Avoiding the Labors of Sisyphus: Strengthening U.S.-India Relations in a Trump Administration

Abstract

Avoiding the Labors of Sisyphus:Strengthening U.S.-India Relations in a Trump Administration Ashley J. Tellis (bio) For close to two decades now, the transformation of U.S.-India relations has been a bipartisan project in Washington. It has also been uniquely successful, as alternating Republican and Democratic administrations have worked with governments led by both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress Party to exorcise the ghosts of old corrosive Cold War disagreements. As a result, the United States and India, once sharply divided by the issues of alliances and alignment, today routinely declare their commitment to a durable strategic partnership. Former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, arguably the progenitor of the new collaboration, once boldly declared the United States and India to be “natural allies.”1 At that moment in 1998, the vision of fraternity seemed like fatuous rhetoric. But to the credit of Vajpayee’s successors (Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi) and their U.S. counterparts (George W. Bush, in particular), his ambition was brought to fruition rapidly and productively enough for Barack Obama to assert that U.S.-India ties could become the “defining partnership” of the century ahead. The first section of this essay discusses the potential implications of the “America first” agenda that Donald Trump outlined during his presidential campaign for U.S.-India relations and regional security more broadly. The second section then assesses several challenges facing the bilateral relationship. The Outlook for U.S.-India Relations during the Trump Administration Although it is not inevitable, Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the United States could interrupt the dramatic deepening in U.S.-Indian ties to the disadvantage of both nations. If this outcome were to materialize, it would not be necessarily because Trump harbors [End Page 43] any particular animus toward India. During the election campaign, he admittedly did complain that “India is taking [U.S.] jobs” and that the United States was being “ripped off” by many Asian countries, including India.2 But he also declared that he was “a big fan,” and that “if…elected President, the Indian and Hindu community will have a true friend in the White House.”3 The variety of positions expressed by Trump suggests that the potential threat to the continuing transformation of U.S.-India relations comes less from his views on India—which are probably unsettled—than it does from his iconoclastic convictions about the relationship between the United States and the world. Throughout the campaign, Trump emphatically affirmed his opposition to the existing international order, arguing that the United States, far from being its beneficiary, was in fact its principal victim. To remedy the inconveniences flowing from this pernicious “globalism,” his America-first campaign promoted an agenda that rejected multilateral free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, demanded that allies bear a greater share of the burdens associated with their defense, and eschewed U.S. military intervention in virtually all instances other than to avert direct threats to the U.S. homeland. While many elements of this nationalist agenda are understandable—even defensible—the worldview it represents diverges from that which initially cultured the evolving U.S.-Indian partnership. Going back to the earliest years of the George W. Bush administration, the United States’ rapprochement with India was premised on the assumption that the principal strategic problem facing both countries consisted of the rise of China and the threat it posed to both U.S. primacy and Indian security—not to mention the safety of the United States’ other Asian partner and allies—simultaneously. Since it was assumed that the United States would subsist as the principal protector of the liberal international order, and the Western alliance system in particular, even in circumstances where the containment of China was impossible because of the new realities of economic interdependence, the Bush administration slowly gravitated toward a strategy of balancing China by building up the power of key states located on its periphery. [End Page 44] India’s large size, its geographic location, and its own rivalry with China made it the ideal partner in such a strategy. Hence, it was not surprising that the Bush administration...