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16 February 2024

India’s Elite Worries About America - Opinion

Walter Russell Mead

I spoke at the Global Business Summit, a conference organized here by an Indian media group, and spent several days talking to Indian business leaders, journalists and senior government officials. Most were very optimistic about the country’s prospects. India’s economic growth is trending at about 7% a year, and a massive infrastructure push is transforming the country. The flight of foreign (and Chinese) capital from China is driving investment to India, with companies such as Apple moving electronics production here.

From the standpoint of government officials and many in the business world, there’s more. The Bharatiya Janata Party government is heavily favored in parliamentary elections this spring. With an approval rating of 78%, Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains the most popular leader in the democratic world and appears headed for a third term. Businesses like certainty, and even corporate chieftains who don’t share the BJP’s Hindu nationalism support a strong, stable and reasonably pro-business government in New Delhi.

All this good news is a heady brew, but the officials I spoke with were anything but triumphalist. What sobers them is the gathering storm on the international horizon. The near-closure of the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi militia is a direct threat to Indian trade with Europe and North America. Upheavals across the Middle East threaten the economic corridor through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel—a corridor that New Delhi hopes will boost trade and investment. Western efforts to isolate Russia have, in New Delhi’s view, driven it into China’s arms, creating serious problems for India.

China casts a long shadow across the region. India’s neighbor and would-be rival Pakistan has moved steadily into China’s orbit. Beijing’s debt-trap diplomacy has given it leverage in Sri Lanka. China has tightened its links with Maldives. The civil war in Myanmar offers China opportunities to increase its influence in that resource-rich country. Chinese businesses and diplomats are working to solidify their influence across Africa.

At the end of the day, though, what worries India’s leaders most isn’t China. It’s the U.S. India’s security and prosperity are closely tied to the U.S. and the international system Americans have done so much to build. Does the U.S. have the will and wisdom to keep the system afloat? Is America still ready to do what it takes to keep the peace in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific? Is the American political system still capable of producing leaders who can navigate rough global seas?

Indians read the American news. They know that a special counsel appointed by President Biden’s attorney general issued a report saying that the president appeared too elderly to remember basic facts. They also know that Mr. Biden’s leading political rival threatened to blow up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization over some members’ unwillingness to honor their commitments to contribute to the common defense. They know that Mr. Biden’s national security adviser boasted last year that the Middle East was calmer than it had been in decades, days before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks touched off a crisis that the U.S. still struggles to manage.

India wants to reform the existing international system (among other things, to gain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council), but it needs that system to work. The safety of sea lanes like the Red Sea, stable access to reasonably priced fossil fuels from the Persian Gulf, opportunities for Indian exports around the world—these are necessary for India to prosper.

As that system has come under attack, Indian diplomacy has shifted into high gear. One focus is the Persian Gulf. After speaking at the Global Business Summit, Prime Minister Modi will travel this week to inaugurate a Hindu temple in the U.A.E. Indians meanwhile celebrated the release of eight Indian naval officers who had been sentenced to death by Qatar on charges of spying for a “third country,” widely assumed to be Israel.

As the prime minister prepared to fly west, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was at the Indian Ocean Conference in Perth, Australia. He warned participants of “conflict, threats to maritime traffic, piracy and terrorism” on one side of the Indian Ocean and challenges to international law and the freedom of navigation on the other.

Mr. Modi and his cabinet understand how closely Indian and American interests converge. They are asking whether Washington can still summon the intellectual coherence and political energy to do what needs to be done.

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