Modi’s Visit to the US: Crafting a Partnership for a Multipolar World

15 June 2023, NIICE Commentary 8652
Monish Tourangbam

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States (US) later this month, amplifies the high-level political support to the India-US partnership from both sides. The American beltway is overwhelmingly optimistic about the broad positive direction in this relationship, and the Indian leadership has been invested in stitching together this partnership irrespective of the change of guards in New Delhi. The Indian American community, which is more influential and politically active than ever before, is equally buoyant and will leave no stones unturned to make this visit a grand spectacle. Compared to any other period in India-US relations, the one witnessed in the 21^st century, is more comprehensive and more tangible in outcomes. Divergences do exist particularly when it comes to aligning threat perceptions as in the case of Russia, and unrealised potential as in the case of the bilateral trade volume.

However, the convergences and more particularly the strategic compatibility in the Indo-Pacific are robust enough to tide over issues of nuts and bolts. India’s tryst with the United States during the bipolar Cold War era was one that is overwhelmingly remembered as estranged despite sporadic moments of efforts at building cooperation. However, a multipolar world has emerged in parallel with the times when the spectre of China’s rise and its structural ramifications created common grounds for Washington and New Delhi to build a new understanding in the 21^st century. Before the grind of US electoral politics gathers steam for the presidential election next year, Prime Modi’s visit is well timed to cement ties and talk ways ahead.

While the democratic values and the economic opening of India does add a solid base of commonality, the most significant driver of the growing partnership has been geopolitics. The beginning of 21^st century was being called an Asian century, with China and India being the frontrunners of new economic miracles, but the narrative around peaceful rise of China quickly drifted towards apprehensions and concerns regarding China’s belligerence. For the United States, China was fast emerging a competitor at the global level. India’s threat perceptions were local in nature at the India-China border, followed by China’s strategic footprints in South Asia. Gradually, India became a pivotal factor in US grand strategy and the US became a potential partner in India’s rise.

In these strategic calculations, building a closer defence partnership almost from scratch became germane. This was not going to be easy, as India’s premier defence establishments remained under US sanctions, post the 1998 nuclear tests. However, initiating a culture of negotiations between the bureaucracies of the two democracies, such as the one over the nuclear issue, managed to build hitherto unseen, habits of cooperation. Right now, defence partnership, including defence trade as well as military-to-military exercises between the two countries stands at a plank unthinkable before.

The US Secretary of Defense Llyod Austin’s visit to India and meeting with his counterpart Rajnath Singh led to a significant understanding in the form of the new defence industrial cooperation roadmap that envisions to move the relationship from that a buyer-seller to co-development and co-production. A hallmark of this development is the promise of 100 per cent ToT (transfer of technology) for the fighter jet engines to be jointly produced by America’s General Electronics (GE) and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). The convergence in India’s need for access to sophisticated technologies for its defence modernisation and America’s need for greater access to the Indian defence market is being harnessed. India’s acquisition list and the growing interoperability between the militaries of the two countries shows that the defence partnership is cutting across all domains-land, sea and air. A meeting between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and his American counterpart Jake Sullivan on the India-US Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) also preceded Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the United States. This is the 2^nd meeting between Doval and Sullivan on iCET, that aims to “elevate and expand” bilateral “strategic technology partnership and defense industrial cooperation between the governments, businesses, and academic institutions.”

Negotiations between the two democracies, in recent times, has been geared towards addressing constraints posed by regulatory barriers and export control related issues, and take cooperation in civilian and defence technologies to the next level. Besides, the establishment of the India-US Strategic Trade Dialogue (IUSSTD) is meant, “to facilitate development and trade in critical technologies like semiconductors, space, telecom, quantum, Artificial Intelligence, defence and bio-tech.” Furthermore, the exigency of climate change impact lends a new impetus to cooperate on initiatives to move towards greener energy sources. Undeniably, there has been a quantum leap in the India-US partnership, simultaneous to a time of transition in global balance of power and hence the world order. The new tango between Washington and New Delhi is a true test case for the call of a multipolar world, wherein, the two countries, are truly shedding their old skins, and developing new habits of cooperation to face the complexities of a brave new world.
Monish Tourangbam is the Honorary Director of the Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies (KIIPS), India.