Fooling around [with the charkha!]

Get Donald Trump in an unfamiliar setting, have him him do things he hasn’t done, and there’s a good chance he’ll end up being a li’l puddy cat. Like when he (along with his wife, Melania) was given a charkha to handle, on his last visit at M.K. Gandhi’s ashram (or something in Gujarat).

But the G-7 June 15-17 summit at the French riverside town of Évian-les-Bains near the Swiss border with casinos and other pleasure domes, is not a place for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to risk a one-on-one meeting with the US President, who is only too familiar with Europe and is so at ease in these surroundings that he has used them in the past to harangue and belittle his European counterparts.

Modi is there at the French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation, who is ever so grateful that the Indian government saved the French aerospace industry one more time by shelling some $43 billion for the vintage Rafale fighter aircraft without any real tech transfer! This Indian money will come in handy now that the tripartite 6th generation future combat aircraft system programme involving France, Germany and Spain, is formally terminated.

Macron’s agenda for the conference is expected to feature global trade imbalances and the two ongoing wars — in Ukraine and Hormuz. In the context of the European Union generally deciding to counter China’s uncontrolled exports push by possibly imposing tariffs and putting up other barriers to Chinese merchandise, Modi should have no problem in piling on China, wagging a finger at it, or whatever else the G-7 collectively undertake to do by way of curtailing Chinese imports. In India’s case, the imbalance is so great it is getting to be criminal to not just shut down at least the merchandise imports. And please, no scurrying around for Chinese investments which don’t come without strings attached.

Where the conflict zones are concerned, Modi better be cautious. Delhi already has egg on its face by joining the British initiative to send a naval task force to the Hormuz Strait and the Gulf of Oman to enforce “freedom of navigation”. It is a good thing nothing has come of it, or India would have been on the hook. Moreover,Tehran is already much stressed without India joining the West in belabouring it some more. Especially because it is not Iranian shore fire that hit the Palau-flagged ship but US guided munitions, that killed three Indians in the crew on June 8th. (Palau is a small archepelagic nation in the Pacific.)

Because Iran matters geostrategically to India as it offers the North-South trade route through the port of Chabahar, which is still India’s best bet to open up the landward trade links to Afghanistan and Central Asia and westwards to Russia and Europe, and as competition to China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Because the other project India is part of — IMEEC (India-Middle East Europe Corridor) also to rival the BRI in the extended region is, in the aftermath of the war in Hormuz, unlikely to come to fruition before the 2040s.

Moreover, when peace arrives — however that happens, the Indian Navy has to have a presence on Gwadar’s western flank that the PLA Navy is itching to develop into a major resupply base for its ships it hopes permanently to station in the Indian Ocean west of Malacca, Lombok and Sunda. There’s, in other words, too much for India to lose should Modi choose the wrong side, when sitting on the fence serves Indian interests best. Isn’t this how “strategic autonomy” works? The trouble is Delhi tilted perceptibly towards the US and Israel and to UAE, when it did not have to.

Of course, Israel is a seperate case and our close connection with the Jewish state cannot and should not under any circumstances be weakened. Here India has an opportunity to thread the needle by maintaining a policy of repose, reacting to nothing that either Iran or Israel does, in the hope that at the end of the conflict Tel Aviv, with strained relations with the US, will need India’s anchor support, even if that means tolerating Delhi’s overtures to Tehran. But shia Iran will need recultivation because Delhi’s siding with UAE — India’s prized Arab and sunni pivot in the Gulf, crimped ties with Tehran.

The point to make is this: At the end of the Hormuz war, Trump’s America will hightail it out of the region, Israel and UAE will firm up a front against Iran, even as the Ayatollahcracy survives, propped up by the Revolutionary Guard Corps that proved to the world their country’s resilience and sturdiness under intense US fire. This is no small outcome because it has convinced even the most rabid of the “regime change” crowd in Washington that “bombing the f..k” (Trump’s words) out of Iran is easier said than done. For India, it is an object lesson on how a middling country can stand up to big power bullying.

Consider a situation in which India faced the kind of intense American military attention that Iran suffered but successfully thwarted: Would India and the Indian government, which seemingly specialise in folding at the first hint of trouble or pressure, as has repeatedly occurred, be able to put up as brave and solid a front???

Anyway, back to Evian! Jaishankar and MEA are doubtless urging Modi to prepare for a closed door meeting with Trump. That’s BAD advice, unless Modi desires Trump to once again make a monkey out of him in France, this time. The fact is no mainstream leader, let alone Modi, can have the better of Trump simply because for the US President even the friendlist encounter is an occasion to show who is boss! Recall, the handshake grudge matches Trump regularly engages in with Macron (which may again be seen at the G-7 summit)? And because Trump glows in exhibiting lack of restraint, especially at such showcase conferences and delights in picking on some leader or the other to kick around. And who can say it won’t be Modi who, in the European setting, will stick out like a sore thumb?

Sindoor is a recent enough experience for Modi to be wary of any move to pitch him into a Trump meeting that the US ambassador Sergio Gor too seems to be pushing, from behind the curtain. If Sindoor taught the Indian government anything it is to not signal or otherwise inform Washington of moves it may intend to make, and to keep its thinking on issues to itself. Not that US intelligence will not have a fair idea of what’s cooking in MEA and at the PMO — after all no system is more “penetrated” than the Indian one, and then at the top most levels.

At Evian, actually, Modi has very little of substance to say to Trump, and vice versa. If so, then why step in wittingly into a situation where, with the world media looking on, Trump says something once again about how he saved India from a Pakistani thrashing, or whatever spin of the monent he wants to give it, even as Modi stands there dumbstruck, unable to counter with a telling riposte about Trump as usual not knowing what he is talking about, or something more insulting. This is as likely as not to happen because Pakistan-US relations are currently enjoying high summer. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told The Sunday Times (of London) that Pakistan’s serving as a mediator in the U.S.-Iran war is “one of the shining moments in our history.” And former Pak ambassador in Washington Masood Khan chirped in, saying. “We are in seventh heaven and on cloud nine and it’s intoxicating. I’ve had a long diplomatic career and I have never seen Pakistan on such a high pedestal.”

The fact of the matter is the Modi government has already compromised national interests on the Free Trade Agreements with the US (and Europe), as regards energy by limiting buys of Russian oil, and by not reacting at all to Trump’s tariff war or his egregious insults that he has not stopped periodically hurling at Modi and, therefore, at India.

Modi should instruct Jaishankar to tell the US side that the Indian leader cannot spare the time because his appointments book for the Evian summit is full. It will send a much needed message to the Trump Administration not to take India for granted, and that Delhi is not America’s handmaid.