 "Why India should worry about a Kamala Harris presidency")
Indians might be proud that Vice President Kamala Harris could become the first Indian-American to become United States President. Academically, financially, and professionally, Indian-Americans far outperform the average American. That is a good thing. From rocket research in Huntsville, Alabama, to medicine at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic to superconductor development in California’s Silicon Valley, the United States benefits tremendously from India’s diaspora. It is time Indian-Americans receive the prominence they deserve.
However, a Harris presidency could be a disaster for US-India relations. The foreign policy consensus that existed in Washington during the Cold War is over. From Cuba to Israel to Mexico and Yemen, successive administrations have treated foreign policy as a partisan football. Happily, India was an exception. Every administration since George W. Bush in 2001 has sought to develop US-India ties, diplomatically, economically and militarily. Indeed, the importance of India as an ally might be the only foreign policy topic upon which Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden actually agreed.
Harris, ironically, may break that consensus. By picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate after a thinly veiled anti-Semitic campaign against Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro by the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, either Harris signals a willingness to defer to her party’s most Leftist fringe or she confuses Twitter and Facebook activism with the mainstream. Either way, it does not bode well for US-India ties.
The Indian-American community may lean left but they reject extremes. If Harris takes her cues from the online community, then, she will subordinate the interests of Indian Americans and advocates of strong US-India ties to those who embrace Hinduphobia, denigrate Indian democracy, and promote Khalistan separatism.
Harris, likewise, neither has the depth, intellect, nor will to press the case for India over the objections of State Department career staff primed to embrace a highly politicised approach to human rights and to take inputs from organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch uncritically. Just American press and officials once succumbed to “Bush Derangement Syndrome” and Trump sent them over the edge, so too do they today indulge in “Modiphobia”.
Biden’s team has managed the problem well. When human rights groups sought to cast the Manipur violence as motivated in religious bigotry rather than decades-old tribal dynamics, the Biden team assuaged loud voices inclined to believe the worst. After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Indian intelligence of killing a designated Khalistan terrorist on Canadian soil and implied US analysts agreed, the White House and State Department managed the crisis with a nod-and-wink, assuaging irrational activists and online provocateurs without insulting India. To New Delhi’s credit, it successfully navigated the crisis by cooperating with an investigation with which it could have taken umbrage.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsUnfortunately, Harris would be more Trudeau, less Biden. While most Americans and even most Democrats support the partnership with Israel and recognise that the world’s only Jewish state is in an existential struggle with terrorists bent on genocide. As she acquiesces to the loudest voices within her party and online as well as cocooned Hollywood friends detached from reality and whose foreign travel consists of hopping between five-star hotels, expect the dyke in the dam of the State Department’s worst instincts to break. Human rights groups will have free reign to peddle propaganda and left-of-centre State Department bureaucrats will push their personal political agendas absent any adult supervision.
Not only will they believe at face value lies told by the pro-Khalistan movement, but they will also believe the worst about abuses that, if they look in the mirror, they will recognise all democracies suffer. They will defer to an academic community that puts Marxist narratives about caste above reality and use that to demean India’s democracy. Unable to see the forest through the trees, they will amplify minor incidents into major crises and condescend to New Delhi in a way that Americans and Europeans so often do without recognizing they are doing so.
A Harris victory may be a symbolic triumph for Indian-Americans and a rightful source of pride, but make no mistake: It will also usher in the worst crises in India-US relations since Clinton-era sanctions and the late National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s multiple betrayals.
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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