President Donald Trump is a man given to surprises. In the shortest inauguration speech America-watchers can remember, he abjured the expected rhetorical frills and flourishes for content. He said America’s politicians had milked the country for personal gain, ignoring the interests of the American people, to whom he would return power. American businesses had enriched other nations, while neglecting their own. He likened derelict industrial plants across America to ‘tombstones.’ Transnational trade deals had impoverished America and no such arrangement would now be made or considered. Such pacts would be bilaterally negotiated. His advice to fellow American companies was ‘Buy in America, hire in America.’ The American national interest, he said, would be his foremost priority in the years to come.
President Trump would not impose American ways and values on other natons; American achievements would be his country’s most enduring advertisement. President Trump spoke of his commitment to the renewal of America’s decaying infrastructure; he pledged to build more highways, bridges and make education dynamic and relevant. He promised to stop the ‘carnage’ in inner cities perpetrated gangs and mobsters. He promised to renew the American dream through new technologies, and he pledged himself to the annihilation of ‘radical Islam from the earth.’
His message and its vision had a resonance of Democratic party Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who, from a different perspective dwelt on the need for the restoration of the American dream in the nation’s public life and its political discourse. There were shades of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal. President Trump addressed a nation deeply divided, but so too did Thomas Jefferson in 1801, Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. They turned out to be three of the greatest American presidents.
China reminded of India’s ‘core interests’
Speaking at the recent Rasina Dialogue in Delhi, India’s Foreign Secretary, S. Jaishankar, the senior-most official in the Ministry of External Affairs, reminded China that India, like itself, had ‘core interests,’ of which Beijing would be best advised to take proper heed. The minatory tone of statements emanating from Beijing, first to Mongolia, then to India, that hospitality to the Dalai Lama by each country infringed ‘China’s core interests’ provoked a firm response from Mr Jaishankar. He suggested that China might be better served accepting India’s rise’ just as India and the international community at large had noted and accepted China’s rise without demur.
China’s uncompromising strategic alignment with Pakistan points surely to an approved understanding on Pakistani jihadi activities across the border in neighbouring India and Afghanistan, the latter perceived by Islamabad as its ‘strategic depth’ in a possible conflict with India. The prime objective of China’s economic corridor in Pakistan is to contain and cripple India. Pakistan’s material resources have been concentrated domestic development but on military expansion. China’s ruling elite appears driven by the desire to reduce India to a satisfactory level of subordination in Asia.
One needs only to turn to the pages of the Global Times, Beijing’s ideological organ of choice, to gauge the disdain and arrogance that India elicits from China’s political class and its twisted leadership. These ingrained habits of mind and spirit are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
Tackling China is best seen in India as a protracted game which requires a blend of unflinching political resolve leavened with diplomatic skill and subtlety in an era unfolding global disorder. Political solutions in an unstable environment are likely to be complex and convoluted rather than simple and straightforward. Penetrating China’s cultural autism, its Middle Kingdom mindset is best likened to defusing a minefield, but the exercise is best tackled in tandem with other concerned players disturbed by Chinese belligerence. The new Trump administration in Washington and its proclaimed outreach to Moscow should strengthen India’s proven ties both with the US and with the Russian Federation. Japan through a more circuitous route is moving towards a similar goal: it is on track to normalize and take forward its relationship with Russia – a movement fully reciprocated by President Vladimir Putin; Tokyo and New Delhi are on the same page in pursuit of a closer economic and strategic relationship, all of which are predicated on Japan’s long binding security treaty with the United States.
Beijing’s shrill, disjointed rants at India following the successful tests of its Agni V intercontinental ballistic missile and its intermediate-range Agni IV twin, both capable of carrying nuclear warheads deep into China’s Han heartlands may, hopefully, have jolted China’s rulers into a dawning realization that bluster and threats have been, and are, counter-productive, that apart from Pakistan, Beijing enjoys no genuine friendship with any major power in the Asia Pacific region.
Addressing the media in Washington, Chief of the US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris made a fairly detailed presentation of the joint workings of the US and Indian navies through joint exercises in the Bay of Bengal in which Japan is now an active participant. Admiral Harris said: ‘My meetings with the President-elect’s [Donald Trump] team and the National Security Council last week underscore the seriousness of the way they view the region’s great importance. I am reassured over where the new teams are on the relationship with India.’ One message is more speed hereon to a closer Indo-US partnership.
New Indian envoy on ways to strengthen UK ties
Yashwardhan Kumar Sinha, the India’s new High Commissioner to Britain has urged a closer working relationship between the two governments to meet contemporary and future challenges. Speaking in London, he said: ‘Of course Brexit is a challenge but I see it more an opportunity. Indian companies and Indian businesses are looking forward to engaging more closely with their British counterparts.’
However, he listed as a matter of concern the declining number of Indian students at British universities, which he contrasted this with the more welcoming approach of Australian, American, French and German institutions whose representatives spared no effort to attract Indian students to their country’s shores.
He dwelt on Indian IT professionals. ‘In Europe, the UK is again our first port of call and I think for us it’s very important our IT professionals can come here and go back. They contribute immensely to not only to the local economy, but also to the global economy, which is what they are doing in Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. It is important that both countries engage in a manner beneficial for both India and the UK.’ One must hope that these words of wisdom do not fall on deaf ears.
Possible deal on Chagos Archipelago
Beyond such issues there appears to be a welcome development. The inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago, who, long years ago, were forcibly removed for reasons of security from the land of their birth to make way for a US military base at Diego Garcia, may have some chance of return. Britain, as a close ally of the United States acquiesced in this brutal act of injustice. As the Chagos Archipelago was under British colonial administration in Mauritius, the hapless islanders were dispatched to Port Louis, the Mauritian capital, where they have lived in poverty and social deprivation to this day. All attempts to secure justice for this displaced community have failed thus far.
A warning from the present Mauritian government that it would take the case to the United Nations, thence to the International Court of Justice appears to have jolted Whitehall out of its decades of slumber. Britain, prompted by the United States, has approached India to use its considerable influence with Mauritius with a view to reaching a settlement acceptable to all the parties.
The new British approach appears to have been welcomed by India. In today’s fraught world India too has vital interests in the waters around Mauritius, hence an overall deal which would also meet Indian security interests may well be on the cards. We shall have to wait and see. But hope springs eternal that justice so long delayed will, at last, be done.
