The US needs to abandon its Cold War mindset toward India

While the Indian election juggernaut is set in motion with the Election Commission of India’s notification and model code of conduct, the US primary season is also slowly winding down. In all probability, the 2024 US presidential election will be a rematch of the 2020 contest.

Unlike India’s majoritarian democracy and Westminster-style parliamentary form of government, the United States has a republican democracy with a presidential form of government. When America’s founding fathers established their nation, they established a republic to limit majoritarian power. The US election process reflects that sentiment. Americans choose their President not by a popular vote but by the Electoral College process.

The Electoral College has 538 electors, one each for House of Representatives and Senate members. A minimum of 270 electors are required to elect a President. When Americans vote for their President, they select delegates associated with the presidential candidates. After the general election, these electors meet and vote for the President and Vice President. Congress then counts the Electoral College votes and elects the President.

A 2020 Rematch In 2024

Incumbent President Joe Biden, despite concerns about his age, fading memory, and woefully low job approval rating, is once again poised to be the Democrat Party’s official nominee when the delegates meet in Chicago later this year. His challenger will be former President Donald Trump, another octogenarian.

Current polling, however, give Trump a slight upper hand, including in swing states where Biden beat him in round one. If Trump does indeed win the presidency, he would make Biden only the fifth elected President in over a century to lose a re-election. Interestingly, Trump was the fourth one.

There are many reasons for Biden’s unpopularity. His age and memory aren’t the only concerns Americans have. An overwhelming majority—76%—of Americans believe their country is headed in the wrong direction. Inflation, wars in Europe and the Middle East, rising crimes in American cities, homelessness, fentanyl and mental health pandemics, and collapsed borders have not helped Biden’s case.

Trump, on the other hand, has his own set of issues, including many legal problems. Unencumbered, he has been unstoppable in the GOP primaries. He has also consolidated his control over the Republican Party by installing his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as the head of the influential Republican National Committee (RNC). The committee is vital in allocating funds and shoring up other resources for Trump and other Republicans during elections.

Trump supporter Mike Johnson is already the Speaker of the US House. The GOP leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has announced his retirement after the election, paving the way for a potential takeover by a Trump confidant.

A Period of Anxiety

Like the rest of the world, India will watch the US elections very closely and with a level of anxiety. For starters, under President Biden’s watch, the world has grown significantly unstable compared to a period of relative peace and economic prosperity during the four years of his predecessor. The threat of the current war theater quickly escalating into an ugly World War 3 with nuclear weapons is real. Domestically, only 36% of Americans support President Biden’s foreign policy.

On the other hand, Europe is on the edge at the prospect of a Trump second term. To say that the transatlantic relationships were strained during Trump’s reign would be an understatement. Many consider Trump’s threat to blow up NATO if its member states failed to pay their membership dues a scary idea.

India knows its territorial security and prosperity are closely tied to the US in a hostile neighbourhood. At the same time, the US also recognizes that it needs a reliable partner in the Indo-Pacific to counter China’s rising influence, and India could be that partner. The US and India have taken concrete steps to strengthen this partnership over time. However, the momentum created in the US-India relationship following PM Modi’s US visit last year and President Biden’s subsequent G20 stop in New Delhi appears to have hit a wall.

Late in September last year, US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti revealed that PM Modi had invited President Biden to be the chief guest at India’s grand Republic Day celebrations on 26 January 2024. However, the White House sent a regret note barely a month before the event. India had to scramble to get French President Emmanuel Macron, who graciously obliged.

The Canadian allegation of India’s involvement in the killing of India-designated terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada created some wrinkles in the US-India relationship due to the participation of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance. Many also saw the indictment of an Indian national by the US agencies in an alleged plot to kill an American citizen as stiff-arming India.

The U.S. Needs A New Perspective On India

Earlier last week, the US establishment managed to poke in the eyes of one of its staunchest allies and a friend in a few hours. First, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the highest-ranking Democrat in the US Senate and the Majority Leader, openly advocated a regime change in Israel. Delivering a speech, Schumer called for a new election in Israel to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Almost threatening, the Majority Leader told the Israelis that if they did not change their government, the US would “have no choice” but to intervene “to change the present course.”

Later, during a US State Department media briefing, spokesperson Matthew Miller commented on India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). He said that the US was “closely monitoring how this [Citizenship Amendment] Act will be implemented [in India].” The US Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, later added, “The principle of religious freedom… is a cornerstone of democracy… [and] you cannot give up on principles.”

India reacted sharply, calling Miller’s statement a “lecture.” Through its Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, India called the State Department’s statement “misplaced, misinformed, and unwarranted.” India’s Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar was equally critical of Garcetti’s statement. He said he has problem when people don’t hold up the mirror to their own policies citing Lautenberg, Specter, and other provisions that fast-tracked immigration in the US. “I am questioning [Garcetti and others’] understanding of our history,” said Jaishankar.

Statements from Ambassador Garcetti and the State Department officials on India’s Citizenship Act point to gross intellectual and political incompetence. Their statements resemble a college club run by twenty-something petty ideologues and activists rather than responsible diplomats of a world superpower. They fail to recognize the bloody history of India’s religion-based partition and other historical and cultural nuances. Rather than caving to the anti-India leftist-jihadi elements within his party and administration, Biden ought to lead them.

US policymakers also seem unwilling to accept that India’s postcolonial resurgence is premised upon a sense of pride in its glorious past and the resolve to make Hindu civilization the centre of India’s social and political life. Under current circumstances, any attempt to impose Western ideology and world order in this part of the world—the Global South, more generally—will be seen as imperial domination.

Beyond a few diplomatic irritants and virtue signalling, such meddling by the US also has a profound ideological and “domestic politics” angle. Amid its sagging polling numbers, the Biden administration is feeling the pinch from the more radical leftist section of the Democrat Party owing to its failure to implement its agenda . Recently, in the Michigan primary, those unhappy with Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza cast “protest” votes that picked up two delegates against Biden. Muslim Americans, a loyal voting bloc for Biden and the Democrats, and many Islamist groups are also unhappy with the administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Last year, the White House had to end its government-level collaboration with an Islamist group whose leader said he was “happy to see” Israelis attacked by jihadi terrorists.

The US needs to abandon its Cold War mindset toward India and sidestep its policy hawks who see India through the prisms of orientalist, colonialist, and South Asia departments of US universities. The US must recognize and respect India’s social, political, economic, and civilizational aspirations for a chance to have a stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific. This is in America’s best interest.