India under pressure
Whoever wins the US presidential election on 3 November will face the toughest challenges in recent memory and India may find itself on the back burner for some time, despite the attention it received during the visit by top US officials during their third 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in Delhi in late October. The American goal is to recruit India to confront China as part of Washington’s anti-China strategy in exchange for defence and other support for India. Delhi is receptive in light of worsening border tensions with China and the severe economic setbacks to India delivered by the Covid-19 crisis.
China’s Global Times media outlet poured ridicule on these efforts and on US Foreign Secretary Mike Pompeo. “Pompeo is one of the worst secretaries of state in US history … he will end up being ridiculed by history as a political clown because he acts against the historical trend and refuses to face up to reality,” it said in an analysis of the talks in Delhi. It may get some satisfaction if Republican Donald Trump loses the 3 November elections and his entire cabinet, including Pompeo, is pushed out.
Whether the next US President is Democrat Joe Biden or Trump, India’s problems with China’s growing assertiveness will not change. As the Global Times proudly noted, “India is China’s neighbour and its strength is weaker than China’s”.
Pressure on Delhi will be severe. Biden is even more anti-China than Trump, because that plays well with Left-wing liberal Democrats. If Trump wins, Delhi can expect more pressure to become a buffer in a Trump administration’s increasingly militarised confrontation with China in the Far East and the South China Sea. Delhi may have to walk on eggshells to stay alongside Washington without creating a crisis in relations with Beijing.
Biden, who many voters see as the saviour of America’s reputation around the world, looks to be as inadequate as Trump is in dealing with or even understanding a changing world. Handling the already devastating Covid-19 pandemic will also be a huge burden.
Biden, 77, is an archetypal establishment man. He is a leader of an entitled Western establishment that tried for many decades to block opposition to its ideas about how nations should behave. That imperial establishment used the banners of democracy and human rights to conduct decades-long wars far beyond Western frontiers, as in Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
It placed financial penalties and trade sanctions on at least 30 countries to coerce regimes to change behaviour or encourage citizens to disrupt their governments, as in Russia, Iran, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.
Even US voters are disenchanted with both Trump and Biden. Stuck down by the corona-virus, Americans like Indians want a return to normalcy when politics did not tear families apart and reasoned discussion of common problems was the norm.
Trump took that entitlement to a paroxysm with bombastic slogans like America First and trade sanctions on China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and others. He made US foreign policy coercion worse but did not invent it.
The disruptions caused by Trump are big breaks from past decades, including trade battles with China and Europe, his explicit pro-Saudi and pro-Israeli tilt, defiance of all other signatories to the nuclear agreement with Iran, and failure to extricate from wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.
His weaponisation of the dollar and enforcement of heavy penalties on any companies that skirt Washington’s maximal sanctions against Iran are causing widespread resentment. They are seen as abuse of US financial power to impose its laws beyond its borders.
Money will remain tight because the Covid-19 pandemic is piling gigantic debts upon a faltering US economy. This is also an increasing problem in India as the economy continues to stumble. At the same time, the world economy no longer has the wealth needed to buy as much from India and America as in the past. China is the only world economy with a positive growth rate this year. India needs Chinese markets.
The US has lost technological primacy to China in vital areas, including artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, driverless and electric vehicles, 5G and higher telecommunications, high speed trains and high-tech batteries.
As the Global Times says, “US-India co-operation may make China unhappy, but it will not exert psychological pressure that could force China to make strategic concessions.” So, Delhi will have to make fateful choices on China regardless of whether Trump or Biden wins the elections.