2 weeks Ago By Firstpost
American diplomats in India are a busy lot these days. Apart from their usual work of enlightening Indian populace on ‘disinformation’ and ‘correct political discourse’, for which they are platforming social media influencers and content creators of a certain political and ideological bend, they are also finding a lot of time to engage with the Opposition. In the last few weeks, US consul general in Hyderabad Jennifer Larson has met Telangana’s Congress chief minister Revanth Reddy, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, the TDP leader and NDA partner whose support remains crucial for the Narendra Modi government’s survival, and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi with whom Larson shared “informed and important views on a range of shared issues and concerns.
” It would have been interesting to know what those “shared issues and concerns” are that the American diplomat discussed with a bitter critic of the government at the Centre, but no such details have been forthcoming. Incidentally, Owaisi is possibly the only Indian politician to question New Delhi’s decision to give shelter to the deposed Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina (a rare issue of bipartisan consensus in India) who fell out spectacularly with the United States. There has been a persistent buzz over Washington playing a covert role in her ouster.
The US denies involvement. On Monday, a delegation of high-level American diplomats that included Graham Mayer, minister-counsellor for political affairs at the US Embassy in New Delhi, first secretary Gary Applegarth and political counsellor Abhiram Ghadyalpatil called on National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah at his residence in Srinagar. The visit apparently came at the behest of the American side, and “discussions covered a wide range of issues pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir and the region,” according to NC.
Digital news outlet The Print wanted to know the subject of the conversation but was reportedly told by a spokesperson of the US embassy in Delhi that “they could not divulge private diplomatic conversations”. Incidentally, the day the diplomats came calling, the NC sealed a seat-sharing deal with the Congress Party for the upcoming Jammu and Kashmir Assembly polls. It is worth noting that this was the American side’s first meeting with political leaders in J&K since the abrogation of Article 370 and splitting of J&K into two Union Territories.
It comes just ahead of the crucial elections where the NC is campaigning to restore Kashmir’s ‘special status’ and resumption of India-Pakistan dialogue on Kashmir. To be clear, meeting Opposition leaders and fostering subnational diplomacy by reaching out to the leadership in different Indian states forms a core diplomatic function of consulates. States frequently create channels of communication with Opposition leaders, and Indian diplomats serving abroad are expected to do the same.
Besides, the trip to J&K would have required special permission from India’s Ministry of External Affairs and clearance from intelligence agencies which also translates into the fact that these meetings are undertaken amid full governmental glare. That said, the United States is not just another country, and J&K is a sensitive border region on the cusp of returning to normalcy after decades of terrorism and violent separatist movement aided and abetted by Pakistan to wrest Kashmir away from India. American interest in meeting the key players at a critical time is bound to raise questions and curiosity, especially when such meetings have been rare in the past.
It is undeniable that a shift in power equation has taken place post 2024 general elections. The Opposition has become more energised. These visits are an acknowledgement and consequence of that changed reality.
However, the meddlesome nature of America’s hegemonic liberalism, its activist impulse and the unique circumstances of an unstable Indian subcontinent – for which a large portion of the blame can legitimately be laid at Washington’s door – arises suspicions that there are more to these meetings than meets the eye. There is clarity in New Delhi that the US is a vital strategic partner, and the clear and present danger presented by China is a big part of that equation. On Friday, delivering a lecture at Vivekananda International Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank, India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar called the US-India relationship “invaluable” for “strategic and economic purposes” and Washington “indispensable for India’s multipolarity”.
While that is evident, that isn’t the only reality. The US isn’t a monolithic actor, and the relationship is not an alliance. As Jaishankar himself said at Friday’s event, the relationship is not about “congruence” or an “alliance” but “about overlapping interests and it is about the ability to work together on issues, areas and theatres which suit us.
