The soft corner several of the Trump Cabinet picks have for India is because of their confidence that India under PM Modi is a reliable partner of the US in resisting aggression by the other superpower.
While several ancient monuments and texts, some dating thousands of years, have either been destroyed by invaders in the past or have collapsed as a result of neglect which has continued for several years after 1947. An illustration of such past neglect is that only in the recent past was the list of significant monuments enumerated by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) been revised. In the earlier version, which dates back well over a century, more than a third of the historical monuments marked as important were the graveyards of British soldiers who died in their efforts to subdue local populations for the benefit of the British. Such locations were indeed meriting reverence, but by the occupying power and not the occupied power. Which is why Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked for a change in the ASI list, and why foreign policy in India, articulated by the PM and by External Affairs Minister Jaishankar has changed its tone. Bharat will give as good as it gets, if not a tad more, even from partners as close as the US. Whoever in the US system fed Justin Trudeau raw data about an imaginary conspiracy by high levels in the Union Government to rid the world on the soil of a friendly country of a terrorist who had secured his citizenship by criminal means, he was doing a service to the Sino-Wahhabi lobby, almost certainly knowing that such was the consequence of his action. The incoming administration headed by Donald Trump will need to search for, locate and act against such a Fifth Column, and there is little doubt that he will. After what he is being put through by the Biden administration, it is unlikely that he will adopt the attitude he did towards Hillary Clinton. Not least because she repaid him for his refusal to even seriously investigate, much less prosecute her was repaid by the former US Secretary of State by enthusiastically backing Biden in his administration’s efforts at prosecuting Trump. As for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, if the President of Ukraine took up Trump’s request that he investigate the links between the Ukrainian company Burisma and Hunter Biden, the results of such an investigation have yet to be made public. Both Trump and Zelenskyy were Heads of State and Government when they spoke to each other. The request to check on why Burisma made substantial payments to then Vice-President Biden’s son Hunter appears a reasonable ask, and not the criminal, indeed treasonous, activity that Trump-phobic media made it out to be. Nor has any explanation been given as to why Hunter Biden’s laptop was reported as either imaginary or missing when neither was true. If what is being done to Trump since 2021 is kosher, so will be Trump doing the same to Biden, should he decide to do so. He may yet not. The 47th President would be well advised to leave the ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden to the Justice Department, and allow the department freedom to do what it deems fit without interference. As for his rival in the Presidential sweepstakes Kamala Harris, he should follow the same policy he followed towards Hillary Clinton during 2017-24, leave her alone. For it is a fact that Harris has been almost powerless during the Biden Presidency, a fact that the present Vice-President refused at her political cost to openly declare during the campaign against Trump. As with Hillary, losing to Donald Trump has been punishment enough for Kamala Harris.
As his Defense Secretary, Trump has chosen a military veteran with a spotless record of service. As a military man, since his retirement he has gone on record that the US military does not understand how to deal with a possible conflict with China, something he regards as likely, unlike several of his former colleagues who believe in such a conflict to be impossible, the way in the 1930s General Maurice Gamelin in France believed a war with Hitler’s Germany very unlikely rather than inevitable. Is it because he is not a modern day appeaser of China that the incoming Defense Secretary is being mocked at by some, despite his outstanding record of military service? Key Trump picks are not deniers of the possibility of a kinetic threat from China, a view that has put them in the line of fire of the CCP lobby that has permeated so much of the polity in several democracies. President Roosevelt was called a warmonger because he understood in the 1930s the threat posed by Germany. So was Churchill, for much the same reason. Yet events showed that they were right. Trump is picking a team that has a clear understanding of present-day reality. Which is why they understand that appeasement does not succeed in avoiding war. Appeasement raises the risks of aggression by the aggressor by fuelling such activity. Because of this, Trump may yet be able to deter a war that those committed to appeasement would not. Xi believes that a limited war involving Taiwan will not escalate into a wider conflict involving the US and its partners and allies. Now, given some of Trump’s Cabinet picks, he can no longer be sure. Prime Minister Narendra Modi telegraphed his clear understanding of the risk of appeasement of the aggressor by signing the four foundation defence agreements with the US and by re-invigorating the Quad during his first term itself. The message that India is a reliable partner in resisting expansionism by the world’s other superpower needs to be underlined, preferably before Trump takes office on January 20, 2025. The soft corner several of the Trump Cabinet picks have for India is because of their confidence that India under PM Modi is a reliable partner of the US in resisting aggression by the other superpower, and that message needs to be underlined during the coming weeks. The utility of strategic ambiguity ends when the Biden Presidency does.