Donald Trump And Narendra Modi’s Opportunity
Now is the time to enshrine a U.S.-India great power partnership.
This week, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Washington, DC for two days of talks with newly-elected President Donald Trump. While the summit will no doubt be full of announcements on trade deals and defense cooperation, it is important not to lose sight of the greater opportunity.
The United States and India’s core national interests call for a strong alliance between two great nations in an era of great power competition. Bureaucratic skepticism borne from past mistakes keeps the world’s oldest and largest democracies from forging an epoch-shaping alliance. However, it is time for President Trump and Prime Minister Modi to overcome the hesitations of history through a clear-eyed and reciprocal partnership that propels India’s strategic autonomy from the shadows of China to its rightful place—a truly great power and a redoubtable American ally.
India’s primary goal is to regain historic parity with China as one of two leading Asian powers with expanding global influence. India needs to substantially augment its hard power capabilities to optimize its strategic autonomy. Presently, this is constrained by China’s superior military and economy. Hard power determines a nation’s strategic autonomy and the reach of its soft power. To paraphrase President Theodore Roosevelt, soft speech is greatly amplified when accompanied by a big stick. A strong alliance with the United States is India’s optimal conduit to build and sustain its hard power.
The United States needs a resolute and strong India that can hold its own against China and anchor its wider web of relationships across the Indo-Pacific. It is in the American interest to build up India’s hard power capabilities so that it can be a reliable ally in the region. It is to America’s benefit to boost Indian strategic autonomy, particularly across the Indian Ocean and in the Global South. To secure the Indian Ocean in particular and the Indo-Pacific, the United States and India aim to rapidly modernize the Indian defense industry into the region’s “arsenal of democracy.”
Seasoned interlocutors in both the American and Indian camps harbor understandable misgivings about whether a strong alliance between the two nations is achievable. The Indian side holds residual skepticism of American intentions, stemming from military support for Pakistan during the Cold War and the War on Terror. Over the last few years, Washington’s ignominious Afghan withdrawal and its indifference to Bangladesh’s political turmoil left many questioning the wisdom and consistency of U.S. policy in India’s near abroad.
Similar skepticism runs deep in American circles regarding India’s reliability. New Delhi’s leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement and its close affinity with Moscow befuddled American strategists during the Cold War. India’s twentieth-century economic policies of nationalization and protectionism clashed with the American vision of a free global economy. More recently, India’s constant requests for technology transfers and its insistence on continued engagement with Russia give off the impression it wants the benefits of a U.S. partnership without the responsibilities.
The best antidote to this mutual skepticism held by a small entrenched class on either side is a strong reciprocal commitment to benchmarked progress toward a resolute partnership.
The partnership should be structured with progressive reciprocity along four pillars. First, defense cooperation and co-production with a bespoke, tiered AUKUS-like arrangement should execute a shared strategy to secure a free and open Indian Ocean. Indian defense posture needs to protect the country’s long, rugged land borders to the north and ensure naval dominance across the Indian Ocean from Suez to Singapore and Malay to Madagascar. A strong, tailored military partnership between the United States and India is the most realistic way of achieving this critical national security priority for India while also meeting U.S. regional security goals.
Second, an energy security and transition partnership with an all-fuels pragmatic approach is needed to meet India’s exploding energy demand and provide adequate resilience and security across generation, transmission, and distribution systems. American energy exports and nuclear technologies have an instrumental role to play in meeting India’s energy security goals. It is also to America’s benefit that India’s solar and renewable industry competes effectively with Chinese dominance of the sector in Asia and Africa.
Third, trade and mobility agreements advance fair and reciprocal growth in bilateral trade and mobility of skilled individuals, contributing to the shared prosperity of collective digital economies. India’s high ceiling of bound tariffs (averaging 48.5 percent) allows for novel and creative strategies to level the playing field in U.S.-India trade. Overcoming these obstacles will substantially expedite and expand already surging trade volume, which is expected to grow in value from $200 billion per annum at present to over $1.8 trillion by 2033.
Individual agreements on critical economic sectors, such as semiconductors, critical minerals, and pharmaceuticals, afford a politically pragmatic approach to constructing strong bilateral trade and supply chain agreements. India holds a deep repository of highly skilled labor in the health and technology sectors, which can address critical U.S. labor demands and revive American domestic manufacturing. A temporary work scheme of pre-cleared, highly-skilled workers who are able to participate in each other’s complementary and rapidly growing specialized sectors will be a prudent option for both nations to pursue.
Fourth, a strong shared commitment to a “New Golden Road,” resuscitating historic Indo-Mediterranean trade and commerce, would bolster economic and security linkages between the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic. The U.S.-led Abraham Accords that began Israeli normalization with the Arab Gulf nations and others paved the way for the launch of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) at the 2023 G20 Summit in India. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have become India’s third and fourth-largest trading partners. The Italian port of Trieste is positioned to connect the European industrial heartland to the burgeoning Indo-Mediterranean trade through the Suez Canal, road-rail networks traversing the Gulf Peninsula, or through Iraq to Turkey into Europe. It is in American and Indian interests to boost and coordinate among key stakeholders such as Italy, the European Union, Israel, Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, among others, as they form a more equitable and transformative alternative to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
The United States and India enjoy substantial synergy in a host of additional areas, including space, AI and digital economy, STEM education, and remote learning. The overwhelming majority of mainstream Americans and Indians hold high favorability of each other, have growing familial connections, and are keen to forge lasting bonds. They are unaware and unburdened by the history that stymies the select professional classes on either shore.
Trump and Modi are transformative leaders restructuring the political landscape of their respective nations and reshaping their nations’ global engagement. Unsurprisingly, they glimpse in each other a kindred spirit and wish to make fast the ties between the two great powers. For the good of the American and Indian people and for all who cherish freedom, the two leaders this week should seize the moment to lay the foundations of an enduring order.
Kaush Arha is President of the Free & Open Indo-Pacific Forum and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue.
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