Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump (AFP file photo)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third term in office is a legacy term marked by his ‘coming of age’ — taking bold decisions in foreign policies. Hardly has the dust settled down on Modi’s controversial decision to visit Kiev as peacemaker even as the Ukraine war is only accelerating, Modi took the decision in the solitude of his mind apparently to call on Donald Trump during his brief 3-day visit to the US starting Saturday.
That, at least, is the signal from the silence of the lambs in the US State Department and our Mission in DC. Actually, the ‘breaking news’ came from the great man himself . The US media promptly flashed it.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, spin masters in Delhi are playing up PM’s meeting with Trump. The ANI took an interview with the prominent New York-based entrepreneur and Trump’s close aide Al Mason (who figures in Trump’s inner circle) and Doordarshan promptly carried the news agency’s entire 760-word report on its website, titled PM Modi, Trump Are Strong Leaders Who Respect Each Other, Says Former US President’s Close Aide.
Despite the orchestrated campaign against Trump by mainstream US media, Delhi apparently keeps an open mind. Modi is on the same page as Hungarian PM Viktor Orban and Polish President Andrzej Duda, the flag carriers of right-wing conservative-nationalist ideology in European politics, who reject the neoconservative-globalist outlook that President Biden represents.
In the US political culture, it is not unusual that foreign dignitaries call on opposition politicians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accompanied by wife Sara, capped a weeklong US visit in late July by visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Orban met Trump more than once during the past year. But then, Orban is highly critical of Biden and the Ukraine war and openly voices support for Trump’s candidacy. Orban flew to Moscow and Kiev before meeting Trump in July.
Modi will be likewise meeting Trump. Ukraine crisis will almost certainly figure in their conversation.
Last week, at a meeting with the visiting Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval in Moscow, Putin proposed yet another ‘bilateral’ with Modi when he visits Russia soon after his return from the US on the sidelines of the BRICS summit (October 22-24) in Kazan.
The last time Modi visited Russia in July and met with Putin, their first such meeting since the Ukraine war started in February 2022, US officials went ballistic. The US National Security adviser Jake Sulivan cautioned that strong ties with Russia were a “bad bet” for India.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US was concerned about India’s relations with Russia. And Eric Garcetti, the US ambassador to India, publicly rebuked the Modi government that it could not take Washington’s friendship with Delhi “for granted”. Garcetti questioned the raison d’être of India’s strategic autonomy.
Against such a complex backdrop, can it be a coincidence that the controversial Khalistani activist settled in the US, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has filed a civil lawsuit in the US Federal District Court in New York against the Government of India, Doval and senior Research & Analysis Wing officials and the ‘Indian businessman’ Nikhil Gupta (who was extradited to the US from Prague earlier this year) for their “unprecedented attempt to assassinate a US citizen on the US soil”?
Importantly, the lawsuit also says: “Mr. Pannun at this time has not named Narendra Modi as a defendant due to the immunity he now enjoys under US and international law as head of a foreign sovereign government. However, Mr. Pannun reserves his right to amend the complaint to include Narendra Modi as a defendant should his status as head of state change during the course of these proceedings.”
The development has serious implications insofar as “it brings matters almost to the doorsteps of the Prime Minister whose work with the NSA [Doval] is intertwined and inextricable,” to quote V Sudarshan, senior journalist who writes on national security affairs.
Pannun’s lawsuit is carefully timed to coincide with Modi’s visit. The US spy agencies and FBI actively keep in touch with Pannun and in all probability green-lighted his lawsuit. The US diplomacy has a history of blackmailing countries that pursue independent foreign policies.
By Monday, Modi will be back in India and the UN General Assembly’s Summit of the Future , which occasioned his US trip, will start fading away as a distant memory. An international consensus on “how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future” will remain elusive in our Age of Geopolitics.
The remains of the day will be largely the fallouts from Pannun’s lawsuit. This could be Doval’s last visit to the US as he may soon become a fugitive from American law. That puts External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in a dual role in the high-level exchanges with Washington — doubling up also as India’s security czar. The Americans won’t mind it.
However, the transactional relationship as such acquires a new dynamic. Delhi’s appeasement strategy may now translate as more mega arms deals with the US, generating substantial business and job creation in the American economy. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Make no mistake, Americans will use it to pressure India.
The BRICS summit at Kazan becomes a trial run. At a press conference in Moscow on Monday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “alternative payment platforms are being developed within BRICS which allow countries to trade, invest, and conduct other economic transactions without being dependent on those who have decided to weaponise the US dollar and the euro.” Lavrov added that the new payment system will not only be used to settle cross-border transactions, but will act as a complete financial set-up.
‘De-dollarisation’ is becoming a campaign issue in battleground states in the US elections. Trump said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, “I hate when countries go off the dollar…. I’ll say, ‘You leave the dollar, you’re not doing business with the United States, because we’re going to put 100% tariff on your goods” (here). Washington will expect India to slow down the ‘de-dollarisation’ process on the BRICS platform.