How Trump has turned the clock back on India–US relations – Firstpost

By making what most Indians believe to be ‘preposterous claims’ on the India-Pakistan ceasefire following ‘Operation Sindoor’, US President Donald Trump may have lost more friends in the country than he might have had in the first place. Many of them also saw in it a weak and mean effort at stealing India’s decisive victory, which has facets that none of the other global powers could claim in what was a deliberately calibrated and measured military engagement, the likes of which none of them have even attempted any time in the past.

From the looks of it, even without anyone’s intervention, India might have possibly called a ceasefire once its limited aims, achievements and goals had been met. Even after the first night’s aerial raids on terror hideouts both in PoK and mainland Pakistan, India had done what it intended.

The second night’s military engagement was prompted by Pakistan firing missiles not only at Indian military personnel but also at civilians living along the border, especially in Kashmir. That night witnessed India neutralising many other select Pakistani military targets that comprised radar stations and air defence systems, including those near the capital Islamabad.

Hence, for President Trump to claim as if the ‘night-long intervention’ by him and his officials was the main reason for the ceasefire did not go down well even with the man on the street in India. Clearly, he thought it was an attempt at stealing headlines, at least a part of it, as if the US under Modi’s friend Trump, too, would not want to credit India with superior military capabilities than they were ready to concede, at least in public.

Truly concerned…

It does not stop there. If Trump and the US administration were truly concerned about it all, they should have intervened much earlier, after the Pahalgam terror massacre that claimed 26 innocent Indian lives. Unlike after China’s Galwan attacks, this time, individual Western nations readily condemned the Pahalgam massacre but did not still connect it to Pakistan.

In the past, despite knowing full well that Pakistan was backing Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, even after 9/11, the country did not find a place in President George Bush’s list of three ‘Axis of Evil’ nations. Likewise, had it not been for the Pokhran-II nuclear tests, which prompted Islamabad to demonstrate its nuclear weapons capabilities as if it were just off the shelf, the world would not have been wiser to it.

Successive US presidents, with full knowledge of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capabilities, looked the other way, despite repeated pleas by New Delhi, which also continued to provide Washington (and other global capitals) with credible evidence. Thus, as far as India is concerned, Pahalgam terror showed that nothing has changed for the country and in its favour unless it did what needed doing – and all by itself.

Trump’s claims to ensure a ceasefire in South Asia and indicating that he would continue to discuss the matter with the two governments concerned have clearly come out of a lack of understanding of geopolitics and geo-strategic considerations in this part of the world. As India has since clarified and reiterated, New Delhi does not entertain third-party intervention in bilateral affairs of the kind, be it viz Pakistan or China, or any other.

In this case, the political stakes for India were too high for Team Trump, too, who have lost sight of. Under the Simla Accord of 1972, both India and Pakistan agreed to sort out all bilateral matters only through bilateral negotiations, without involving a third party, including the UN. It was on this commitment, so to say, that India at the time agreed to release the record high of 92,000 Pakistani PoWs captured at the end of the successful Bangladesh War of end-1971.

It does not stop there. As if in retaliation to India declaring its intention to keep the Indus Water Treaty ‘in abeyance’ as one of the many diplomatic responses to the Pahalgam Terror, Pakistan announced the suspension of the Simla Accord. So, from a Pakistani standpoint, Trump’s declaration of intervention, if left unchallenged by India, would have lent credence to Islamabad’s position on the suspension of the accord.

Despite what critics in India might still say about New Delhi under Indira Gandhi returning captured territory and returning the PoWs, the Simla Accord was/is good. In particular, the clause that denies third-party intervention has kept India in good stead whenever Islamabad had considered taking New Delhi to the UN. Now after Trump’s claims of intervention, India under PM Modi has reiterated its position against third-nation intervention. Thus, New Delhi has reiterated its commitment to the Simla Accord.

Boorish play-acting

Trump’s claims of ensuring a ceasefire between India and Pakistan came at a time when Indians, like their counterparts elsewhere, were already upset by what everyone considered his boorish play-acting in the name of an American ‘Liberation Day’ and declaring a unilateral ‘tariff war’ on much of the rest of the world. This has also meant that many Indians did not take the US president seriously on his ceasefire claims, but those who did were looking at a holistic picture involving the institutions of American administration and the US presidency.

From the looks of it, as was anticipated when he declared a tariff war, Trump needs a breather, a life-saver, to save his face nearer home. The tariff war had gone bad almost at once, and he had to announce a moratorium when the rest of the world protested and also began talking trade among themselves, minus the US.

As if to acknowledge the truthfulness of the situation, a day after the president’s tall claims on the India-Pakistan ceasefire, his administration had to impose a 90-day moratorium on the tariff war with China, America’s biggest adversary as much on the economic front as on the political, if not strategic, front. Maybe the ceasefire claim was a deliberate diversionary tactic, both for Trump’s domestic and international audiences, who were expecting fireworks on the China trade negotiations front – but it was not destined to be already.

Putting the clock back

India has since kept China and Turkey out of the diplomatic briefings on Operation Sindoor – and for specific reasons. Already, demands have come up, including from Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), an affiliate of the RSS parent of the ruling BJP at the Centre with a ‘Boycott Turkey’ call. It’s similar to the ‘Boycott Maldives’ call last year, which hurt the archipelago nation’s mainstay tourism industry badly.

India is alive to Pakistan’s proximity to China in political, economic and strategic matters and how China is supplying a lot of weapons and fighter aircraft to Pakistan–once an exclusive terrain for imports from the US. Yes, Beijing choosing this time to give Chinese names for some more places in Arunachal Pradesh, which is an integral part of our nation, is not only in poor taste but also wholly unwarranted even otherwise.

Yet, it was in the scheme of things as far as India’s China relations go, especially when Pakistan is at the receiving end from India. To put it differently, what China did mattered more than what it said, including delayed condemnation of Pahalgam terror and soft-pedalling perceived political support for Pakistan during Operation Sindoor.

Still, China is China, and Beijing’s current behaviour might well delay the resumption of normalisation dialogues with India, which is hurt and has let its feelings be known. Anyway, China cannot be expected to rush to the negotiations table with India, as it will not go down well with Pakistan, given their ‘strategic alliance’ from the past.

That is, however, not the case with the US and President Trump. India and Indians believed that despite the visible soft corner for Pakistan in certain sections of the US administration’s institutional mechanisms, Washington and New Delhi had come a long, long way from the Nixon era and the Cold War.

It was especially so with the advent of India’s economic reforms agenda in the early nineties, followed by bilateral defence cooperation agreements and more so the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal. But by lack of sensitivity and appreciation of India’s holistic concerns on the Pakistan front, President Trump too might have put the clock back by a few years, though definitely not back to the Nixon era.

Yet, in the fast-tracked complex world that we are living in, it is still saying a lot. If nothing else, the Indian public mood would compel the government leadership on American matters from now on.

A lot, however, would depend on the trade and tariff deals that the two sides are set to negotiate now, but that would satisfy only experts and strategic thinkers at best. Mollifying the street opinion would take time – and would need fresh American efforts that are not dramatic but sincere and are seen as such.

The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.