Head-on | The Washington Consensus: Embracing the Indian decade

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States will establish the contours of what can broadly be termed the Washington Consensus. It puts India front and centre of America’s unfolding global doctrine designed for the second quarter of this century between 2025 and 2049. As the incumbent superpower, the US is aware of how rapidly the world order is evolving. The China threat is now regarded as greater than the challenge posed by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact powers during the 40-year Cold War. China not only threatens US economic, military and technological hegemony. It poses a diplomatic challenge. Beijing has in a matter of months transformed the geopolitics of the Middle East. It first choreographed a detente between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, ending a conflict that had fuelled proxy Sunni-Shia wars across the region. Beijing then blessed the return of Syria to the Arab League. Damascus had been expelled in 2011 under American pressure. The West launched military strikes on Syria to oust President Bashar al-Assad from power. Russia intervened militarily in Syria in 2015 to ensure the US-led West’s bid to effect regime change in Damascus failed. With Iran and Syria also re-establishing diplomatic ties after over a decade, Beijing and Moscow have successfully reduced Washington’s influence in the world’s most volatile geography. An alliance between Iran and Saudi Arabia was unthinkable months ago. China midwifed the agreement with the physical presence in Beijing of the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran. The four-day state visit to China last week by the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, ended with Chinese President Xi Jinping declaring: “Justice must be done to Palestine as soon as possible". The message to Washington couldn’t have been clearer. Washington’s attempt to weaken Russia through the West’s proxy war in Ukraine and unprecedented economic sanctions has strengthened the China-Russia axis. With Beijing and Moscow increasingly involved in the Middle East’s fraught geopolitics, the US has painted itself into a geopolitical corner. Who best to get it out of that corner than India? Washington recognises that the future theatre of conflict will be in the arc curving down from Israel to the Indian Ocean and rising up to the South China Sea. India has over the past few years fashioned key alliances within this arc. The I2U2 alliance between Israel, India, the US and the UAE is one arrow in the quiver of the developing US-India relationship. The older Quad with Japan and Australia takes the US-India partnership close to China’s territorial waters. Washington has also encouraged the new India-France-UAE trilateral. France has joined Indian battleships and submarines in patrolling the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). In all these alliances, India is a common partner. For Washington, New Delhi presents two opportunities: One, as an ally against China’s expansionism in the IOR and beyond; and two, as an economic opportunity for America’s corporate and defence sector. Pentagon officials are speaking of “big” announcements to be made this week at the Modi-Biden meeting following the Indian prime minister’s address to a joint session of the US Congress. Apart from the GE engine deal for India’s new generation fighter jets and a $3 billion contract to buy Predator drones, there could be other key defence agreements as well. What about Washington’s preoccupation with the Ukraine war? The West’s draconian sanctions on Russia have not broken its economy. The rouble is stable. Inflation is lower than in many Western countries. Washington knows that its 100-year-old Eurocentricism offers diminishing returns. The refusal of the US to even put on the agenda a free trade agreement (FTA) with Britain during British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s two-day visit to Washington on 7-8 June shows that the special relationship between the two countries is special more for London than Washington. For America’s hard-nosed officials in the White House and the Pentagon, Europe represents the past, Asia the future. America was built on slave labour shipped from Africa by European slavers. King Charles III’s ancestor King William III owned the Royal African Company which profited from this brutal centuries-long slave trade. US officials know their history well. They also know that by the end of the second quarter of this century, in 2049, America will be a coloured-majority country with blacks, Asians and Hispanics accounting for over 50 per cent of the population. A quarter century can herald great change. Exactly 25 years ago in 1998, US President Bill Clinton slapped harsh sanctions on India for conducting the Pokhran II nuclear test. In the next 25 years leading up to the mid-21st century, the US, China and India will form three angles of a geopolitical triangle of power. Modi’s address to a joint session of the US Congress will focus on shared interests. These are, first, enhancing the defence and security partnership between the two countries to counter the China threat in the Indo-Pacific by giving the Quad more teeth. Second, driving collaboration on cutting-edge technologies while building safety guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Third, working together on climate change and sustainable development. Fourth, buying or co-developing a range of weaponry, from Predator drones to GE fighter jet engines. For Washington, India is a key security partner in a new Cold War with China that will define geopolitical power well into the next decade. India also provides the large consumer and business market that could, as it grows, make up for the loss of trade that is inevitable as the US relationship with China worsens. Biden calls the relationship between the US and India the most important partnership of the 21st century. The future, he says, lies with India, the world’s fifth largest economy, soon to be the third largest. The US is nothing if not pragmatic in its choice of important partners. The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.