Rajrishi Singhal: Look East to grasp why Trump is ghosting India

A lot of literature has already emerged about similarities between Trump and former president Richard Nixon, primarily in their shadowy governance styles and despotic personality traits, even though some of the statecraft instruments may have changed with time. In fact, events during the Nixon presidency might hold some clues to Trump’s inconstant disposition towards India.

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Trump’s singling out of India—slamming it with punitive import tariffs for buying Russian oil—from among a host of countries that import Russian goods is perhaps not accidental or whimsical. Indian authorities have expressed their disappointment with US unilateralism, but have displayed diplomatic maturity by not acting impulsively, given that half of the new tariff card comes with a 21-day hiatus, allowing both sides time to reach some compromises. 

India has also refrained from reacting to Trump’s error-prone social media outbursts about the Indian economy because his hectoring on these platforms is headline-seeking behaviour. He threatens, mostly fulminates, but also relents on occasion. It seems part of an act contrived to deliver on his ‘tough negotiator’ election-campaign promise.

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And while Indian diplomats and trade officials watch on with a mix of bemusement and indignation, speculation over the real reasons behind Trump’s sudden coldness towards India has ranged from the mundane ‘negotiating strategy’ to the fanciful presidential wish to end the Russia-Ukraine war. 

One of the reasons that seems to have gone unheeded has been Trump’s hosting of Pakistan’s military chief Asim Munir at the White House for a private lunch. 

This was followed quickly by Pakistan air force chief Zaheer Ahmad Baber Sidhu meeting key US military leaders and foreign minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar meeting secretary of state Marco Rubio. At the surface level, these meetings may be viewed as a manifestation of Trump’s geopolitical and ideological choices—feting military leaders and not the elected premier—but, at a deeper level, these meetings may have been necessary to broadcast his new-found love for Pakistan and loudly emphasize a strategic pivot away from India.

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To understand the motives for this inexplicable shift in Washington’s strategy, it might be necessary to take a time-machine back to Nixon’s time, specifically the months preceding the Bangladesh liberation war. 

Pakistan, as on most occasions, was ruled by a military dictator then: Yahya Khan. A pompous but gormless general, he was backed fully by Nixon and his crafty secretary of state Henry Kissinger. 

Nixon visited Lahore in August 1969 and promised arms and monetary aid to Pakistan on one condition: Yahya Khan use his good offices with Peking (now Beijing) to mediate a US-China rapprochement. The US desire to do business with China was so strong that both Nixon and Kissinger were willing to turn a blind eye when Yahya Khan’s army committed genocide against people in what became Bangladesh in 1971, sending millions of refugees across the border. 

Pakistan’s pre-emptive attack on India, given India’s aggressive outreach to the global community, and India’s fitting military response prompted the US to even despatch a component of its Seventh Fleet, spearheaded by aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, to the Bay of Bengal to aid Pakistan’s army. The Nixon-Kissinger ambition of ending the 25-year chill with China—it was eventually accomplished when Nixon visited Peking in February 1972—surpassed all other moral considerations, even if that meant condoning genocide and providing naval support to Pakistan’s blood-thirsty armed forces.

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Cut to the present and Trump may have a similar role for Asim Munir. The public excuse for the private lunch was that the US needed Pakistan to keep an eye on Iran. But Iran is an enfeebled force now and the US is not really anxious about a blowback from Tehran. The real reason could well be leveraging Islamabad’s proximity to Beijing once again and cutting deals with Xi Jinping, even if that means overlooking Pakistan’s sponsorship of terror. This seems to make sense, even though Trump’s mercurial behaviour may have been prompted by a stack of other factors which will only get clearer with time.

Beijing is the only US trade partner that did not flinch after Trump announced his reciprocal tariff threats; in fact, it retaliated with its own set of punitive tariffs. It then went a step further and choked supplies of rare earth minerals and magnets, critical inputs for a host of high-tech products, including electric vehicles. This seems to have worked somewhat: Trump now seems reluctant to wield a stick, despite China’s oil imports from Russia eclipsing India’s. Trump’s recent public outpourings are also underlined by a burning desire to meet Xi Jinping and conclude a trade deal with China. Considering the prolonged radio silence from Beijing, Asim Munir may be seen as the only pawn left on the board.

There is a cost to be paid for all this. It could include wrecking the assiduously cultivated India-US relationship, which took years to bury mutual suspicions and reach tentative agreements based on shared values. Trump, on the other hand, seems to value short-term personal achievements over long-term alliances.

The author is a senior journalist and author of ‘Slip, Stitch and Stumble: The Untold Story of India’s Financial Sector Reforms’ @rajrishisinghal