SEOUL, South Korea — Is the world’s most powerful democracy about to lose the world’s most populous democracy? Could be. India has, in the last two days, reset deeply troubled relations with China at the same time that its relations with the United States are fraying.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met China’s top diplomat Wang Yi on Tuesday. Mr. Modi hailed “steady progress” in improving bilateral relations and “respect for each other’s interests and sensitiveness.”
Mr. Wang, on a two-day visit, also met with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.
Key outcomes included eased trade, resumptions of direct flights and issuances of visas to each other’s reporters. Those are significant turnarounds.
Relations iced over following deadly military clashes on the two countries’ Himalayan frontier in 2020, and were further damaged in May this year when Chinese weapon systems were used by Pakistani forces in an aerial border clash in May.
The two sides also agreed, in New Delhi’s words, to “a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable resolution of the ’Himalayan’ boundary question.”
Mr. Wang’s visit comes ahead of the expected attendance of Mr. Modi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1 in Tianjin, China. The SCO, an economic roundtable established in 2001, includes Belarus, China, India, Iran, Russia, and Pakistan as member states.
“Unilateral bullying practices are on the rise, while free trade and the international order face severe challenges,” Mr. Wang said during his visit, per China’s Global Times. “As the two largest developing countries with a combined population of more than 2.8 billion, China and India should embrace a global vision.”
What makes the sudden bilateral amity surprising is what many see as its distant promoter: U.S. President Trump.
“Trump may have inadvertently set the stage for an unexpected thaw in India-China ties,” The Times of India editorialized, referring to the U.S president under a headline that read, “the elephant and the dragon tango again.”
Looming over the background of the China-India reset are newly disputatious India-U.S. relations.
India was indignant when, in the wake of an aerial-border conflict in May, in which India responded to what it claims were Pakistan-based terrorist attacks, President Trump welcomed the Pakistani Army Chief of Staff to the White House in June.
Islamabad reciprocated, nominating Mr. Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Indignation rose further when, on Aug. 6, India was slammed with 50% tariffs on exports to the U.S, despite only taking up 2.7% of U.S. imports.
For comparison, fellow East Asian democracies Japan and South Korea each copped 15% tarrifs for, respectively 4.5% and 4% of U.S. imports.
Authoritarian China, which takes up a whopping 13.4% of U.S. imports, is subject to a 30% tariff rate.
Indians were perplexed by the stated reasons for the tariffs — India’s purchase of discounted Russian energy — given that both Europe and the United States continue to trade with Russia, despite its invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has also criticized U.S. firms investing in India — the world’s most populous nation, and a font of skilled English-speaking IT specialists.
One Indian says Washington has shoved New Delhi into a corner.
“India is a post-colonial country that shook off colonial rule, so they don’t want to be told what to do by foreign powers,” said an Indian businessman who works in the Indo-Pacific, speaking on condition of anonymity as he did not have permission to interact with the media. “To be seen to be publicly doing what a foreign great power tells you to is something that no Indian prime minister can ignore.”
The nascent China-India amity looks particularly problematic as, on the face of it, Washington should be one of India’s best chums.
While India has for decades maintained a “non-aligned” geopolitical stance, it is a fellow democracy.
Geostrategically, it is actively competing against China in the ground domain in the Himalayas.
The two countries fought a two-month border war in 1962, won by Beijing’s forces. Tensions flared again in 2020 with border skirmishes resulting in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese.
Most recently, it was Chinese-supplied aircraft and long-range missiles that downed as many as three Indian jet fighters — figures are disputed — in a Pakistani aerial ambush of Indian air assets on May 7.
In the naval domain, India is competing with China in the Bay of Bengal.
And New Delhi is a member, along with Canberra, Tokyo and Washington, in the region-wide “Quad” — a security dialogue of democratic states.
“This is the head-scratching part: India is in the American camp on China,” said the Indian businessman. “Now all that is in danger of being frittered away.”
There are other areas of shared interest. Within its own borders, India is battling Islamic terrorism.
Customarily, India was a heavy purchaser of Russian weapons — including armored vehicles, rocket artillery, jet fighters and naval vessels, including nuclear submarines — but has in recent years been diversifying heavily toward French, Israeli and U.S. suppliers.
U.S. systems bought by India include Apache and Chinook helicopters, P8 maritime reconnaissance and C17 and C130s heavy lift aircraft, and M777 artillery pieces.
It is not just Indians. U.S. pundits, too, are gobsmacked at how swiftly relations have deteriorated.
“Donald Trump risks tanking 25 years of U.S.-India relations,” warned Evan A. Feigenbaum, a deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, in the pages of the Carnegie Endowment, calling the trend a “slow-motion catastrophe.”
Mr. Feigenbaum admitted that Mr. Trump consistently applies pressure before getting deals done, and admitted also that there remain excellent reasons for New Delhi-Washington to get along regardless of current hiccups.
Writers for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute agree.
“The U.S. and India have got through rough patches before, sometimes when they were not as strategically aligned,” the think tank noted in an Aug. 14 piece. “These days they are, and the reason for that alignment, China’s aggression and ambition, won’t go away.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.