Nixon to Trump: Tracing the ups and downs of a mercurial engagement

nixon-trump-tariff

Richard Nixon, the 37th president (1969-74) of the US, is an infamous character in recent political history. But for entirely different reasons in the US and India. In India, Nixon is best remembered for a hostile position to India during the war with Pakistan in December 1971 which led to the liberation of Bangladesh.

Papers declassified in the US over the last decade show that, if anything, analysts underestimated Nixon’s loathing for Indians, not just Indira Gandhi. He was even open to using the US military to hurt India during that war. Very likely, he is the most disliked US president in India.

There may be competition here soon. In an extraordinary turn of events, President Donald Trump in his second term has undone the trust engendered by over two decades of deepening ties between India and the US. It’s not just about driving a hard bargain on trade. Trump’s gratuitous insults over social media, referring to the fastest growing major economy as a ‘dead economy’ is unlikely to be forgotten soon. The damage done over the last few days may well last years.

Hesitant 1960s

India and the US, one would have thought, would be natural allies. That, however, has never been the case. In the decade leading to the Nixon presidency, the relationship showed promise that was not realised.

Despite unease with India’s stand on many issues, the US played the role of a benefactor in a difficult decade in which India fought two wars and confronted severe droughts.

Three instances are worth recounting. President John Kennedy airlifted arms to India during the phase when the conflict with China was on. A few years later, US supplied wheat under the PL-480 programme when the food situation dire. It may have saved many lives. Subsequently, some of the organisations supported by USAID catalysed India’s Green Revolution and the ensured food security.

It’s hard to imagine India standing up to Nixon if PL-480 was required.

Dismal 1970s and the promise of the 1980s

After the Nixon episode, came India’s nuclear detonation in 1974. The response was swift and unsparing. In a way, it led to a technology winter when it came sourcing from the West.

Once Indira Gandhi returned as prime minister in the 1980s, there was an effort to reset ties with the US. In June 1985, Rajiv Gandhi became the first Indian prime minister to address a joint meeting of the US Congress- Nehru in 1949 addressed the House and Senate separately.

Rajiv Gandhi in his speech acknowledged the help India received from the US in the 1960s and appealed to a shared set of values. However, India had to wait for the end of the Cold War to take the relationship to another level.

Missed opportunities?

India was the beneficiary of US help till this point. But there’s tantalising evidence that the US may have not paid enough attention to Indian strategists at that point and the world paid the price for it.

Consider this example from Strobe Talbott, who would during the Clinton years plays a crucial role in improving bilateral ties after India’s second nuclear detonation in 1998.

Writing an introduction to a book edited by Rakesh Mohan to mark 25 years of economic liberalisation, Talbott mentioned his stopovers in Delhi, on the way to Kabul, during the years the US used Afghan mujahideen as proxy force to fight the Soviet Union.  He received a remarkably prescient warning from Indian officials on the likely fallout of the proxy war America was underwriting.

Talbott was told that the mujahideen would eventually radicalise Afghanistan, make common cause with likeminded elements in Pakistan, and “turn their jihadist furore on India and, very possibly, on the West”.

A prescient warning, which was ignored.

End of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era

Collapse of the Soviet Union lifted a burden that didn’t allow bilateral ties to bloom. Simultaneously, India’s liberalisation spawned commercial opportunities, particularly in services sector. The advent of India’s information technology industry and the positive spill-over it had on other economic areas owes a lot to the US. Even in terms of inward remittances, the US now is India’s largest source.

This phase, sometimes characterised as “strategic altruism” on the part of the US by its analysts, reached its high point with the civil nuclear deal in in 2008 that ended India’s nuclear isolation without having to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Betting on India was a bipartisan consensus.

A nuclear deal negotiated by a Republican President was passed by Democrat- controlled Congress, including the votes of three senators, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Evan A. Feigenbaum attributed this phase to the removal of three roadblocks to a deeper engagement: Cold War politics, a stagnant commercial relationship and disagreements over the nuclear programme.

Latent distrust of India never went away

Bipartisan consensus may have existed, but parts of the US establishment never really bought into the India story. This is best summarised by an article Robert Boggs, a US diplomat who served in South Asia between 1985 to 2004, wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2015.

He wrote that merely because both were democracies they did not necessarily have a substantial overlap of interests. He concluded: “New Delhi will strengthen its ties with Washington only if doing so serves its interests; Washington should do the same.”

Trumpian damage

Foreign policy establishment in India has been blind to the signals that Trump sent in his first term. He is by far the most transactional US president in living memory. Strategic altruism is anathema to him. India didn’t have an easy time on trade in his first term.

In the second term, the damage he has inflicted in a matter of months will not be undone quickly.

Trump may not get a third term, despite trying to change the rules. But what he may end up doing in his term is give credence to the line that Robert Boggs espoused. That’s where the real threat to bilateral ties lies.

Trump may not share Nixon’s personal dislike of Indians. But Nixon, who passed away a few decades ago, has a successor when it comes to damaging bilateral ties.