The Nobel Prize season ended last month when winners of the six different awards were announced for their outstanding accomplishments in fields ranging from medicine to literature. But over the years, no award has generated more controversy than the Nobel Peace Prize.
This year’s Peace Prize to the Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo came as a surprise, signifying a welcome respite from the award’s increasing politicization.
The six prizes, each worth 10 million Swedish kronor ($917,000), are named after Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist who made his fortune selling cannons and munitions, including the explosives he invented — dynamite and gelignite. The prizes are handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s 1896 death. While the Peace Prize winner is selected and honored in Norway, the other Nobel awardees are chosen by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, where the prizes are handed out.
Alfred Nobel’s will stipulated that the Peace Prize should go to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
But an examination of the 104 Peace Prizes awarded since 1901 shows that this prize has not developed in line with what Nobel laid down. As the official Peace Prize website acknowledges, the parameters for selecting a winner have expanded over the decades to include humanitarian work, democracy and human rights, climate and environmental change and other issues.
Worse still, the Peace Prize committee in Oslo has increasingly allowed geopolitical considerations to guide the selection of an awardee. In fact, the Nobel Peace Prize has become more about geopolitics than about peace. Consequently, the prize over the years has gone to a number of undeserving recipients. The prize runs the risk of losing its legitimacy.
President Barack Obama had been in office for less than one year when the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided in 2009 to award him the Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and “his work for a world without nuclear weapons.”
The stunning decision was met with criticism in the U.S., including from some Obama supporters. He received the prize not for his accomplishments but merely for succeeding President George W. Bush, whose invasion of Iraq on false pretenses made him deeply unpopular internationally.
Far from being a peacemaker, Obama in office relied, like Bush, on hard power, even as he deplored the ethos of “might makes right.” Obama waged serial military campaigns from Somalia and Yemen to Iraq and Syria. His 2011 U.S.-led military campaign removing Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi from power created an enduring failed state, while his effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad helped spawn the terrorist Islamic State organization.
And while championing “a nuclear-free world,” Obama led an extensive modernization of the American nuclear arsenal, stoking a new arms race.
Another Nobel Prize recipient, Muhammad Yunus, today presides over rampant human rights abuses in Bangladesh. In August, the 84-year-old Yunus was installed as head of an interim regime by the country’s powerful military, which, capitalizing on deadly violent protests, packed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina off to neighboring India before she could formally resign.
Yunus pioneered microcredit, or giving small loans to rural families, for which he and the Grameen Bank that he headed jointly received a Nobel Prize in 2006 — not in economics but for peace, after former President Bill Clinton lobbied for him. While presenting Yunus with the Peace Prize, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, “In 2002, Bill Clinton put it this way: ‘Dr. Yunus is a man who long ago should have won the Nobel Prize and I’ll keep saying that until they finally give it to him.’ Now Clinton will no longer need to remind us.”
Underscoring the award’s geopolitical agenda, the committee chairman hoped that “this peace prize will represent a possible approach to the Muslim part of the world” given the post-9/11 tendency to “demonize Islam.” He added, “It is an important task for the Nobel Committee to try to narrow the gap between the West and Islam.”
Bangladesh, with Yunus as the regime’s nominal head, is today effectively under military-clerical rule and faces a growing risk of sliding into chaos. The country is wracked by Islamist attacks, including on religious and ethnic minorities; extrajudicial killings; and arbitrary arrests, with the regime jailing thousands just last month.
The Peace Prize has even gone to people who did more to scuttle peace than to promote it. One such awardee was Henry Kissinger, whose disastrous decisions while serving under President Richard Nixon resulted in immense death and destruction across vast regions, including the U.S. carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos. North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho, who was jointly awarded the prize with Kissinger, declined his half of the spoils, as he did not want to share the award with a war hawk.
The Peace Prize Committee has often demonstrated its geopolitical activism by awarding the prize to Western-backed anti-regime activists in the developing world, from Aung San Suu Kyi to Liu Xiaobo, or by seeking to promote the bridging of regional divides. For example, the 2014 prize was given jointly to a Pakistani Muslim and an Indian Hindu.
Against this background, the Peace Prize has become not only increasingly controversial but also, as one author put it, “the world’s most reviled award.” This year’s uncontroversial award to the Japanese organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may be an effort to restore international faith in the prize.