” What he left unsaid was that there are areas where interests do not overlap, and Bangladesh is a textbook case in point where the two partners do not see eye to eye. In a recent phone call, for instance, that US president Joe Biden initiated to discuss Modi’s recent trip to Ukraine, both sides released separate readouts where the difference in perception over the instability in post-Hasina Bangladesh is stark. While the Indian statement revealed that the “two leaders expressed their shared concern over the situation in Bangladesh.
They emphasised restoration of law and order and ensuring safety and security of the minorities, particularly Hindus, in Bangladesh,” any reference to the troubled nation, leave alone the atrocities against Hindu minorities, was absent in the White House readout. This isn’t an anomaly. It is a pointer to the fact that there are many factions and competing power centres in Washington that are unafraid to stress test the bilateral relationship.
While defence ties are on an upswing , the liberal internationalist faction within the Biden administration, for instance, prefers an India riven with internal tension and structural weakness over politico-ideological domination by a single force, and works round the clock to increase anti-government and pro-Opposition space in political discourse, as I had argued in a recent column . This hegemonic liberalism arrogates to itself the right to interfere and intervene in the affairs of other sovereign nations where it deems that human rights or democratic values are ‘endangered’. Often this activism proves counterproductive and even detrimental to the stability of the states and the region.
' This American overextension also gets its partners in trouble in other geographies. It may not be an oversimplification to posit that the Indian backyard, including states such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, or Afghanistan has been rendered unstable in part due to America’s clumsy attempts at intervention, leaving India with a national security headache. A recent Washington Post piece, headlined ‘ India pressed US to go easy on Bangladeshi leader before her ouster ’, in an attempt to criticise India’s handling of the Bangladesh crisis, inadvertently points to the extent to which the US interfered with Bangladesh’s domestic political developments and tried to install itself as an actor in a bid to secure what it reckoned to be a desired outcome.
One US official is quoted by the newspaper, as saying, “There is always a balancing act in Bangladesh, as there is in many places where the situation on the ground is complicated...
” Complications surely are a problem for liberal internationalists ready to bulldoze their agenda in regions around the world in a moral crusade for democracy. Since allegations have flown thick and fast about America’s machinations behind the overthrowing of Hasina under the garb of an organic student-led revolution, Washington has issued multiple, vehement denials. But facts speak otherwise.
An article in South Asia Journal last year reported that on October 16, US deputy assistant secretary (South Asia and Central Asia) Afreen Akhter in a meeting with then Bangladesh foreign secretary Masud Bin Momen, had issued an ultimatum to the ruling Awami League government that either Hasina relinquishes power by November 3, or faces the music. The article , quoting unnamed sources, claimed that the US, which accused the Hasina government of undermining democracy and committing human rights abuses, essentially gave two choices to Hasina. She either hands over the charge to President Mohammad Shahabuddin, or better still, resigns and puts the Speaker in charge of a caretaker government to oversee “truly free, fair, participatory and inclusive elections.
” Incidentally, American ‘suggestions’ curiously mirrored the exact demands placed by the main Opposition party, BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party), that wanted a caretaker government to preside over the voting. When asked about the veracity of the report, US claimed that it doesn’t take sides or prefer one political outfit over another but neither confirmed nor denied the report that Washington had issued an ultimatum. What followed in the next few months leading to Hasina’s removal is an extraordinary collapse of bilateral ties.
The US imposed sanctions and visa restrictions on key Awami League figures, claimed that its embassy is not secure, while then US ambassador to Bangladesh, Peter Haas, went to meet the families of victims of alleged enforced disappearances in Dhaka to the further detriment of ties. Hasina, on her part, refused to relinquish authority till the bitter end, claimed that a plot is afoot to “carve out a Christian state like East Timor taking parts from Bangladesh and Myanmar,” and also alleged in May, during a post-election speech at Gono Bhaban, that a “white man” had offered her a “hassle free re-election in January if she allowed a foreign country to build an airbase in Bangladesh territory.” In her valedictory speech in the 22nd Parliamentary session in April last year, Hasina accused the US of interference, stating that Washington is so powerful that it can overthrow any government in any country if it wants.
