[Most experts agree that China will
be the driving force behind how India’s relationship with Washington changes in
a Biden administration.]
By Pranshu Verma and Jeffrey Gettleman
Military cooperation and a personal
friendship between President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India —
both domineering nationalists — have pushed New Delhi and Washington closer.
Now, as President-elect Joseph R.
Biden Jr. is set to move into the White House, American diplomats, Indian
officials and security experts are resetting their expectations for relations
between the world’s two largest democracies.
On one hand, experts said, Mr.
Biden’s administration will most likely pay more attention to India’s
contentious domestic developments, where Mr. Modi’s right-wing party has been
steadily consolidating power and becoming overtly hostile toward Muslim
minorities. Mr. Trump has largely turned a blind eye.
Others believe that the United
States cannot afford to drastically alter its policy toward New Delhi because
the United States needs its help to counter China and increasingly values India
as a military and trade partner.
“The real opening between the
United States and India began under President Clinton, it accelerated under
President Bush, it continued under President Obama, and it’s accelerating again
under our president, President Trump,” Stephen Biegun, the deputy secretary of
state, said in October. “One of the constants in U.S.-India
relations has been that every presidential administration here in the United
States has left the relationship in even better shape than the one it
inherited.”
Most experts agree that China will
be the driving force behind how India’s relationship with Washington morphs in
a Biden administration.
“We need India for various
reasons,” said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “Most important of which is
balancing Chinese power in Asia.”
This year, 20 Indian soldiers were
killed in the worst
border clash between India and China in decades. As relations between
New Delhi and Beijing soured, India strengthened its commitment to a
multilateral partnership with the United States, India, Japan and Australia —
known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad.
China has castigated this forum as
an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, one that is
directly aimed at counterbalancing its interests. India, leery of formal
alliances and upsetting trade relations with Beijing, was initially hesitant to
fully engage.
Mr. Biden, who once spoke
optimistically of China’s emergence “as a great power,” has become increasingly
tough on Beijing, and some analysts said his administration would most
likely use the Quad as a way to ensure that the balance of power in the
Indo-Pacific region does not tilt too far toward China.
“They’ll keep the Quad going,”
said Richard
Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security,
adding that the partnership had gone from largely being considered “a meeting
in search of an agenda to something real that is doing things.”
But some Indian officials are
concerned that the next administration will not be as tough on China as the
current one and that Mr. Biden will adopt a more nuanced and less favorable
position toward India, analysts said.
“If he’s seen as pursuing a softer
approach with China, it will make New Delhi have second thoughts about a soft
alliance,” said Brahma
Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy
Research, a think tank in New Delhi.
Mr. Biden’s administration will
inherit a growing military relationship with India. In recent months, the
United States and India have shared more intelligence and conducted more
coordinated military training exercises. The military cooperation is closest
among the navies of the two countries; Kenneth J. Braithwaite, the Navy
secretary, visited India last week.
The United States has been trying
to increase arms sales to India, but the country’s history of buying weapons from nations such
as France, Israel and Russia, has complicated that effort. American officials
are concerned about providing equipment to India if there is a risk that
members of the Russian military or other foreign agents would then have access
to it. American and Indian officials signed an agreement to share real-time geographical data through
satellite images when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited India in October.
Despite the warming ties, though,
Indian officials also worry that Mr. Biden might be less critical of Pakistan,
the country’s archrival, than Mr. Trump has been. Mr. Biden may even reach out
to Islamabad for support as the United States draws
down troops in Afghanistan. Early in his presidency, Mr. Trump suspended military aid to Pakistan, accusing it
of supporting terrorists and giving the United States “nothing but lies and
deceit.”
In contrast, Mr. Trump has said
little about the increasing hostility toward Muslims in India and the divisive
politics of Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. The Trump administration has
kept largely quiet about Mr.
Modi’s crackdown on Kashmir last year and the passage of a new,
blatantly anti-Muslim
citizenship law. And Mr. Modi’s recent pro-market agricultural policies
have fueled
a farmer rebellion that has snarled daily life in the capital and
stirred up more anti-government feeling.
Both Mr. Biden — who is considered
a strong friend of India since his days as a senator, when he worked to approve
the country’s landmark civil nuclear agreement in 2008 — and Vice
President-elect Kamala Harris are likely to be more critical of India’s human
rights record, both in private and in public, experts said.
Ms. Harris, whose mother was Indian
and who has remained close to that side of her family, has already indicated
that she is concerned about Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim area that has long
been a flash point between India and Pakistan.
Mr. Biden’s campaign documents
specifically called on the Indian government to “take all necessary steps to
restore rights for all the people” in Kashmir. His campaign added that he was
also “disappointed” in Mr. Modi’s citizenship law.
Some activists in the United States
want the Biden administration to go even further and warn Indian officials that
discontent over some of its current policies could imperil how strong a partner
India might be for the United States.
“Human rights first is equally
important,” said Simran Noor, the chairwoman of South Asian Americans
Leading Together, an advocacy group in the United States. “The impacts of not
addressing it now could lead to a lot worse conditions in the future.”
Another challenging issue is visas.
Mr. Trump this year suspended H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, a major
setback for American technology companies, which employ many Indians, and the
wider Indian diaspora in the United States.
The two countries have also
struggled to sign a comprehensive trade agreement, with talks hung up over
imports of American dairy products and medical devices such as coronary stents.
After two decades of India loosening its trade restrictions, Western officials
say the country has been tightening them over the past two years, embracing Mr.
Modi’s push for a “self-reliant India.”
And many of Mr. Biden’s priorities
— including climate change — will most likely require India’s cooperation,
ensuring that New Delhi remains front of mind for Mr. Biden’s chief diplomats.
“There is no relationship today
between any two countries that is as important as the relationship between the
U.S. and India,” said Nisha D. Biswal, Mr. Obama’s assistant secretary of state
for South and Central Asian affairs. “Neither of us can go it alone.”
Pranshu Verma reported from
Washington, and Jeffrey Gettleman from Mumbai, India.
