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India’s expanding partnership with the US is marked by a fascinating political puzzle. The relationship has advanced by leaps and bounds even as doubters dominate the public discourse in both Delhi and Washington. The latest evidence comes from the quickening pace of diplomatic engagement between the two capitals.
For months, analysts in Delhi and Washington told us to expect a slowdown, if not setbacks, under the Joe Biden presidency. What we have instead is the likely elevation of the strategic partnership at the first-ever summit of the Quad nations scheduled for this week.
The Quad, or the quadrilateral security dialogue, brings India and the US together along with Washington’s longstanding treaty-allies, Australia and Japan. That the Quad is meeting at the summit level, well before Biden has spent two months at the White House, underlines the growing gap between our foreign policy debate and policy.
The roots of this problem, on the Indian side at least, lie in the enduring reluctance of Delhi’s foreign policy community to either acknowledge or accept the unfolding transformation of India’s ties with the US. It also rests in the continuing underestimation of Delhi’s capacity to rework its great power relations to meet India’s changing interests and circumstances. Consider, for example, some of the recent lines of the argument on India-US relations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it was said, made a big mistake by investing far too much in engaging Trump and that Biden would neither forget nor forgive.
The Democratic Party’s strong concerns on human rights, it was argued, were bound to undermine US ties with the Modi government. It was widely held that the Indo-Pacific and the Quad will become footnotes in Biden’s foreign policy. This in turn was based on the bet that Biden is likely to embrace China rather than confront it in the manner that Trump did. All these assumptions turned out to be inaccurate.
Biden has far too much on his plate at home and in the world to pick on the international friends of Trump. Biden has been in Washington long enough — for nearly half a century before he became President — to know that the international outreach to Trump was about sustaining the partnerships with the US at a difficult moment.
Concern for democracy and human rights has always been part of US foreign policy ideology. But to believe that they will define America’s engagement with India required a leap of faith. No state, not even a revolutionary one, can run its foreign policy on a single-point agenda. All chancelleries need to balance competing interests.
Biden has signalled more continuity than discontinuity with Trump’s China policy. He affirmed continuing commitment to the Indo-Pacific and the Quad. The foreign ministers of the Quad were quick to convene digitally and the summit appears a natural next step.
Analysis of international dynamics, especially at a time of fluidity, does not lend itself to easy assessments. Yet, a focus on structural trends does give us a sense of where major powers relations might be headed. India-US relations have been on a steady upward trajectory over the last three decades, withstood significant political transitions in both countries, and managed to overcome many difficult barriers.
The US is now India’s most comprehensive partner. The Russia relationship is long on defence but short on commerce. India’s commercial ties with China are large, but tilted heavily in Beijing’s favour; meanwhile, Delhi’s political trust in Beijing has evaporated amidst China’s aggressive antics on the contested boundary. Collective Europe is big on commerce but small on security cooperation. The US has a sizeable presence in both economic and security dimensions and the political common ground with India has steadily expanded.
Why, then, the persistent doubts in Delhi about the US partnership? One part of it is the ingrained ideological bias in the dominant foreign policy elite. It was generous to a fault when it came to assessing China’s interests and motivations, but always unduly suspicious of America.