But for such an effort to succeed, the Peace Prize Committee must no longer give the award to make a geopolitical point. It should stick to Alfred Nobel’s mandate that the prize be given for international peace and disarmament — not for human rights promotion, civil rights work, environmental protection, economic opportunities for the poor or antigovernment activism.
China has not hesitated to use highly aggressive tactics in its effort to expand its control over the South China Sea and end America’s primacy in the Indo-Pacific region. If the US does not start pushing back, China will grow only bolder – and more dominant.
China has not hesitated to use highly aggressive tactics in its effort to expand its control over the South China Sea and end America’s primacy in the Indo-Pacific region. If the US does not start pushing back, China will grow only bolder – and more dominant.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” of global preeminence depends significantly on achieving dominance in the South China Sea and ending America’s primacy in the Indo-Pacific region, an emerging global economic and geopolitical hub. And China has not hesitated to use coercive tactics in service of these objectives.
In recent years, boats belonging to countries whose territorial claims China disregards, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, have faced blockades, ramming, water-cannon attacks, and even bladed-weapon assaults by Chinese vessels. Offshore energy operations endure regular harassment. Simply fishing in waters China calls its own can expose a person to a Chinese attack with iron pipes. Such violent confrontations have heightened regional tensions and undermined stability in a crucial corridor linking the Pacific and Indian Ocean.
One might have expected the United States to take action to rein in China’s behavior, especially given its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines. And yet, three successive presidents – Barack Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden – have failed to offer anything beyond statements of support and symbolic action. In 2012, Obama allowed China’s brazen seizure of the disputed Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines to go unpunished.
This was hardly the first time the US failed to live up to its defense commitments to the Philippines. In 1995, the Philippines requested US help to block Chinese forces from capturing Mischief Reef, located just 129 nautical miles from the Philippine island of Palawan. US President Bill Clinton, smarting over the termination three years earlier of America’s right to maintain military bases in the Philippines, refused. Mischief Reef is now an important Chinese military base.
The more China has gotten away with, the bolder it has become. Following the capture of the Scarborough Shoal, Xi embarked on a land-reclamation frenzy, creating 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of new land in the South China Sea, including seven artificial islands that now serve as forward operating bases. China has built 27 military outposts on disputed islands, which now bristle with short-range missiles, reconnaissance gear, radar systems, and laser and jamming equipment. Its larger islands also feature aircraft hangars, runways, and deep-water harbors. By unilaterally redrawing South China Sea’s geopolitical map, China is ensuring that it is uniquely positioned to project power in the region.
Even as China has gradually eroded the Philippines’ security – including Philippine control of areas within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – the US has continued to underscore its “ironclad” defense commitment to its ally. Late last year, the Biden administration affirmed that any armed third-party attack against the Philippine military, coast guard, aircraft, or public vessels “anywhere in the South China Sea” is covered by the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. Yet China remains unpunished – and undeterred.
What explains this yawning gap between rhetoric and action? First and foremost, the US fears escalation, especially when its resources and attention are being consumed by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Moreover, the US prefers not to weigh in on sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea, where it has no territorial claims of its own. It has not even taken a position on the sovereignty of the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, which China also claims.
The US has, however, made clear that its security treaty with Japan covers those islands and cautioned against “any unilateral action that seeks to undermine Japan’s administration.” It should do the same for the Philippines, stating unequivocally that its treaty commitment to the country covers any efforts to compel a change in areas currently under Philippine administrative control, including Second Thomas Shoal, which China has been attempting to besiege.
In support of this stance, the US could cite the 2016 ruling by an international arbitration tribunal that China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea have “no legal basis” and that Chinese actions within the Philippine EEZ violated the Philippines’ sovereignty. But China’s open contempt for that ruling should dispel any hope that the South China Sea’s future will be decided by international law, which is why the US must be prepared to back up such a statement with action.
If the US does stand up for its treaty ally, it can take advantage of the nine Philippine naval and air bases to which it has gained access within the last decade, two of which are located just across from Taiwan and southern China. If it does not, China will continue to solidify its dominance over the South China Sea, thereby cornering the region’s rich energy and fishery resources and gaining the ability to disrupt supply chains and punish countries for acts it deems unfriendly.
