My Take | America, not China, stands in the way of India becoming a great power
Washington makes no room for New Delhi’s geopolitical ambitions but considers the Asian giant as just another asset in its Beijing containment strategy
Some pundits see the return of Donald Trump to the White House as an opportunity for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to draw even closer to the United States in a marriage of convenience against mutual enemy No 1 – China.
The problem is, Modi and his Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar have already tried it under Trump 1.0 and Joe Biden. How did that turn out? Not well at all for New Delhi. For India to double down on Trump 2.0 will be to throw more good money after bad.
India’s power, prestige and influence have declined regionally and globally as Biden’s “friendshoring” and alliance-building ended up subsuming Modi’s geopolitical ambitions under those of the United States.
The expansion of Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific as a military-political-economic regional entity under Washington has not expanded, but actually shrunk, Modi’s influence.
Now, he seems finally to realise that defining the “Indo” part of Indo-Pacific as his country’s sphere of influence is no more acceptable to the US than allowing China to turn the Asia-Pacific, or even the South China Sea, into its sphere of influence. In both cases, the US will fight for its continuing hegemony in the region as a whole since the end of the second world war. India’s own interests and ambitions do not factor into this American geopolitical equation. In fact, if anything, they are to be actively subsumed and undermined.
The problem for Modi is that there is a fundamental but unbridgeable gap between India’s grand ambitions for itself and Washington’s design for it, which is no more than a bulwark against China’s alleged expansionism.
But India wants to be a regional power at least on par with China and to project comparable power and influence across the Indo-Pacific and beyond. It is to be a great power in its own right, not a mere junior partner living under the shadows of Uncle Sam. But, rhetoric aside, Washington has no interest in creating a potential great power rival, only another junior partner, vassal state, subordinate government, or whatever you call it.
