The Third Eye | Decoding Indo-US Strategic Friendship

India has done well to adopt a cautious and balanced approach to the unfolding policy framework of US President Donald Trump, who has a reputation of being unpredictable, reactive and autocratic in his responses.

As a major power with a say on the global issues of peace and world economy, India would be well advised to handle India-US relations on the premise that the two countries needed each other for promoting their national interests.

This is precisely what came out of the first meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi had with the new US President at the White House on February 13.

The atmospherics for this meeting was set by the bonhomie struck by the two leaders in their telephonic conversation on January 27 earlier.

The prime minister said in a post after the call that the two countries were ‘committed to a mutually beneficial and trusted partnership’ and will work for the welfare of our people and towards global peace, prosperity and security.

President Trump also referred to the ‘productive’ call he had with Prime Minister Modi and added that the ‘expanding and deepening’ bilateral cooperation as also the issues of security of the Indo-Pacific, Middle East and Europe had figured in the talk.

He specifically mentioned that Prime Minister Modi ‘will do what is right’ when it came to taking back Indian immigrants who had come to US illegally.

Meanwhile, the multiple directives signed by President Trump on his first day in office for the second term on January 20, had confirmed that he was going to focus on domestic issues of governance, economy and protection of borders against infiltration. He also said that he was against the ‘compulsive’ funding of global projects for the cause of human rights, equity and support to liberal regimes and that he was committed to ‘America First’ approach in the spheres of foreign affairs, trade and tariffs and involvement in the world’s trouble spots.

India has reasons to feel satisfied with the new US President's forthright denunciation of global terror rooted in ‘radicalisation’—he ordered close scrutiny of visa applications from ‘certain countries and regions’ that were known to be promoting ‘faith-based’ terrorism—as also with his China policy.

Trump was clearly critical of China while declaring American withdrawal from WHO —he said the UN agency was ‘under the Chinese domination’.

Also, in asserting the legitimacy of the US right to ‘take back’ Panama Canal, he contended that the channel had been ‘unfairly exploited by China’.

There is evidence that President Trump was going to bank on India in the pursuit of his China policy.

The resumption of Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting—hosted by the new US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on the first day of his office at Washington on January 21—marked a significant continuity of the shared policy of US and India on Indo-Pacific that included dealing with Chinese encroachment in the maritime region.

The Quad meeting signalled that China was high on the agenda of the Trump Presidency and countering Chinese designs was a priority for the new US president.

The joint statement issued at the end of the meeting, lauded the fact that the next leadership-level meeting of Quad was going to be hosted by India this year.

The ‘national emergency’ invoked by President Trump to ‘throw out’ all illegal immigrants was also a part of the pursuit of ‘America First’ mandate.

It enabled the US President to induct army in the task of tightening up vigilance on Southern border and give a direction to the Homeland Security to create teams in all states to proactively identify illegal elements on the ground that they posed an ‘internal security’ challenge.

It deserves to be noted that at his first press conference President Trump had said in regard to H1B visas that ‘he is on both sides of the argument’ and indicated that he had no intention of blocking the ‘engineers’ enrolled by major American corporations to come in on such visas.

He however, wanted ‘working jobs’ to be given to Americans except where immigrants had to be recruited on ‘merit’ and not just because they could be employed cheaply and taken on board for profit-making.

The despatch of 104 ‘illegal migrants’ to India by the US in a military plane—all in handcuffs and fetters—as a first lot, evoked political reactions in this country and signalled the need for a suitable diplomatic intervention.

Prime Minister Modi in his meeting with Trump made it a point to reiterate India’s policy of taking back its identified nationals deported on grounds of illegal stay and viewed it as India’s cooperation in the ‘crackdown against an illegal ecosystem that promoted human trafficking’.

President Trump’s known lack of enthusiasm for European Union and NATO on one hand and his past record of smooth relationship with President Putin of Russia on the other, did give him a certain potential for exercising a moderating influence on the Ukraine-Russia ‘war’.

In his interaction with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Oval Office on February 28, however, Trump seemed to be coercing the former to opt for peace talks with President Putin without acknowledging that Ukraine had security concerns—in the light of the military intervention made there by Russia nearly three years ago—and thus showing a tilt towards Putin.

