How the Modi, Khobragade factor resulted in Powell's resignation

There are two major bilateral diplomatic reasons and a larger strategic scenario that are primarily responsible for the sudden exit of Nancy Powell, the US Ambassador to India, who announced her resignation to President Obama in a US Mission Town Hall meeting on 31 March.

The two reasons are:

(i) the Narendra Modi factor, and

(ii) the Devyani Khobragade issue.

The latter reflects a bitter past in the Indo-US bilateral relations, a past that continues to be the present and threatens to spoil the future too. The former is indicative of the Obama administration’s determination made in the present to safeguard the future.

The larger strategic scenario pertains to India’s recent silent abstention during the vote in United Nations General Assembly on the Ukraine resolution where New Delhi refused to toe the line of the West. India’s voting behaviour was by no means an act of shying away from taking a call on the Ukraine/Crimea crisis. India’s abstention did not mean neutrality. Instead, it should be interpreted as a sure sign of India not sacrificing its time-tested and trusted friend Russia on the altar of the US-led western community. For the Americans, the Indian decision was a wake- up call.

Nancy Powell is guilty of various sins of omission and commission because of which Indo-US bilateral relations plummeted to a new low. The US can ill afford to estrange India at this time when it is pro-actively engaged in a war of nerves with Russia and Washington needs a long-term geo-strategy aimed at containing China.

Powell’s biggest blunder was failing to read the Indian political scenario and take a call on Modi to prepare a platform for dealing with a new Indian government by May-end. This is despite the fact that most election surveys have been pointing for months to the stark possibility of Modi heading the new government in May.

She travelled to Gandhinagar and met Modi on 13 February, 2014. It was a much-delayed action and proved to be too little too late. She should have read the Indian tea leaves better – and sooner.

Her second blunder was mis-judging and mis-calculating the tough Indian response over the Khobragade spat. Exactly three months ago, this writer had predicted that the US will have to eat crow over the Khobragade issue.

The prediction was not based on star gazing but on ground realities in New Delhi’s South Block. This writer has consistently written on Firstpost that India was livid over how the Americans have treated Khobragade and is in no mood to throw in the towel. This is exactly what has happened and there is all the more reason now why it is a matter of when, not if, the Obama administration will withdraw all the cases against Khobragade.

However, for that to happen Narendra Modi, if he does become Prime Minister next month, will have to continue to take a tough stand vis a vis the US on the issue. Modi has already spoken his mind on the subject and raised the Khobragade issue during his meeting with Powell.

The UPA government has refused to budge and show any “understanding” that American interlocutors have been calling for on the Khobragade issue.

While it is the US State Department, not Nancy Powell, who initiated an unprecedented action against Khobragade, the ambassador continued with the flawed assessment that in view of the impending general elections, the Indian government’s response would be weak and timid.

Powell failed to alert Washington about the mood of the UPA government and its possible reaction. Instead she waded into the controversy when she surreptitiously flew Khobragade’s domestic assistant Sangeeta Richard’s family from India to the US on T-visas days before the Indian diplomat’s arrest in New York on 12 December, 2013.

This is not how an ambassador is supposed to treat her host country. Within weeks, her unfriendly and surreptitious act became known to the Ministry of External Affairs and, no wonders, she was “unfriended” soon thereafter. She was cold-shouldered and also denied an audience by the political leadership.

Soon enough her access was limited to a few Indian diplomats only. That served little purpose. Her stay in New Delhi was increasingly becoming unremunerative diplomatically, if not untenable.

New Delhi rubbed it in further when on 10 January it ordered the expulsion of US diplomat Wayne May because he had assisted Richard’s family in securing T-visas and travelling to the US. May, who was then head of the US embassy’s diplomatic security contingent managing a staff of 424 security officers, including 10 Marine Security Guards, could not have done this without Powell’s approval.

Few US ambassadors in India would have had such a disastrous tenure as Powell’s two-year stint in New Delhi has proven to be. This is when the US is India’s largest trade partner and the Indo-US bilateral trade is hovering around an impressive $100 billion mark.

This is yet another and very pragmatic reason for Powell’s exit, just a week before the nine-phase election process begins in India on 7 April. The Obama administration needed to convey a message to New Delhi that it is genuinely interested in deepening all-round engagement with India with the new government.

It is for the next Indian government to decide whether it will continue with the UPA government’s policy vis a vis the US, which in a nut shell, is that everything is predicated on how the US moves on the Khobragade issue. As of now the Income Tax department is continuing with its probe into the financial matters of US diplomats and officials in India.

The next government too is likely to continue with the current tit for tat template: you withdraw cases against Khobragade and we show some “understanding” on the IT probe.

The writer is a Firstpost columnist and a strategic analyst who tweets @Kishkindha.