SEOUL, South Korea — Is the world’s most powerful democracy about to lose the world’s most populous democracy? It could be. In the past two days, India has reset deeply troubled relations with China while its relations with the United States are fraying.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Tuesday with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi. Mr. Modi hailed “steady progress” in improving bilateral relations and “respect for each other’s interests and sensitiveness.”
On his two-day visit, Mr. Wang also met with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.
Key outcomes included eased trade, resumptions of direct flights and issuances of visas to each other’s reporters. Those are significant turnarounds.
Relations iced over after deadly military clashes on the two countries’ Himalayan border in 2020. They were further damaged in May when Pakistani forces used Chinese weapon systems in an aerial border clash.
In New Delhi’s words, the two sides also agreed to “a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable resolution of the ‘Himalayan’ boundary question.”
Mr. Modi is expected to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, China, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1. The economic roundtable, established in 2001, includes Belarus, China, India, Iran, Russia and Pakistan as member states.
“Unilateral bullying practices are on the rise, while free trade and the international order face severe challenges,” Mr. Wang said during his visit, per China’s Global Times. “As the two largest developing countries with a combined population of more than 2.8 billion, China and India should embrace a global vision.”
What makes the sudden bilateral amity surprising is what many see as its distant promoter: President Trump.
“Trump may have inadvertently set the stage for an unexpected thaw in India–China ties,” The Times of India editorialized. It referred to the U.S. president under a headline, “The elephant and the dragon tango again.”
Looming over the background of the China–India reset are newly disputatious India-U.S. relations.
India was indignant in June when Mr. Trump welcomed the Pakistani army chief of staff to the White House after an aerial border conflict in May. India had responded to what it claimed were Pakistan-based terrorist attacks.
Islamabad reciprocated by nominating Mr. Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Indignation rose further on Aug. 6, when India was slapped with 50% tariffs on exports to the U.S. despite taking up only 2.7% of U.S. imports.
Fellow East Asian democracies Japan and South Korea each received 15% tariffs on 4.5% and 4% of U.S. imports, respectively.
Authoritarian China, which takes up 13.4% of U.S. imports, is subject to a 30% tariff rate.
Indians were perplexed by the stated reasons for the tariffs, India’s purchase of discounted Russian energy, given that Europe and the United States continue to trade with Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has also criticized U.S. firms investing in India, the world’s most populous nation and a font of skilled English-speaking information technology specialists.
One Indian says Washington has shoved New Delhi into a corner.
“India is a post-colonial country that shook off colonial rule, so they don’t want to be told what to do by foreign powers,” said an Indian businessman who works in the Indo-Pacific, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to interact with the media. “To be seen to be publicly doing what a foreign great power tells you to is something that no Indian prime minister can ignore.”
The nascent China–India amity looks particularly problematic because, on the face of it, Washington should be one of India’s best allies.
Although India has maintained a “nonaligned” geopolitical stance for decades, it is a fellow democracy.
Geostrategically, it is actively competing with China in the ground domain in the Himalayas.
In 1962, the two countries fought a two-month border war, won by Beijing’s forces. Tensions flared again in 2020 with border skirmishes resulting in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese.
On May 7, Chinese-supplied aircraft and long-range missiles downed as many as three Indian jet fighters (figures are disputed) in a Pakistani aerial ambush of Indian air assets.
In the naval domain, India is competing with China in the Bay of Bengal.
New Delhi is also a member, along with Canberra, Tokyo and Washington, of the regionwide “Quad,” a security dialogue of democratic states.
“This is the head-scratching part: India is in the American camp on China,” said the Indian businessman. “Now, all that is in danger of being frittered away.”
In another area of shared interest, India is battling Islamist terrorism within its borders.
India was customarily a heavy purchaser of Russian weapons, including armored vehicles, rocket artillery, jet fighters and naval vessels, including nuclear submarines, but in recent years has been diversifying heavily toward French, Israeli and U.S. suppliers.
India bought several U.S. systems, including Apache and Chinook helicopters, P-8 maritime reconnaissance aircraft, C-17 and C-130 heavy lift aircraft, and M777 artillery pieces.
U.S. pundits also are gobsmacked by how swiftly relations have deteriorated.
“Donald Trump risks tanking 25 years of U.S.-India relations,” Evan A. Feigenbaum, a deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, said in the pages of the Carnegie Endowment. He called the trend a “slow-motion catastrophe.”
Mr. Feigenbaum acknowledged that Mr. Trump consistently applies pressure before completing deals and that excellent reasons remain for New Delhi and Washington to get along, regardless of current hiccups.
Writers for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute agree.
“The U.S. and India have got through rough patches before, sometimes when they were not as strategically aligned,” the think tank noted in an Aug. 14 piece. “These days they are, and the reason for that alignment, China’s aggression and ambition, won’t go away.”
