What got lost in the din of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday celebrations, vote-chori allegations by leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and the Asia Cup India-Pak match chatter was the fact that US President Donald Trump blinked. Modi picked up the phone when Trump called for the fifth time, now to wish him on his birthday. According to a German newspaper, Trump’s previous four phone calls were left unanswered. That was the only way to handle a bully ––– stare him down.
Early this week, the US trade negotiation team led by Assistant Trade Representative Brendan Lynch was in Delhi. And that visit was a strong indicator to show the direction the talks were taking. Why would the chief negotiator fly down if not to hasten a deal? Meanwhile, India’s Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said yesterday that he believed that the penal sanction would not go beyond November 30. He was quick to add that his optimism is purely intuitive and not based on facts.
The details of the give-and-take between the two negotiating parties have not been made public. The prospect of Indian red lines drawn around its farm and dairy sectors and its sovereign right to engage in trade with Russia remaining or getting diluted is too early to predict, as the India-US relationship has become unpredictable altogether. Soon after the phone call, Trump has gone around repeating his boastful lie of using trade tariff to force India and Pakistan to end the conflict. Trump is vaingloriously thundering that, “I have sanctioned them.”
No wonder India is seeking alternate markets for its exports. Garments, fisheries and leather are the most affected by the sanctions. Now, the exemption to US sanctions on the Chabahar port too are being revoked. India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is on a tour to find markets for the troubled sectors in the United Arab Emirates. He is talking about doubling the $50 billion trade with UAE and seeking newer markets in Central Asia and Africa.
Multilateralism, thus, is the key to safeguard sovereignty in all its manifestations –––security, trade, et al. Trump or any other US administration will blow hot or cold depending on its political, economic and security exigencies. But India can no longer afford to be at the receiving end of Western diktats, not because of any false notions of greatness, but because of genuine fears of loss of sovereignty. Even this visit by the US trade team and Trump’s fifth phone call were necessitated by Modi’s China visit for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.
All those who poo-pooed the idea of multilateralism as a failed notion of being friendless should now sit up and take note. Is it not India’s dexterity in walking up to the Chinese leadership that made Trump blink; that led the US trade team to visit India just two weeks after the grand Russia-India-China huddle? Even a New York real estate wheeler-dealer would know when he has overplayed the cards. And the best of intelligence networks could easily pick up signals of new possibilities in global groupings.
Imports worth $86 billion are indeed a lot, no doubt. But it is not too much for a post-colonial nation to pay for its sovereignty. While Trump and his advisors were heaping abuses and relentlessly attacking India, it refused to respond, instead quietly mending its relations with China. Import markets can be found elsewhere, but sovereignty once lost will be lost forever. In today’s world, China offers a countervailing force and multipolarity.
India’s urgency was not met with cold cynical calculations. China’s response of warmly inviting, respectfully hosting and offering the all-important visual symbolism of the Russia-India-China pull-aside at Tianjin proved that the Asian giant is willing to play its role in balancing the geopolitical poles. Russian President Vladimir Putin had a big hand in making all this possible, but not without equal Chinese enthusiasm. This balancing act cannot be a one-off, but a perennial struggle to retain strategic autonomy to fight forces of neocolonialism.
In fact, Western enthusiasts baulk at this term. But if the Indian government had acceded to the Western diktat and stopped buying crude oil from Russia, India would have effectively become a neo-colonial vassal without sovereign agency. India refused to budge. It was at that juncture, the Russia-India-China huddle helped to restore the balance. Had it not happened there would have had no compulsion for Lynch to travel or Trump to call. The huddle worked.
That is a lesson that India needs to carry for two reasons: One, India shares a 3500-km-long civilisational border with China, unlike those created by the British with Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is militarily impractical and economically inconceivable to have inimical relations with a superpower on one’s border. Two, when China guarantees multipolarity, it is worth holding hands because unipolarity would only mean strategic servitude. So, it is in India’s interest to have a peaceful border and to strengthen multipolarity, which assures trade with everyone including the US.
The latest development of Pakistan-Saudi Arabia mutual defence pact signed by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pak PM Shehbaz Sharif yesterday with Pak army chief Asim Munir accompanying him should be seen more in the context of Trump feting Munir than as an immediate aftermath of Isreal’s attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar. Pakistan has never posed an existential threat to Israel like Iran, and in return the Zionists never attempted to take out Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and missiles, which many believe are guarded by the West.
After all, West Asia was carved up by the British after the demise of the Ottoman empire making many Persian Gulf countries a Western creation like Pakistan. When two of them come together, it obviously cannot be against a third, favourite child of the same forces. Any Pak defence pact directly threatens India, particularly in the context of Op Sindoor. If this is another attempt by the West to corner India, it need only move eastwards opening its doors and windows to easterly winds of change.
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