China will not stop at the South China Sea. Under Xi’s leadership, China has used a similar combination of deception, bullying, coercion, and surprise to expand its territorial control elsewhere, from the East China Sea to the Himalayas, sparing not even the tiny country of Bhutan. As with any bully, the only way to stop China is to confront it with a credible challenger. The US must be that challenger, and it should start by defending the Philippines.
Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.
The next US administration led by Donald Trump will have to navigate an uncertain world, a fragile economy and hardened polarisation at home at a time when a new age of international relations is dawning. The crises, conflicts and wars that are currently raging highlight just how profoundly the global geopolitical landscape has changed in recent years, with America’s own power and influence coming under increasing challenge. Great-power rivalries have again become central to international relations, with the US now pitted against a prospective Sino-Russian alliance.
Thanks to outgoing President Joe Biden, the US is deeply involved in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that have exacerbated global divisions. The risk is growing that, unlike its indirect entanglement in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the US could be directly involved in a war over Taiwan if China launches aggression against that island democracy.
For Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has called Taiwan’s incorporation into China a “historic mission”, the longer the wars continue in Ukraine and the Middle East, the better. An end to the Ukraine war would leave the US free to focus on the Indo-Pacific, a critical region that will shape the next global order.
China’s expansionism is centred in the Indo-Pacific, from the East and South China Seas and the Taiwan Strait to the Himalayas. Xi must be pleased that US transfers of critical munitions, smart bombs, missiles and other weaponry to Ukraine and Israel are depleting American stockpiles and exposing America’s inadequate industrial capacity to restock weapons and ammunition.
The US has played a critical role in bankrolling the Ukrainian fight against the invading Russian forces, with Congress approving almost $175 billion in military and non-defence assistance. But American assistance has been unable to turn the tide in the war, with Russia still making slow but steady territorial gains in eastern Ukraine. Almost one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory is currently in Russian control.
One key reason for Russian advances is that, more than weapons and funds, Ukraine needs new recruits to replenish the ranks of its exhausted and depleted forces. But even draconian conscription practices have not been able to offset Ukraine’s mounting troop shortfall. Many Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines today are in their 40s and 50s.
Meanwhile, the US dollar—which, according to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper, was facing “stealth erosion” before the Ukraine war—now confronts a more open but nascent challenge to its global dominance in response to the West’s weaponisation of finance and seizure of Russia’s earnings on its central-bank assets that have been frozen by Western governments. As countries explore alternatives to the dollar, the greenback is beginning to lose some of its global influence, especially in oil markets.
Meanwhile, as a hedging strategy, central banks in many countries—especially China, Turkey, India, Kazakhstan, and in Eastern Europe—have increasingly been buying gold. Such hoarding, coupled with greater geopolitical uncertainty, has helped drive gold.
Rebuilding trust with India ought to be a priority for Trump. Strategic partnership between the world’s most powerful democracies is pivotal to equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific, including hindering China’s westward naval march from the South China Sea. As Admiral Mike Gilday said, India’s centrality to a stable Asian power balance makes it an essential US partner
The US-led Western decisions to weaponise finance and seize interest earned on frozen Russian central-bank assets have caused deepening disquiet in the non-Western world, helping to build support in BRICS to explore alternative arrangements, including new cross-border payment mechanisms invulnerable to political pressures or interventions. Some countries are also reassessing their heavy reliance on the US dollar in international transactions and reserve holdings.
The fact that more than 30 countries have applied to join BRICS shows that countries from the Global South are eager to lessen their vulnerabilities to Western pressures by enlarging their geopolitical options. They view membership in BRICS, the world’s first major non-US international initiative, as useful both as a hedging strategy and to navigate increasing global geopolitical turbulence and uncertainty.
The US cannot be pleased that BRICS is becoming a magnet to pluralise the world order. Reshaping the present US-led global order may not be easy but what unites the BRICS countries is the goal of achieving a multipolar international system. This is driven by the shared belief that only multipolarity can put checks on hegemonic power, which, if left unchecked, could undermine international peace, stability and economic growth.
More fundamentally, the Trump administration cannot ignore the fact that China poses a far greater threat than Russia to Western interests and the US-led order. Whereas Russia’s designs are largely confined to its own neighbourhood, China is seeking to supplant the US as the world’s foremost power. It also has the means: China’s economy, like its population, is about 10 times larger than Russia’s, and China spends four times as much as Russia on its military.