His attempt to make out that if Ukraine signed a deal with US about the mining of rare earth minerals in Eastern part of the country the consequent American ‘presence’ there would ‘deter’ the Russians from showing any aggression, was not a convincing assurance for Zelensky.

Trump’s reservations against EU and NATO also affected his outlook on Ukraine.

On the Israel-Hamas confrontation President Trump remains totally supportive of Israel and completely inimical towards Hamas and wants a 'clean up' of Gaza to be completed by Israel in quick time.

Trump’s ideas about the future of Gaza as a territory that could serve American interests, would not go well with Palestinians and the Muslim world.

Interestingly, the new US President’s first call to a foreign head of state went to the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia in which further Saudi investments in the US found a prominent mention—not the conflict-ridden situation in the Middle East.

While President Trump is not inclined towards an ‘interventionist’ approach to the world's trouble spots, he would not be above showing US ‘muscle power’ where it was needed to assert his ‘America First’ strategy.

A new dimension of India-US relations is the prospect of potential collaboration between the two countries in the emerging field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications.

Trump announced—soon after taking over as President—a $500 billion AI infrastructure investment in the US on behalf of three top tech firms whose leaders—OpenAI CEO Sam Alton, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison—were present by his side in the White House for the occasion.

The three corporate chiefs declared the launch of a new company called StarGate—for the purpose of ‘revolutionising computational capabilities in the US’—and President Trump, emphasised that this would create a hundred thousand US jobs.

The advent of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI assistant startup from Hangzhou that matched the present capacity of US AI for a fraction of investments made on the latter, has led Trump to describe it as ‘a wake up call’ for US firms and Silicon Valley to ‘innovate more cheaply’.

Prime Minister Modi attended the AI Action Summit at Paris on February 10-11 as the co-chair before flying out to the US to meet President Trump.

The prime minister emphasised at the summit that India led the world in Al adoption and commanded the largest AI skilled work force.

Prime Minister Modi’s much anticipated visit to Washington to meet President Trump made a good start with Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) significantly becoming the first top appointee of Trump to call on the prime minister at Blair House on February 13.

The closed-door meeting of the prime minister with the US President at the Oval Office later, was followed by a joint press conference during which they showered praises on each other, spoke on a harmonious note on crucial issues like trade and tariff, crackdown on illegal migrants and security and defence and apparently put India-US strategic relations on a forward-looking path.

Trump called Prime Minister Modi ‘a great leader’ and the latter described the US President as ‘a friend’.

In an uncanny understanding of Trump’s persona the prime minister appreciated the MAGA movement and the ‘America First’ doctrine, pointed out that he also believed in ‘Make India Great Again’ and would put the national interest of India at the top of everything and contended that if the two countries cooperated within that strategy, that would work for the prosperity of both.

On tariff the two leaders announced that they would pursue a framework of greater cooperation through negotiations to address the long running disparities.

Collaboration on space travel, artificial intelligence and energy production, besides international security found notable mention in their remarks at the press meet.

Trump went on to declare that “US bonds with India were the strongest they had ever been”.

It is clear that President Trump’s primary concern is to accelerate American economy and this was reflected in his announcements that an agreement reached between India and the US will “restore to US the position of the leading supplier of oil and gas to India”, that the US had agreed to sell the fifth- generation F-35 stealth fighter to India and that the value of India-US trade would touch $500 billion by 2030.

It is the fight against radical Islamic terrorism that has put India-US cooperation on a solid footing—President Trump pledging to extradite Tahawwur Rana, a prime accused in the ‘horrific’ Mumbai terror attack and Prime Minister Modi describing 26/11 as an act of ‘genocide’.

The strategic collaboration between India and US has been further consolidated by Trump’s advocacy of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor first mooted in September 2023.

He talked of the corridor “running from India to Israel to Italy and owned by the US, connecting ports, railways and underground cables” and said that “it would allow the US to stay the leader” in an implied reference to the economic competition from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Trump-Modi meet at Washington marked a continuity of strategic friendship between the two countries based on mutual trust and pursuit of national interests.

(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views are personal.)

—IANS