Opinion: How Trump's external policies could mean serious collateral damage for India

118411551Narendra Modi is only the third head of government or state, after Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba, to be received in Washington after Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president of the US. This reflects the importance the US under Trump continues to attach to its relations with India. It also reflects the affinity, both personal and ideological, that Modi and Trump appear to share.There were significant and substantive outcomes, as reflected in the joint statement issued on February 13 during Modi’s visit. These include the ‘US-India COMPACT (Catalysing Opportunities for Military Partnership, Accelerated Commerce and Technology) for the 21st Century’, the decision to conclude a new 10-year framework for ‘US-India Major Defence Partnership in the 21st Century’, and an ‘Autonomous Systems Industry Alliance (ASIA)’.The bilateral defence and military relationship will, thus, continue to serve as an anchor, despite unsettling political changes in Washington. The challenge will be on the economic and trade relationship given Trump’s obsession with tariffs and reducing trade deficits with partner countries. Even in the presence of Modi, Trump didn’t hesitate to harshly criticise India on its high tariffs, and called for the imposition of reciprocal tariffs generally.India may have gained some breathing space by holding out the prospect of a limited bilateral trade agreement by autumn this year. More consequential will be India’s willingness to buy more US oil and LNG. Purchase of several military hardware items such as Poseidon long range surveillance aircraft, Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stryker infantry combat vehicles, mentioned in the joint statement, would also help in fending off pressures on the trade front. The announcement of ‘Mission 500’ — the target of raising the volume of bilateral trade to $500 bn by 2030 — may be too ambitious in the current environment.Prospects for Indo-US nuclear energy cooperation, especially in small modular reactors (SMR), will improve once the amendments to India’s civil nuclear liability law are formulated and made known. Optics of the visit were positive. But there was a sour note on the migration issue. Just prior to the visit, GoI was embarrassed by deportation of the first batch of illegal Indian migrants in humiliating and inhumane circumstances. These were widely publicised in the American and Indian media. The visit was followed within days by another such deportation. In both cases, US military aircraft were used. It’s not clear why GoI didn’t insist on using Indian aircraft, or even send a ship to evacuate them. Lack of American sensitivity on this issue and the Indian acquiescence to this mistreatment of its citizens have taken some of the shine from Modi’s visit.While the bilateral front may have been secured for the time being, there could be serious collateral damage from Trump’s external policies. The orderly management of the global commons through established international institutions and multilateral processes is important to developing countries like India. Some may believe that the US walking out of the Paris climate agreement and reviving the fossil fuel industry may take the pressure off India to reduce its carbon emissions. But this would be very short-sighted.Climate change-related disasters, and rising costs of adaptation, would surpass any gains from a delayed transition away from fossil fuels. The US is rejecting any international governance of AI, and this may pose a danger of global proportions.US foreign policy under Trump is creating an unsettling churn in geopolitics. POTUS appears to have regressed to a past when territorial expansion was a marker of power. He wants to own Gaza, take over Greenland and make Canada the 51st state of the US. He respects Russia and China as great powers because like the US, they cover huge land spaces.There is a hemispheric reset in US calculations, leading to a ‘spheres of influence’ kind of thinking. If this leads to China being conceded dominance over Asia, where would this leave India? Why did Trump have to publicly offer to mediate between India and China? Where would this leave the Quad?The biggest loser in this geopolitical game is Europe. Its ‘dumbing down’ at the recently concluded Munich Security Conference was brutal. The US has reached out directly to Russia to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war with neither Ukraine nor Europe being at the table. The choice for Europe is to embrace greater economic and political integration and achieve strategic coherence, or slide into irrelevance.This would be a tragedy for Europe. But it would also affect India, whose long-standing preference for multipolarity needs a united Europe serving as a relatively independent power pole in international affairs.Pragmatism requires that India makes tactical adjustments in its US policy that deflects the immense harm that Washington is capable of inflicting on its friends and adversaries alike. Wherever possible, it should use its partnership with the US to expand its own economic and technological capabilities. But it needs to build its own parallel network of relations and coalitions of interest to safeguard and promote its longer-term interests.The writer is former foreign secretary, GoI