The Biden Administration and the “India” Deadlock: Steering US-India Foreign Policy

Joseph R. Biden Jr., the 46^th President of USA faces a unique dilemma as he assumes his role. The ‘Thucydides’ Trap’ that Graham Allison has allured to, continues to exist unabashedly, with its intensity getting scaled up following the Covid-19 pandemic. The Trump administration’s incapability and despicable record in handling of the crisis has led to a greater questioning of the institutional structure of the United States from both left and right wings. The heightening of the Race tensions, leading to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement, culminating in the Right wing Republican Party sponsored attack upon Washington DC has further corroded the image of the liberal order in America. The witnessing of the growth of a proper equivalence of class and race interests against the White, neoliberal hegemonic class is indeed something that Biden had properly exploited in the US Presidential Elections of 2020, securing a pluralist majority and coming to power, with Kamala Harris as his Vice President.

The Trump Administration’s failure has been noted across all fronts, internally as well as externally. From deepening social stratification along class, race, gender and religious lines, to mishandling of American Foreign Policy whilst garbing it as realist assertiveness, the USA had been really pushed to the doldrums. In fact, as Andrew Carnegie had once famously stated how ‘the Republic (USA) thunders past with the speed of an express”, it is China that has seemed to take up the mantle of growth, proving once again the efficacy of Marx’s dictum reflecting Historical Materialism, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

It is in such a momentous phase that President Biden has come to power, leading to possible doubts as to how he is going to ‘make right’ the mess that exists. Coming to Foreign Policy, United States’ primary contender at this stage is China, but herein there is a twist; the same being that the US depends upon China for its cheap and technically skilled labour and multifarious imports. It should be noted that China is the present day production hub of the world, thereby showing the venerable fallacy that neoliberalism ultimately presents itself with.

Precarious times always foment the requirement of alliances, and it is in such a position that US Foreign Policy towards India has assumed a greater and more important role. India-US ties, from the very onset of the Cold War, have been a mixed bag. The presence of multiple structural constraints, namely contrasting worldviews and role conceptions, huge asymmetries in terms of resources, have affected the Foreign Policies of both the nations towards each other (Tellis, 2017). It is also important to note how the present Indian and American International Relations scholarship has pointed out the role of China in the lead up to this situation (Singh, 2019; Madan, 2019).

The Sino-Soviet split of 1955 brought China closer home to the United States, while the USSR discovered an ally in India, something that got more pronounced and cemented by the 1970s. However, this was soon to change. The fall of USSR in 1991 and the rise of USA with its unipolar hegemony led India to join ranks, fall in place with the global liberal institutional regimes and follow the bandwagon theory, opening up its market and opening India to neoliberal entities. The souring of relations following the 1998 Pokhran Tests under the Vajpayee regime and the rejuvenation and resurgence of Indo-US ties under the Manmohan Singh regime mark the high points of early 21^st century diplomacy.

The rise of populist leaderships of Narendra Modi in India and Donald Trump in the United States, replete with backing each others’ regimes reflected through public displays like ‘Howdy Modi’ (2019) and ‘Namaste Trump’ (2020), were indeed sordid. The constant jubilation and popularity associated with Trump reached its low point with his handling of the hydroxychloroquine exports from India. The rise of Biden and Harris, and the “very awkwardly silent” congratulatory notes from the Office of the Indian Prime Minister, shows the cost of this humongous miscalculation.

In order to understand Biden’s policy directive with relation to India, the author shall be primarily referring to a policy drive statement that he had presented in the Foreign Affairs (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-01-23/why-america-must-lead-again). Following the structure provided by Alexander L. George in his work, ‘The Causal Nexus between Cognitive Beliefs and Decision-making Behavior’, this author shall attempt to formulate a Role Conception (shaping of beliefs and images) and to find out a set of congruent behavior, consistent but unlikely behavior and incongruent behavior, thereby leading to a proper understanding of Biden’s India Policy using two variables: Explanatory and Dependent.

Before assuming his position of the President of the United States, Joe Biden had previously served as the Vice President to Barack Obama, the 44^th President of the United States. In his policy statement, Biden attacks Trump for his insularity and protectionism, especially in handling the US role as the ‘global police’. It must be noted that President George W. Bush’s increasingly assertive realpolitik was neutralized by Obama’s realpolitik of leading from the back. Biden’s participation in that administrative setup is bound to create ripples in his present position, and the assertiveness that he promises in his policy document may not seem to be of complete fruition, as it might be but an evolved policy of leading from the back, as against brittle assertiveness.

India’s democracy being largely populous and diverse is difficult to ascertain, as it is vibrant and swinging. Demagoguery, a point that Biden makes whilst attacking Trump, is very important in this respect. It must be noted how equivalences in the ruling styles of Modi and Trump have been drawn up in popular perception. The extension of the same in policy making, along with the various protestations taking place across India over the NRC-CAA issue (Citizenship) and the Farm Law Amendment Act (attempts at creating an oligopoly, marked as a process of ‘corporatization’) have surely captured the attention of the Biden administration, and unlike Trump’s action, ‘turning a blind eye’ goes against the assertive role that Biden hints at.

This author, in his conclusion, feels that the primary accommodation to be made by the United States towards India is to be found in the management of security resources, a rejuvenation of the erstwhile ‘Pivot strategy’ introduced under the helm of Obama and Leon Panetta. There shall be an increase in the US role in the Quad, and attempts would surely be made to provide it a structure like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), albeit within a very limited scale.

Biden is indeed in an Indian deadlock, an ethical dilemma, that his administration will find very difficult to avoid. The conditions created by the pandemic have surely benefitted him, allowing him to come to power, but it has surely created greater problems, especially in terms of Soft Power, and it is in such a high stakes game that the present day US-China Cold War 2.0 is taking place. The nature of this conflict is different from that of the US-USSR, and multipolarity as against unipolarity shall be the rule of engagement.

Raunak Bhattacharya

Intern, AGA