China is currently engaged in the largest peacetime military buildup in history. It has more than doubled its nuclear-weapons arsenal since 2020, and is expanding its conventional forces faster than any other country since World War II.
At a time when a majority of Americans believe that the nation’s power is declining on the world stage, the Trump administration needs a more realistic balancing of America’s key geopolitical objectives. Without such rebalancing, the US may well fail to deter China from attacking Taiwan
Yet, by focusing on the wrong enemy (with Biden only strengthening American policy fixation on Russia), the US has crimped its ability to counter the greater challenge that China poses. For example, with its military resources already stretched thin by its involvement in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the US is dedicating insufficient attention and resources to countering Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Pacific.
Indeed, China has been the main beneficiary of Biden’s forceful response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unprecedented US-led sanctions, including the weaponisation of international finance, have been a boon for Beijing, turning it into Russia’s banker and expanding international use of the yuan. Russia now generates much of its international export earnings in the Chinese currency and keeps these proceeds mostly in Chinese banks, in effect giving Beijing a share of the returns.
At a time when a majority of Americans believe that the nation’s power is declining on the world stage, the Trump administration needs a more realistic balancing of America’s key geopolitical objectives. Without such rebalancing, the US may well fail to deter China from attacking Taiwan or cementing its strategic axis with Russia, just as Biden failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine.
If objectively seen, a protracted Ukraine war is not in America’s interest. But bringing an end to the war demands dialogue and diplomacy, which Biden has shunned with Moscow.
India is one of the few countries that can play a mediating role in the Ukraine war, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been ready to broker a ceasefire. After the presidential inauguration ceremony on January 20, will American policy begin to shift in favour of a ceasefire in Ukraine? Given that a negotiated deal is the only way to halt the war, it is better to seek it sooner rather than after months or years of more bloodshed and devastation.
BIDEN’S LEGACY
The Trump administration will need to repair the damage the Indo-American relationship has suffered during Biden’s presidency. Before Biden, every American president since the 1990s left the relationship with India in stronger shape than what he inherited. But with US-India relations now strained, Biden is bequeathing the troubled ties to his successor to mend.
An ageing Biden seemed unable to grasp that the blossoming US-India partnership is too important to lose.
US President Joe Biden and Narendra Modi at the G20 Summit, New Delhi, September 9, 2023 (Photo: Getty Images)
While needling India, he prioritised outreach to China, resumed coddling of Pakistan, and stayed mum on China’s encroachments on Indian lands, including the resulting military standoff. Biden’s $450-million modernisation of Pakistan’s F-16 fleet evoked bitter memories of the US arming Pakistan against India and supporting the initial development of the Pakistani nuclear bomb during the Cold War.
Biden’s cognitive decline, which ultimately led the Democratic Party elites to force him to end his re-election campaign, may have been a factor in the US-India relationship cooling, especially as others in his inner circle gradually gained an increasing say in decision-making. The new tensions between Washington and New Delhi can only please Beijing, Moscow and Islamabad.
Biden’s national-security team largely comprised “liberal interventionists”, or hawks on the left, who, among other things, tactlessly exerted pressure on New Delhi to drop its neutrality on the Ukraine war and even sought to leverage the Khalistan card against India. On the eve of Modi’s US visit for the Quad summit in September, Khalistan radicals were hosted by the White House, where they were briefed by senior administration and intelligence officials.
Biden’s top economic adviser, Brian Deese, touched a raw nerve in India when he threatened in 2022 that “the costs and consequences” for it would be “significant and long-term” if it stayed neutral on the war. After New Delhi rebuffed the US pressure to pick a side in the Ukraine war or face consequences, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking to the media in April 2022 in the presence of the visiting Indian defence and foreign ministers, took a swipe at India, alleging “a rise in human rights abuses”.
With every diplomatic spat with New Delhi, Blinken resurrected the human rights card against India.
The jarring fact is that, while maintaining close cooperation with a wide array of undemocratic governments and staying mum on their human rights abuses, the Biden administration has used human rights promotion as a geopolitical tool to bring pressure on countries to toe its line, including through US government-funded organisations like Freedom House. As Blinken repeatedly showed, human rights concerns are raised as leverage even against a friendly democracy like India. This geopolitics-driven approach only undermines American credibility.
