Why US posturing is yet to convince India

After the Galwan Valley clash in June last year, epitaphs were written for India-China diplomatic ties. The government has weathered criticism about its increasing trade with China, but it nonetheless pursues the goal of decoupling its economic dependence on China, with vocal encouragement from the US, American allies Australia and Japan and, to a lesser degree, South Korea.

All through the pandemic, we were told that foreign secretaries of the countries ranged against China also involved South Block in their weekly conversations to lower dependence of their nations’ supply chains on Beijing. The message was that the anti-China front was for keeps and not meant to extract some temporary concessions to free the West into concentrating on Russia, its other strategic enemy of a longer vintage.

The hyperbole of the Trump-Pompeo era has given way to a refined dissembling of Chinese positions on the neighbourhood, trade and the repression in Tibet and Xinjiang. But if there is a shifting of supply chains away from China, it is of western companies moving from one authoritarian regime, where it was easy so far to do business, to another in Vietnam. Even that means shifting business jurisdiction by a few thousand kilometres and nothing else.

In November last year, China and Vietnam, as also US allies Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, tied up for a more intimate economic enmeshing by signing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). India was the only country that was excluded despite its fervent pleas to tighten the rules of origin.

In its present shape, the rules encourage Chinese companies to set up shop in these countries, make minimal value addition to pass them off as manufactures of, say, Vietnam or Korea. Despite the anti-China rhetoric of at least 10 countries in the RCEP mix, India was left high and dry.

During his Delhi visit last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made scant reference to China. It was understandable. Top US diplomat Wendy Sherman was that day meeting the Chinese in Tianjin as a follow-up to a rare, simultaneous meeting of the top four foreign policy czars — Blinken and NSA Sullivan from the US and Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi from China.

The public image of the two meetings was presented as acrimonious, but the US media quoted State Department officials as saying that there was concrete talk behind closed doors. The US wants to ensure that guard rails are in place to prevent competition between the countries from turning into a conflict, they explained.

And there are plenty of guard rails as far as the Biden administration is concerned. His son’s moral ambivalence about earning money from Chinese businesses is in the past, but White House’s top man on China has been echoing what many in the Biden administration, with past links to Chinese business, would want: continuation of commercial interaction. At least half a dozen of Biden’s appointees are from the Albright Stonebridge Group, which is chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who gave considerable discomfort to India on human rights and Kashmir during her days at the Foggy Bottom.

The present US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, NSC director for South Asia Sumona Guha, Deputy Secretary of State Sherman and Under Secretary Victoria Nuland are all from the same stable. Another ‘consultancy’, WestExec Advisors, has contributed Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to the Biden administration.

What both have in common is that they recently wiped their websites clean of all China-related work. Yet, the Albright Stonebridge Group keeps on its rolls two former Chinese diplomats whom Beijing had trusted enough to award them two US postings each in the past.

Now, when the Chinese have clearly signalled at the recent border talks that some areas of their ingress into the Indian territory, particularly in the Depsang Bulge, are not up for negotiations, it may be time to take a hard look at whether the US will actually maintain the degree of anti-China posturing that it expects from India.

During his New Delhi interactions, Blinken grated on South Block’s sensitivities with his accent on human rights, even if the messaging from the gathering at his civil rights roundtable was crude and obvious to include a Tibetan and a Bahai, both anathema to China and Pakistan.

There was no mention of the restoration of India’s GSP (Generalised System of Preferences) status, which has impacted India’s small-scale exporters, nor of the backing for India’s WTO proposal to jack up vaccine production at multiple locations around the world.

Instead, the grapevine and peregrinations of senior security officials in the wake of the visit suggest the accent was to get India more involved in maritime security, of course, in tandem with the US and with equipment bought from the Pentagon’s contractors. They even sought to discourage India’s military ties with Russia.

Blinken and the previous Cabinet-level visitor from the US, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, sought to rekindle Indian interest in the American SM-6 missile defence system, knowing full well that having inked the contract, New Delhi can hardly back out from its deal with Russia for the S-400 systems.

India has had low fungibility so far by hitching its anti-China wagon to the US. The Trump administration’s forthright opposition appeared promising, but the Biden team needs to spell out its China policy in bigger fine print. It also needs to be seen as acting on it, before New Delhi is convinced that its appeal for security partnership is for posterity.