This recurrent theme made its final appearance after her ouster when Indian newspaper Economic Times, reporting on a purported undelivered speech by the ousted prime minister, quoted Hasina, as saying that “I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the sovereignty of Saint Martin Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal.” This was later retracted by her son. It doesn’t take a genius to gather what’s going on.
America’s pursuit of liberal hegemony is also creating more trouble for India in Myanmar where a military coup and resultant civil war is threatening India’s national security and fuelling insurgency in the northeastern states. Washington is offering “nonlethal aid” to the rebels, who have made significant gains in their armed resistance against the military junta, but that aid risks creating more instability and widening divisions in a chaotic country, further exacerbating insurgency and security issues for its neighbours. While America’s ‘nonlethal aid’ is boosting the forces of resistance, it is also creating further complications in a country where the rebel groups, as Michael Haack writes in Nikkei Asia, are driven more by ethnonationalism than democracy.
Their recent battlefield gains are exciting America, who unlike Myanmar’s neighbours remain untouched by the crisis spillover. As Haack writes , America’s intervention will irritate Myanmar’s neighbours, serve little to propagate democracy and the “most likely outcome in Myanmar would be more violence and death, creating the conditions for perpetual war.” India surely must have made these points to its “invaluable partner”, but it doesn’t seem as if Washington particularly cares for New Delhi’s opinion.
Cut to Afghanistan, and there we have yet another America-created mess that has repercussions for India’s national security. Small arms left behind by the American and NATO troops during their hasty exit from Afghanistan, are being used by Pakistan-based terrorists against India in Kashmir. NBC News reported last year, quoting law enforcement authorities in India, how terrorists from Pakistan are “carrying M4s, M16s and other U.
S.-made arms and ammunition that have rarely been seen in the 30-year conflict.” While New Delhi grapples with these challenges, the Biden administration has been hard at work for a G2 ‘lite’ with China through a series of “ secret backchannel meetings ”.
The latest to visit Beijing is US NSA Jake Sullivan who met Chinese president Xi Jinping, foreign minister Wang Yi, and Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission who has operational control over the PLA, and returned with a plateful of advice on how Washington should not cross Beijing’s red lines on Taiwan and “view China and its development in a positive and rational light.” The secret meetings, undertaken at Washington’s behest, and the frequent visits to Beijing by key figures within Biden administration indicates that the US is desperate to keep tension with China under manageable levels. Beijing can smell weakness from a mile away and understands that the urgency for a ‘compact lies more with the other side.
This reinforces the fundamental unreliability of the US as a strategic partner. With Biden being reduced to the status of a lame-duck president, repeated overtures from the Biden administration would doubtless be interpreted by hyper-realist XI regime as a sign of fragility that may be exploited to create long-term leverage over Washington. This development goes against India’s core interests and is yet another American intervention that serves to complicate India’s strategic imperatives.
For a strategic partner with whom it claims to share the most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century Washington has never been too mindful of India’s red lines or core interests. In his autobiography, diplomat and former Indian foreign minister Natwar Singh, who passed way on August 11 this year at the age of 95, accused the US of trying to derail his appointment. Singh, who served in the UPA 1 from 2004 to 2005, in an interview to Economic Times newspaper during the autobiography’s release in 2014, had said, “Americans have 130 officials here, whereas we have 25 officials in Washington.
What are these officials doing in India? 25 per cent of these are CIA agents, I challenge them to deny it, they have access to all ministries, they dine with our joint secretaries.” In an eerie reflection of Hasina’s comments, Singh told the newspaper that “Manmohan (former Indian PM) mentioned to me how powerful the Americans were and that perhaps they could go to any extent to destabilise certain countries, including India. For Manmohan Singh, who staked his premiership to seal the US-India civil nuclear deal, to have made such an admission speaks of the depth and scale of American meddling in India.
Curious way to treat an “invaluable” partner..
