Converging views of India and U.S:
- Modi and Mr. Trump are two leaders who are rewriting the notion of national interest itself — for instance, secularism was considered to be India’s national interest until recently; immigration and trade were considered to be in America’s national interest.
- A general presumption informing scholarship on international relations is that there is a non-negotiable and unchanging precept of national interest that determines the conduct of nations.
- Trump and Mr. Modi are guided by nationalisms that have cultural and economic components. In both, their views converge in some aspects and conflict in some others. For instance, on the cultural front, they could cooperate on global Islamism.
- Source of conflict :
- The growing presence of Indians in America is a source of conflict.
- The sustained squeeze on Indian guest workers entering the U.S., particularly through the H-1B visa programme, is a case in point.
- Modi’s politics involves boosting the global Hindu; but Indian Americans are cultural aliens to Mr. Trump’s supporters, besides being seen to be their economic adversaries.
- Trump has upended American strategy in two fundamental aspects. His approach to international ties gives precedence for commerce over the strategic, and workers over corporations.
- Professional strategists conventionally understood the U.S.’s international ties from the perspective of its multinational corporations.
- These corporations wanted cheap manufacturing in China and Southeast Asia and U.S. policy enabled that pursuit.
- Corporations wanted cheap labour from India by outsourcing work and importing workers into the U.S. But Mr. Trump does not want American work coming to India, or Indian workers going to America; Mr. Modi wants both.
- Trump’s disinterest in strategic matters and obsession with selling meet Mr. Modi’s desire for arms acquisition.
Country specific perspectives:
What India wants from U.S?
- Investment, technology, arms, but does not want finished products (other than arms) or foreign ideas — Christianity, an open global market, the right to self-determination, human rights, Western strands of democracy coming through missionaries, international bodies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
What America wants to sell to India?
- This list does not entirely correspond to what Mr. Trump wants to sell — he wants to sell only finished products at lower tariffs, and keep technology and capital within the borders of America protected.
U.S concerns:
- When commerce becomes the only lens that the U.S. sees the world through, India and China look similar — trying to extract benefits from it.
- Trump sees India and China as two similar countries that are taking advantage of America with protectionism, weak intellectual property protection, and higher emissions under the climate treaty, the strategic reason for India-U.S. alignment, which is the menacing rise of China, gets weakened.
- One war that Mr. Trump wants to end (in Afghanistan) and another war that he appears to be itching to begin (with Iran) have major implications for India and its ties with the U.S. India wants America’s continued engagement in Afghanistan and peace with Iran.
Conclusion:
The point being that India-U.S. cooperation on terrorism has several components to be factored in and the Indian euphoria surrounding Mr. Trump’s relentless bluster against Pakistan needs to tempered with some realism.
The Hindutva nationalists in India have a deep suspicion of China and its intention and they consider the U.S. as an ally and a partner, but the tactical nature of that approach is not hidden or unstated. The cultural suspicion of the U.S. itself is an additional factor.