Since the dawn of the 21st century, the US strategy has been to woo India and to build it up as a counterweight to rising China in the Indo-Pacific region. Most beltway analysts agree with this policy. However, the current Trump administration has taken significant actions, such as the imposition of 50% tariffs on India's exports to the US, that appear to defy this conventional wisdom widely shared in the West. Does President Trump have a grand strategy guiding these actions? George Friedman, the founder of Geopolitical Futures, believes the answer is Yes.
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| George Friedman |
George Friedman is an American futurologist, political scientist, and writer. He writes about international relations. He is the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures. Prior to founding Geopolitical Futures, he was chairman of the publishing company Stratfor
In a recent podcast, Friedman said "India is not an essential country from the American standpoint". "They (Indians) are a useful ally, but precisely not indispensable and in fact, not really able to give us what we want", he added. "They do participate in the quad, but their naval force is not significantly needed. The quad being an alliance basically against China at sea. And simultaneously, it was discovered that their economic capacity is far below what we need. So it was not that they were dispensable, but at the same time, it was not something that we had to take into account greatly".
Getting tough with the Indians also allowed the US to "signal to the Chinese that we’re not going to be going to war with them, which they worried about India and to the Russians that we really are going to impose tariffs".
In answer to a question as to whether the Indians might feel the US is using them as "a tool as it tries to reach deals with Russia and China", Friedman said: "this is the problem of weaker nations trying to play games with very strong nations. They get used".
What Friedman has articulated runs counter to a quarter century of the US policy of boosting India to check China. Even some of India's friends in Washington are starting to acknowledge that India is no match to China. Ashley Tellis, a strongly pro-India analyst in the United States, recently wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine titled "India's Great Power Delusions". Here is an excerpt from it:
"Although India has grown in economic strength over the last two decades, it is not growing fast enough to balance China, let alone the United States, even in the long term. It will become a great power, in terms of relative GDP, by midcentury, but not a superpower. In military terms, it is the most significant conventional power in South Asia, but here, too, its advantages over its local rival are not enormous: in fighting in May, Pakistan used Chinese-supplied defense systems to shoot down Indian aircraft. With China on one side and an adversarial Pakistan on the other, India must always fear the prospect of an unpalatable two-front war. Meanwhile, at home, the country is shedding one of its main sources of strength—its liberal democracy—by embracing Hindu nationalism. This evolution could undermine India’s rise by intensifying communal tensions and exacerbating problems with its neighbors, forcing it to redirect security resources inward to the detriment of outward power projection. The country’s illiberal pivot further undermines the rules-based international order that has served it so well".
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3 comments:
Well said
Javed
Very informative and intriguing!
Chinese, Russian, Indian Leaders Pledge Cooperation, in a Message to Trump - The Wall Street Journal.
https://www.wsj.com/world/chinese-russian-indian-leaders-pledge-cooperation-in-a-message-to-trump-faae8d0c?st=ZuYpDm&reflink=article_email_share
These tariffs (on India) are higher than those enacted against China, America’s strategic rival, and have been accompanied by many statements by Trump administration officials that amplify Indian anger. Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, caused particular outcry in recent days by using caste terminology as he said that Indian “Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of the Indian people” with the Russia oil trade. The Trump administration so far hasn’t enacted any additional sanctions on Russia itself, despite repeated threats to do so.
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Trump administration officials have explained their opening to Putin as part of a so-called “reverse Kissinger” strategy that would pry Moscow away from its growing dependence on Beijing, which has provided an economic lifeline to Russia after Western sanctions were imposed because of the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
While the final statement of the Shanghai summit didn’t mention Ukraine, Putin dedicated much of the speech to the war, saying that the “crisis” didn’t begin with the Russian invasion but with what he described as a Western-backed coup in 2014. He added that, for the war to end, the supposed root causes must be addressed—a Kremlin shorthand for Ukrainian aspirations to pursue policies independent from Moscow.
“The ‘reverse Kissinger’ doesn’t work. India’s alignment with the Russia-China dynamic, even partially or pragmatically, would signify the strengthening of a new world order led by China, and a narrowing of the strategic room for maneuver available to the United States and its allies in Asia,” said Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the foreign-affairs committee of the Estonian parliament.
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