India is way too eager to embrace Trump’s America |
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s working visit to the White House in Washington on February 13 sends a message that India is in a hurry to align with the United States, something it shrewdly avoided over the 75 years since liberation from British colonial rule. It stems from India’s quest to carve out a place in the sun, a dream assiduously fostered by the Hindu nationalist government, which the country’s elites largely have come to equate with a geopolitical alliance with the US.
Of course, there is the flip side to it insofar as getting closer to the sun has its inherent dangers; the moral of the Icarus myth of ancient Greeks.
The Trump administration hallmark seems to combine a religious zeal with a frankly colonial approach, which morally, politically and geopolitically, should be anathema to Indian sensibilities.
A realistic assessment is lacking among Indian elites about the international situation, almost entirely attributable to their delusional thinking that the US can help India become a superpower to match China.
Thus, a talking point for Modi with Trump might well have been the revival of the moribund India-Middle East Economic Corridor (IMEC) to rival China’s belt and road initiative. But then Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's blurted out that Saudi Arabia could be an ideal location to resettle Palestinians evicted from Gaza. Riyadh, which could have been the IMEC’s main financier, went ballistic.
India has not uttered a word about the US-Israeli plans for ethnic cleansing in Gaza or Trump’s bizarre idea of taking over Gaza and transforming into the Riviera of the Middle East — something that has drawn criticism from the rest of the world — and support for the Abraham Accords. It’s the unipolar predicament, stupid!........