Please do not construe anything in this post as a defense of the tariffs President Trump imposed on goods imported from India. I have already made my views on tariffs quite clear: I do not think that the U. S. should impose tariffs on the goods of any country other than China and China is a special case. Fareed Zakaria’s latest Washington Post column raised a number of questions for me and I wanted to point them out. In the column after summarizing the last 30 years of U. S.-India relations he criticizes the tariffs President Trump has imposed on India harshly:
With little warning, Trump has undone decades of painstaking work by U.S. diplomats. He placed India in the highest category of U.S. tariffs, now set to be 50 percent, in the company of Syria and Myanmar, while setting a 19 percent levy for Pakistan (which is now closely allied with China) and announcing joint, probably futile, efforts to look for oil there. He met with Pakistan’s army chief in private, and a Trump family-backed firm has had ties to the Pakistan Crypto Council — fueling suspicions that backroom deals were conducted.
That’s not where my questions are. A little above that he writes:
India is a prickly country. It was colonized and dominated by the West, ruled by Britain for two centuries.
Was India ever “colonized and dominated” by the United States? I don’t recall that. Please explain. I always like to learn new things.
I think he needs to be more specific than “the West”. India was colonized and dominated by Britain, France, and Portugal not “the West”. Or, alternatively, you could hold the view I’ve asserted here from time to time: the term “the West” is a phrase used by the British when they want to draw the U. S. into their wars, generally to pull their onions out of the fire. That’s why although they scoffed at the U. S. after we freed ourselves from their rule in our Revolutionary War and for more than a century thereafter we began to hear about “the West” when they went to war with the Central Powers and again when they went to war with the Axis Powers. Yes, the U. S. has things in common with Britain, e.g. we are, as G. B. Shaw put it, divided by a common language, there are a lot of people of English, Scottish, and Irish descent here, we were colonized by them, etc. India has many of the same things in common with Britain but it’s not reflexively included in “the West”.
Mr. Zakaria fails to mention that from independence until the 1990s India was, basically, an autarky. That was consistent with Gandhi’s vision for India. That closer relations with the U. S. developed in the 1990s and India opened its trade (slightly) in the 1990s were no coincidence. IMO they also had less to do with Clinton Administration diplomacy than they did with Indian realization that their experiment in “socialism with Indian characteristics” had failed. There are many in India who want to go back to strict “self-reliance”.
Something else that Mr. Zakaria conveniently fails to mention is the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was founded in 1980 and has had control of India since 2014. Despite India having a Muslim population of 200 million Indians, the central value of the BJP is “Hinduness”. I question whether the United States can confidently ally with a country ruled by a party with Hinduness as its central value.
Mr. Zakaria continues:
India has long sought to remain nonaligned. Under Modi, it embraced a variation called “multi-alignment,” which, theoretically, allows the country to maintain good ties with all sides. Persistent American diplomacy and the rise of China had been chipping away at this stance, and slowly but surely India had been developing closer ties with America. No more.
Even if Trump again reverses course, the damage has been done. Indians believe that the United States has shown its true colors: its unreliability, its willingness to treat its friends badly. They will understandably feel that, to hedge their bets, they need to stay close to Russia — and even make amends with China. The country is united in its shock and anger at Trump’s insulting behavior.
Ham-handed as Mr. Trump may be, I think that Mr. Zakaria is misinterpreting events and India’s behavior. India’s first interest is India. It will work with other countries including Russia, China, and the United States when it serves their interests and won’t when it doesn’t. But the Indians are well aware that China is much more of a threat to them than the U. S. and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. When was the last time the U. S. and Indian soldiers exchanged fire? To the best of my knowledge never. When was the last time they exchanged fire with Chinese soldiers? Last week? A couple of months ago? That’s why I doubt there is any China-India alliance in the offing.
An Indian military alliance with anyone seems very unlikely. However, India is a member of both BRICS+ and the SCO, both of which include both China and Russia. Moreover, BRICS+ is rapidly growing in membership, and now has about 55% of the world’s population and 45% of its economy. BRICS+ now dwarfs the G7. It seems clear that BRICS+ will dominate the rest of the Century, so India may well find a way to resolve its differences with both China and Pakistan. A settlement is in all their interests, and it is something Russia wants and will work to get.
China is India’s largest trading partner with India importing more from China than it exports to India. This is despite their disputes. There had been some movement to expand imports from other countries. One would suspect India might now look unfavorably on the US. Do I think this will make India and China military allies? Doubtful, but we are probably wont sell them nay F-22s besides losing some trade.
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-india-economic-ties-trade-investment-and-opportunities/
Steve
In theory, “allies” is a two way street. Looking from another perspective, is it conceivable that the US would fight a war on India’s side if there was a war between India and Pakistan? Or take India’s side in it’s claims over Kashmir. I don’t see it.
If being “allies” was never on the table; then the relationship has a common interest of finding counterweights to China. Trump’s surprise was he overthrew the perception that India value to the US was so high the US had to swallow India’s pursuit geopolitical interests even if they ran counter to US interests.
Just remember, the imposed tariffs is modest despite the headlines, it excludes IPhones and the IT services trade.
That’s why the concept of “spheres of influence” makes sense, CuriousOnlooker. AFAICT the primary barrier to moving more towards such an approach is those in the U. S. who cling to the notion of U. S. primacy.
One thing that other countries need to recognize about the U. S. is that we are necessarily an Atlantic AND a Pacific power. In other words we can only back off so far.
In contrast Russia, China, and India are poorly located to be a global military powers, either alone or together. Each, however, is a regional superpower in overlapping regions. That intrinsic conflict is why I’m not particularly worried that they’ll make common cause against us. The Chinese leaders are smart (smarter than ours). They surely recognize that.