President Donald Trump on his return for a second term was apparently creating a reputation for ‘unpredictability’ and even ‘arbitrariness’ by issuing a large number of Executive Directives many of which were being questioned in courts and evoking adverse reactions from the international community as well.
India continues to believe that India-US relations are rooted in a natural strategic friendship, that the two largest democracies of the world must come together to deal with the grave threats of faith-based terrorism and the doings of dictatorial regimes like China’s and that any trade disparity issues affecting them should be settled through negotiations.
India as a major power has to constantly evaluate how Trump’s approach to this country impacted the bilateral relations but it does not have to be swayed by the criticism that others at home or abroad might be levelling against Trump’s actions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done well to broadly adopt this line, believing in the logic that both the US and India needed each other.
There is no particular reservation any country should have against President Trump’s declared doctrine of ‘America First’ and its application in the spheres of diplomacy and trade as also in regard to the US stakes in the ongoing military conflicts in some parts of the world. Two aspects of President Trump’s readiness to issue Executive Directives attract attention- his willingness to face judicial scrutiny of his decisions, which was the hallmark of democracy, and acceptance of the need to ‘course correct’ in suitable cases.
Trump’s clear emphasis on the economic advancement of the US is traceable to his shrewd observation that America’s main rival, Communist China, had drawn lessons from the demise of the USSR and consciously taken the economic route to becoming the second superpower, at a time when the American economy had dipped in terms of the balance of trade and budget deficit.
Trump has, therefore, focused his attention on the cost-effectiveness of federal administration enforced through lay-offs where necessary, cutting down on the funding of projects that did not yield any direct benefit to the US and bringing back manufacturing and other sources of employment to America.
A new department- Department of Government Efficiency(DOGE)-under Elon Musk, a close confidant of President Trump, is driving the campaign for downsising federal agencies, unearthing systemic corruption and reorganising various wings of the federal government.
Efficiency and cost-effectiveness go together since the number of persons doing a job in the given time ought to be reduced to the optimal minimum and similarly, a task should be completed in time, in the minimum number of operational steps. Following Trump’s mandate of providing ‘minimum government maximum governance,’ PM Modi had already set this objective for India- Elon Musk ordered large-scale lay-offs and reorganisation of many wings of the federal government.
Through a Presidential order on March 20, Trump dismantled the Department of Education alleging that it was ‘wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology’.
Federal actions were initiated against Columbia, Harvard and Princeton universities for permitting anti-Semitic activities on the campus.
Department of Health and Human Services(DHH) was reorganised to bring down its Divisions from 28 to 15 through internal mergers and its workforce of 82,000 was reduced by 25 per cent resulting in a saving of $1.8 billion a year.
Meanwhile, a striking example of bureaucratic corruption unearthed by DOGE was its discovery that 12.3 million people aged 120 years or more, were still continuing to be on ‘social security’ record. Their names were struck off by DOGE at one go.
Another form of serious bureaucratic irregularity became evident when Food Safety and Inspection Services (FSIS) discovered that thousands of Pounds of ready-to-eat frozen chicken products were being sold without food inspection by a New Jersey-based Brazilian Corporation using the brand ‘Snack Mania’. They were ordered to be withdrawn as they were likely to result in serious health consequences.
It is seen that Trump’s initiatives are largely driven by the economy but they had an ideological shade of the extreme right too.
A precipitate move of President Trump was to declare a ‘national emergency’ for turning out all illegal migrants from the US which allowed use of Army for blocking the southern border and induction of Homeland Security to constitute statewide teams for detecting such individuals. H1 Visas were curtailed, citizenship by birth was abolished and a general sense of discrimination against outsiders was allowed to prevail-all of which caused concern, particularly in India where the best talent chose to go to the US for higher studies and high-value jobs.
Earlier in a press conference, President Trump clarified that he did not want to come in the way of American companies inducting ‘engineers on merit’ and that he only wanted ordinary jobs to be denied to Americans in favour of a cheaper workforce being brought from outside for reasons of corporate profit.
India showed a good understanding of US concerns about illegal migration and PM Modi himself assured President Trump that India would cooperate with the US in breaking the fraud-ridden eco-system of illegal migration to America.
India is not facing any significant problem relating to US visas beyond closer scrutiny of applicants, which was expected.
Although President Trump was the first world leader to condemn the terrorist violence at Pahalgam on April 22 in no uncertain terms, some misgivings arose in India about the American responses to the subsequent developments relating to the retaliatory military action taken by the Modi government against Pakistan.
PM Modi announced after holding a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) that Defence Forces had been given a free hand to carry out strikes on terrorists and their supporters at a time of their choosing.
When the Indian Air Force made multiple ‘Balakote type’ strikes at nine terrorist camps beyond LoC and inside Pakistan based on intelligence- in the early hours of May 7 -an element of surprise had still been retained. Appropriately named Operation Sindoor the Indian retaliation led to unsuccessful attempts by Pakistan to make drone attacks on some places close to the Indian border. The drones, used by Pakistan, were gifted by Turkey as it came out later and they were mostly shot down by our air defence.
In an upgraded response India launched missile attacks causing grave damage to several leading Air bases in Pakistan. A desperate Pakistan army reached out to the Trump Administration, reminding it of the nuclear capability of the two countries, and unsurprisingly President Trump and his top functionaries moved to broach the idea of a ceasefire.
The request for a ceasefire came from DGMO Pakistan and India accepted it with PM Modi himself defining India’s future stand in his address to the nation on May 12 evening.
In what can be regarded as an enunciation of India’s National Security Policy, the Prime Minister stated that any future terrorist attack on India from the soil of Pakistan will be treated as an act of war and responded to by our defence forces accordingly, that India would not be deterred by any nuclear threat from Pakistan and that any talk with Pakistan will only be about cross-border terror and PoK in keeping with India’s stand that ‘talks and terror do not go together’ and that the only agenda on Kashmir was the return of PoK to India.
It is likely that President Trump did not want to abandon Pakistan and looked at the latter as a trading partner but he would also not like to cause any harm to the strategic India-US friendship.
It is in the nature of things for Trump to be a little hyperbolic- he claimed credit for stopping a ‘war’ between India and Pakistan and averting the death of ‘millions of people’- and went on to offer to mediate between the two countries on Kashmir. Seeing the reaction of India against a third party intervention on Kashmir, however, Trump quickly did a ‘course correction’ by saying on May 16 that India and Pakistan should pursue a direct dialogue on the issue.
It is not difficult for India to maintain the much-needed friendship with the US despite a certain ‘unpredictability’ about President Trump and the trait of being ‘vainglorious’ that the whole world could see in him.
An important part of the strategic diplomacy of India would be to highlight the Sino-Pak collusion that was in evidence during the post-Pahalgam military confrontation between India and Pakistan.
(The writer is a former Director Intelligence Bureau)