Team Biden had no qualms about interfering in other countries’ elections, as it did in India. It used some of the talking points of Indian Opposition politicians to criticise the Modi government. It sought to cast aspersions on India’s legal processes, although the Biden administration faced heat at home for weaponising the justice system against political opponents
It is also striking that as Biden’s cognitive decline became more apparent, the scourge of rising Khalistan militancy in the US and Canada started casting a lengthening shadow over Washington’s relations with New Delhi. The US and Canadian allegations of alleged Indian assassination plots against terrorism-glorifying Khalistan extremists in North America have sought to obscure the role of American and Canadian security agencies in shielding such elements as potential assets against India. It is telling that at the centre of the Canadian- US diplomatic row with India have been two Sikh militants designated by India as terrorists—Hardeep Singh Nijjar and Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
Khalistan militancy may be practically dead in India, but many Indians are asking whether some Anglosphere agencies are seeking to revive it in Punjab by using extremists in the Sikh diaspora.
Biden’s cognitive decline, of course, had a wider apparent impact on the conduct of foreign relations. For example, Biden’s memory issues, including doing things that he had earlier pledged not to do, may well explain why his risk appetite grew in the Ukraine war, especially as he became more and more beholden to the American “deep state”.
With the flow of sophisticated Western weapons to Ukraine failing to stem Russian advances or force Russia to retreat from the areas it has occupied, Biden progressively escalated American involvement in the war by embracing ideas that he had earlier said were taboo. For instance, he permitted Ukraine to use American-provided weapons to strike inside Russia despite having declared earlier that any Ukrainian attack on Russian territory with US-supplied missiles would go against his mandate to “avoid World War III”.
Biden’s overriding focus on punishing Russia not only pushed Moscow closer to Beijing but also threatened to exacerbate India’s security challenges. A Sino-Russian military and strategic alliance would directly impinge on Indian interests.
After New Delhi rebuffed the US pressure to pick a side in the Ukraine war, Antony Blinken took a swipe at India, alleging ‘a rise in human rights abuses’. With every diplomatic spat with New Delhi, Blinken resurrected the human rights card against India
It was in the twilight of Biden’s presidency that the US-backed regime change in Bangladesh occurred and that Washington, in concert with Ottawa, escalated the row with India over North America-based Khalistan militants.
In the run-up to the 2024 General Election in India, the Biden administration began targeting the Modi government on issues ranging from human rights to the implementation of a new Indian law that grants citizenship to non-Muslim refugees who fled religious persecution in neighbouring Islamic countries.
Biden has long alleged Russian interference in US elections. He even imposed sanctions against Russia in 2021 over its alleged meddling in American elections. But Team Biden had no qualms about interfering in other countries’ elections, as it did in the world’s largest democratic exercise in India. It used some of the talking points of Indian Opposition politicians to criticise the Modi government. It even sought to cast aspersions on India’s legal processes, although the Biden administration has faced heat at home for weaponising the justice system against political opponents.
New Delhi found it troubling that the Biden administration set Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau against India by sharing sketchy intelligence with Ottawa. Trudeau admitted before a federal inquiry recently that he relied on raw “intelligence and not hard evidentiary proof” when he triggered the downward spiral in Canada-India relations in September 2023 by alleging India’s “potential link” with Nijjar’s killing.
But unlike Trudeau, who made the allegation against India from the floor of the Canadian parliament, the US allegation of a failed Indian plot to kill Pannun did not come from Biden or any of his cabinet members but from lower-level officials who briefed the media about the unsealing of an indictment. The US indictment alleged a murder-for-hire scheme that was remarkably amateurish: an Indian operative, at an Indian intelligence officer’s purported direction, tried to arrange the killing of Pannun on US soil, but the hitman he hired long-distance from India turned out to be an undercover law enforcement officer.
Biden has not spoken a single word against India while Trudeau has continued to personally lead the charge against New Delhi.
China has been the beneficiary of Biden’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. US-led sanctions, including the weaponisation of finance, have been a boon for Beijing, turning it into Russia’s banker and expanding international use of the Yuan
The US and India, as partners in the Quad, may agree on larger issues in the Indo-Pacific, including a stable balance of power, maritime security, and settlement of inter-country disputes without coercion and on the basis of international law. But in India’s own neighbourhood, the divergence in US and Indian interests has been laid bare by the Biden administration.
