When the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made a quick overnight dash to Delhi in an eleventh-hour mission to give ballast to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s imminent state visit to America, he brought a White House colleague—Kurt Campbell. Now, Campbell was handpicked by Joe Biden on the first day of his presidency as “Asia Coordinator”, and the American media promptly dubbed him the new “Asia Tsar”. Such is his pivotal role in navigating the Biden Administration’s policies toward China as an enemy country that, unsurprisingly, Campbell is also an ardent exponent of a US-Indian alliance.
Yet, Sullivan’s mission was packaged as a bold attempt to draw up an ambitious road map for Indo-US collaboration in specific hi-technology areas under the new rubric of the Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) initiative. The iCET is expected to help both countries strategically and economically, but essentially, aims to deepen defence cooperation, leading to a tighter strategic embrace in an alliance to make the Indo-Pacific order.
Last week, 75 US lawmakers addressed Biden in a letter expressing concerns about growing religious intolerance in India on Modi’s watch, curtailment of press freedom, the persistent targeting of civil society groups by the ruling party, etc. The mainstream American media and prominent think tanks have also been sharply critical of the Modi government as an authoritarian regime. Yet, Biden has chosen to ignore such protestations, exploiting the Sinophobia pervasive in the Beltway, which is at the core of the “bipartisan consensus” among the political elite that an alliance with India is far too critical for the US’ containment strategy toward China and it is foolhardy to hold it hostage to Modi government’s appalling record on democratic values or human rights.
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), flag career of the US foreign policy establishment, noted that Modi’s visit is “both a personal honour for him and a rehabilitation of his global image, considering that he was denied a US visa in 2005 on the grounds of ‘severe violations of religious freedom’ due to his perceived role in the 2002 Gujarat riots.” Quite obviously, the Americans are well aware of the Indian propensity traditionally to treat diplomacy as a vanity fair.
Some Indian analysts insist that lately, the US mindset has mellowed and is more accommodating, for instance, on our relations with Russia. But as the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament asked, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard its spots?” The UAE, a traditionally close ally of the US, now faces the threat of sanctions as punishment for strengthening its ties with China and Russia. Life is real. The CFR summed up: “The Biden administration is clearly courting India as a political counterpoint to China, while Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party see the visit as not only important for countering China but also for buttressing Modi’s global image.”
Modi’s visit has been projected as a determined effort to consolidate and expand defence ties, broadening bilateral trade and facilitating investment in India by US tech companies. By highlighting the growing partnership, the US hopes to strengthen the QUAD platform and engage India more actively in defence. In his departure statement, Modi singled out iCET as the flagship bilateral collaborative platform. Sullivan also stressed that iCET is a “powerful engine for the deeper development of US-India ties because it is so fundamental to everything we are trying to accomplish together.”
Sullivan claimed that iCET will show results over the years “in real research partnerships, real supply chain shifts, real cooperation to produce the next generation technologies for 5G and 6G, and for harnessing AI for positive outcomes.” The leitmotif here is the real concern of the two countries over the dominating leverage held by China in the production process.
Can technology “spur” India-US strategic ties, overcoming the strategic dissonance at the core of the US-India engagement? One must be naive to think so. The lobbyists of the US-Indian alliance overlook how the new technology is shaping geopolitics. As in the nuclear race several decades ago, the current race for supremacy in AI will also create a world of haves and have-nots. The big question is, what is the guarantee that the US will stay ahead of China on AI? And when it comes to warfare, AI systems are already in use, and the question is how to make sure AI is used in war planning the right way and by the right actors. That is where the US’ priority will lie, and unless India sheds its autarchic ultra-nationalist mindset and is willing to embrace globalism—and give up the paranoia over its “national interests”—it is of little interest to the US.
Modi’s visit comes within a fortnight of the trip by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to meet Biden to rededicate the special relationship of the two sister nations and present a united front on the lightning-fast evolution of AI and a rising China on the world stage. Of course, Biden and Sunak concurred that the world economy was undergoing the biggest changes since the Industrial Revolution, partly driven by AI, prompting doomsday warnings that sentient machines could wipe out humanity unless governments coordinate a response. But when they came to the brass tacks, Sunak’s ambitions ran into headwinds since the US and the EU are already engaged in their own dialogue on an AI code of conduct as industry figures plead for regulation.
And this is when Sunak plans to convene “like-minded” countries for the world’s first AI summit in Britain and wants the UK to host a future AI regulatory body! In a world situation marked by ruthless self-interest and fierce competition without self-restraint or ethics, everyone wants to succeed and is willing to harm other people to do so.
Equally, doesn’t Biden’s somersault on China just a day after positively assessing his state secretary’s talks in Beijing show the contradictory trajectory of US foreign policies? There is great unpredictability ahead, given the election cycle in the US. How much of the churning from Modi’s visit will take tangible form remains to be seen.
M K Bhadrakumar
Former diplomat