A senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation published a piece at Foreign Policy magazine last week about how “U.S.-India Ties Remain Fundamentally Fragile”. As could be expected, Derek Grossman laid the blame largely on India’s lap, arguing that its alleged “illiberalism” that supposedly manifests itself in multifaceted ways is responsible for this downturn in bilateral ties. Only as an afterthought does he mention growing US-Pakistani cooperation and perceptions of American unreliability after Afghanistan.
The reality is that while India understandably dislikes any of its strategic partners cultivating close ties with its Pakistani nemesis and was disappointed that America abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban, these two factors aren’t the main reasons why ties with the US have become increasingly fragile. The primary problem is that the US has hypocritically begun to apply a values-based policy towards India while applying more of an interests-driven one towards its Chinese rival.
Although democracy and human rights criticisms of China are common, and they’ve previously been the basis for targeted sanctions, they’re not the top determinant of American policy towards the People’s Republic. By contrast, accusations of Islamophobia, a planned extrajudicial killing of a dual US citizen on American soil, and state persecution of the political opposition figure much more prominently in bilateral relations with India nowadays. These are becoming issues precisely as Sino-US ties start to thaw a bit.
Biden hosted President Xi in San Francisco for mid-November’s APEC Summit, after which they agreed to more responsibly manage their competition. Apart from tensions over Chinese claims to Philippine-controlled waters, which far precede Sino-US tensions, relations have been decent since then. Shortly after their summit, the Justice Department charged an unnamed Indian official with allegedly conspiring to assassinate a Delhi-designated terrorist-separatist with dual US citizenship on American soil.
That opened the floodgates to more American criticism of Indian domestic and foreign policy, thus culminating in their presently fragile ties that Grossman described but misattributed to Delhi’s decisions. From the Indian perspective, the US not only isn’t treating their country and China the same, but arguably seems to be more sensitive towards Chinese concerns than Indian ones nowadays despite the first being its systemic rival and the second supposedly serving as a regional counterweight to it.
As counterintuitive as it might sound, the US flipped from applying an interests-driven policy towards India to a values-based one precisely because it doubled down on its interests-driven policy towards China. To explain, the American policymaking elite aren’t prepared to potentially fight China in the Asia-Pacific after expending such immense military resources and losing so much political capital unsuccessfully trying to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia through Ukraine over the past two years.
At the same time, the Chinese policymaking elite also aren’t prepared to potentially fight the US in the Asia-Pacific either since they need more time to build up their military capabilities, secure their supply chains (especially energy), and sanctions-proof their economy as much as is realistically possible. This confluence of interests resulted in their leaders agreeing to an informal “ceasefire” of sorts in the Asian theater of the New Cold War so that both can better prepare for their seemingly inevitable showdown.
As a “goodwill” gesture, the Chinese state won’t militarily aid Russia unlike how the West is aiding Ukraine, and all such aid that’s provided from China is only through purely commercial contracts from independent companies that do so at the risk of crushing secondary sanctions. Likewise, the US apparently agreed to distance itself somewhat from India to remove perceived Western pressure along China’s mainland flank by applying a values-based policy that sent relations into a tailspin since then.
To be clear, China isn’t “abandoning” Russia nor is the US “abandoning” India, and neither’s rival will be able to drive a wedge between these strategic partners. They also won’t weaken the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership either. Moreover, China and the US won’t ever trust another like they did prior to the trade war and the “Pivot to Asia” before that, nor will there be any Sino-Indo rapprochement either. By and large, the ongoing global systemic trajectory will therefore remain on track.
Nevertheless, a lot can change in the interim between now and the seemingly inevitable Sino-US showdown in the Asia-Pacific given how much everything has accelerated since the start of Russia’s special operation. What worries Indians the most right now is that the US’ “goodwill” gesture towards China of distancing itself somewhat from their country by provoking several rows over values-based issues might embolden the People’s Republic to forcibly assert its territorial claims amidst their dispute.
China renamed 30 residential areas and geographic features in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh that Beijing claims as South Tibet despite never having exercised any writ over it, only indirectly exerting influence there long ago via its imperial suzerainty over Tibet. India’s top diplomat condemned this move as “senseless”, while the US’ reaction to China’s reaffirmation of claims to Indian Himalayan territory was much weaker than its reaction to China’s reaffirmation of claims to Philippine maritime territory.
This sequence of events – the Xi-Biden Summit in November; worsening Indo-US ties right afterwards; improved Sino-US ones during the same time; subsequently reaffirmed Chinese claims to Indian Himalayan territory; and a lackluster American response to the aforesaid – alarmed Indians. From their perspective, while the US isn’t “abandoning” them, it’s now treating them as an object of International Relations and particularly of the Sino-US rivalry instead of the subject of global affairs that it truly is.
Reverting back to Grossman’s piece, neither he nor his ilk can recognize this reality since it’s too “politically incorrect” by their country’s current standards of policymaking discourse. The notion that the US is practically turning a blind eye towards China’s reaffirmed claims to Indian Himalayan territory as part of a “Faustian deal” is chalked off as a conspiracy theory even though it’s based on a series of facts. As long as its experts refuse to acknowledge this perception, ties with India risk seriously worsening.
