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@Evening: 🪤 India Shouldn't Fall Into Uncle Sam's Wine, Dine, And Pomp Trap
The Indian media has amusingly, even depressingly, gone ga-ga over how the Joe Biden administration is laying a thick, bright red carpet for PM Narendra Modi, and then some.
Context: Biden is not inviting Modi for dinner because he wants to treat India as an equal; it is to get us to sign on the dotted line as a lower-level ally with as little American concession as possible.
Biden is trying to slow down or reverse India’s growing ability to defend its own interests despite US pressure, as was the case with our stand on the Russia-Ukraine war and oil purchases from the former, Swarajya editorial director R Jagannathan writes.
Throwing in a free meal or a televised speech to Congress costs the US nothing if India agrees to go along with it on most geopolitical issues.
Make no mistake: This is about a genuine hard power trying to get a softer power to toe the line. PM Modi should not fall for this.
Misreading the cues. Chowtime with the Bidens does not mean the US Deep State will discontinue its hostility to Modi’s “Hindu nationalist” government.
Even as Uncle Sam took his time to appoint an ambassador to India, the man who got the job after a long wait, Eric Garcetti, has promised US lawmakers that he will raise human rights concerns with India.
Recent comments from top officials in the Biden administration that India is a vibrant democracy should be seen as soft-soap ahead of the Modi visit to the US.
Past realities. Indians tend to misread symbolic gestures and words as the real thing. It's happened one too many times before.
During his meetings with Jawaharlal Nehru before China annexed Tibet, then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai pretended to be an eager student to Nehru’s knowledge of geopolitics.
More recently, we should have been able to separate soft signals from hard realities after what China did in Galwan in June 2020.
India's growing stature. India is a $3.75 trillion economy and could surpass Germany and Japan in the coming years to become the world’s third-largest.
It is a rising hard power, but there is nothing inevitable about this rise. But the mere possibility worries not just China, but the US too.
The US wants India to join its camp as a junior partner — like the UK, Japan, and Germany have — before it becomes an independent force all by itself.
India must pursue hard power on its own terms, and the way to get the respect of the US and China is by growing its economy and military steadily despite attempts by the Big Two to undermine this process.
Bottom line: We must talk softly and focus on acquiring a big stick. We must do more, talk less. Soft power will become useful only after hard power is achieved.
Read R Jagannathan's original article in Swarajya today.
