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When Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the joint session of the US Congress seven years ago this month, he declared that India had ended its “historic indecision” in dealing with the US. Modi’s claim had credibility, given his record of improving relations with the United States during his first two years as prime minister. In the years since, Prime Minister Modi has taken consistent steps to expand engagement with the United States. The past few years have seen a rapid expansion of trade to US$191 billion, making Washington India’s most important trading partner.
The United States prevented Pakistan and China from taking up the Kashmir issue in the United Nations Security Council after the NDA government changed its constitutional status in August 2019. When China surprised India with its military entry into eastern Ladakh amid the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the United States intervened. United States to assist India in meeting the challenge by providing equipment and intelligence.
Despite these welcome steps, the Indian security establishment has remained reluctant to open the doors to broader defense cooperation with the United States. Although successive presidents from George W. Bush onwards were enthusiastic about a new partnership with India, bureaucratic hurdles persisted. The story of Modi’s visit to Washington this week was about overcoming these obstacles.
The two governments announced a host of ambitious new agreements, including on the transfer of advanced technologies and defense cooperation, clean energy and climate change, and the promotion of a new rules-based order.
As the Prime Minister said in his address to the US Congress, India and the US “stand at a new dawn in our relationship that will not only determine the fate of our two nations, but also the fate of the world.” It is tempting to conclude that the common defiance of China has pushed India and the United States to a new juncture. This certainly applies to plans to build deeper defense cooperation that will see the United States support the modernization of India’s defense industry, and India facilitate greater operational coordination between the two countries’ armed forces.
But there is a larger imperative connecting the two countries – the need to restart their national economies amid the turmoil brought on by new technologies, the recognition of the need to reformulate the framework of economic globalization, and the need to restructure the traditional relationship between energy and economics. to ensure sustainable growth. Realizing this ambitious bilateral agenda with regional and global ramifications requires flexibility and creativity in Indian politics and the administrative establishment.
Even as he leverages US ties to transform India’s economy and raise Delhi’s global standing, the prime minister’s visit has brought the two countries into an interesting irony. During the Cold War, Delhi and Washington celebrated their shared democratic values, but found it difficult to cooperate on any major issue. Now Modi, who laid the foundation for unprecedented cooperation with America over the past decade, finds himself the target of fierce US liberal criticism over India’s “democratic backsliding”. While Modi stressed India’s deep-rooted democratic credentials, Biden was careful not to see him attack the Indian prime minister. Both India and the United States have a major task of renewing democracy in the future. However, this is an internal political task, not something imposed from the outside.
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