universal human rights. As a southerner, he shared the racial prejudices and as well as the prevailing Anglo-Saxon chauvinism of his times as American liberalism had long accommodated first slavery and segregation.”

Can we earnestly hope and anticipate that President Biden will adhere to the moralism of US foreign policy which can be deftly utilised to strengthen and deepen the bonds of the India-US partnership? Such an optimistic talk intended to drum up a furtherance of India-US convergence needs to be the order of the day as straightjacket stipulations of liberalism, idealism and realism are no longer what the global IR doctor prescribes. We are bound to experience an era, where in the United States led by President Biden has surfaced with the global engagement stratagem for the entire international system thus bearing positive ramifications for New Delhi.

(The writer teaches at International Relations and International Organisations, IIPA)

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