Instead of working with New Delhi in India’s neighbourhood, the Biden administration pursued policies in South Asia that it knew were injurious to core Indian interests. It is telling that Washington has been coddling military-backed governments in Pakistan and Bangladesh while seeking to overthrow Myanmar’s military junta, including through stringent sanctions and “non-lethal” military aid to rebels, despite the spillover effects on Indian border states like Manipur.
The US-supported regime change in Bangladesh, followed by Washington’s silence on ongoing human-rights abuses there, including atrocities against minorities, represented just the latest wake-up call for New Delhi. What many saw as a “colour revolution” in Bangladesh came after Biden’s disastrous withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan effectively surrendered that country to a Pakistan-reared terrorist militia, including leaving behind billions of dollars of weapons for it.
Bangladesh is now pretty much under military-mullah rule, with Muhammad Yunus just the nominal head of the army-installed “interim” regime. The upsurge of Islamist violence, and the regime’s political vendettas and release of terrorists from jail indicate that Bangladesh will struggle to restore economic momentum or regain investor confidence.
Wherever the US has directly or indirectly intervened over the years to bring about regime change, chaos has usually followed in that country, with Islamist or other extremist forces gaining ascendancy. The murder and mayhem in Bangladesh illustrate how that country faces destabilisation, with far-reaching consequences extending beyond its borders, especially for India.
As one of its parting shots at India, the Biden administration has slapped sanctions against 19 Indian firms for their alleged export of “dual-use” items to Russia. The term “dual-use” is defined by Washington so broadly that sanctions can be justified against whichever target it selects. The 19 Indian firms, which figure in a larger list of companies from multiple countries slapped with sanctions, have been accused of exporting just a paltry $2 million worth of items to Russia. Compare that with the flow of more than $200 billion in Western military and other aid to Ukraine.
RESTORING TRUST
These are challenging times for US-India relations. Undermining what should be America’s most important strategic partnership in Asia makes little strategic sense, especially if the US wishes to genuinely pivot to the Indo-Pacific. But without mutual respect, the US-India strategic partnership can scarcely advance.
A country as large and proud as India cannot become just another Japan or Britain to the US. A friend does not mean a follower. Nor is a Cold War-style “us versus them” approach relevant today. A less rigid, more adaptive approach will serve American diplomacy better.
Washington must remember that India has hewed to an independent approach to international affairs under successive governments. This approach is unlikely to change given that New Delhi believes in friendship without dependence.
Furthermore, the US and India are both bitterly polarised democracies, and each government should consciously avoid saying anything that could give a handle to the other’s domestic critics. Important figures within the Democratic Party during the Biden presidency, however, barely concealed their hostility to Modi and what they saw as his brand of Hindu nationalism.
Rebuilding mutual trust with India ought to be a priority for the Trump administration. Strategic partnership between the world’s most powerful and most populous democracies is pivotal to equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific, including hindering China’s westward naval march from its new citadel, the South China Sea. As Admiral Mike Gilday, chief of US naval operations, said in 2022, India’s centrality to a stable Asian power balance makes it an essential US partner.
India, a founder and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, now makes little mention of nonalignment. Instead, it is multi-aligned and building close partnerships with democratic powers from Asia to Europe.
India now holds more annual military exercises with America than any other country. The US has become a key supplier of weapons systems to India, as underscored by the recent deal, valued at nearly $4 billion, to sell 31 armed MQ-9B High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) drones.
India has signed the four “foundational” agreements that the US maintains with all its close defence partners. These accords range from providing reciprocal access to each other’s military facilities and securing military communications to sharing geospatial data from airborne and satellite sensors.
Booming US exports to India—perhaps the world’s fastest-growing market today—reinforce bipartisan support in Washington for a closer partnership with New Delhi. In addition to weapons, the US has rapidly become an important source of crude oil and petroleum products for India, which is the world’s third-largest oil consumer after America and China.
India’s importance as the world’s ultimate swing state is likely to grow, especially as Russia and China deepen their entente. Instead of driving a wedge between these two natural competitors, US policy has helped turn China and Russia into close strategic partners. Biden compounded his blunder in helping to build a Sino-Russian axis by impelling India to seek a thaw with China as a hedge against American unpredictability.
If the US is not to accelerate its relative decline through strategic overreach, it needs India more than ever. But without mutual respect and trust, the US-India strategic partnership could wither away.
Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of two award-winning books: Water, Peace, and War; and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.
Stagecraft and Statecraft 
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