The blossoming US-Indian romance

Receive free US foreign policy updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest US foreign policy news every morning.

The British like to talk about their “special relationship” with the US. But America’s special relationship for the 21st century looks increasingly like it will be with India.

Joe Biden came close to saying as much this week. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington this week, the US president told a press conference that America’s relationship with India is “among the most consequential in the world”.

As with many blossoming romances, it took a third party to bring the couple together — in this case, China. The US and India share a fear of rising Chinese power that is driving them closer together. 

There is so much focus on the decline in US-Chinese relations in Washington that it is easy to overlook the even more dramatic downward spiral in relations between India and China. The US is still debating whether to kick out TikTok. But India has already done it, despite the fact that the Chinese app had hundreds of millions of users in India. There are no longer any direct flights between India and China. Nor, after a round of tit-for-tat expulsions, are there any Indian reporters left in Beijing; and just one, if any, Chinese reporters left in Delhi. Meanwhile, the Indian-Chinese border dispute rumbles on — with 50,000 troops deployed on the two sides of the border. 

As for America, it is looking to decrease its economic dependence on China and increasingly sees India as an “alternative China”. The only other country in the world with a population of more than 1bn people, India seems to offer enormous untapped potential — both as a market and as a production base. Big announcements made during the Modi visit — of purchases of Boeing aircraft by India, and of an investment by Micron, a US company in a new semiconductor plant in India — underlined the potential and stoked the excitement.

People-to-people ties are also burgeoning. Several of America’s most prominent chief executives originally hail from India — including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet and Arvind Krishna of IBM.

But as with many early romances, a word of caution may be in order. In fact, several words of caution.

First, when it comes to economics and markets, it is not quite right to see India as a ready-made alternative China. In 1990, the economies of China and India were roughly the same size. But nowadays, the Chinese economy is five times the size of India’s. Levels of education and infrastructure in China are way ahead of India.

When it comes to politics, India’s greatest calling card is its claim to be the “world’s largest democracy”. But most rankings of political liberty have seen India slide backwards in recent years. Talking to Indian colleagues in journalism and academia, there is no doubt that many feel intimidated by the current political and intellectual climate. Some have lost their jobs. 

The third issue is strategic. India may be a partner of the US — but it is most definitely not an ally. The fact that India has continued to buy Russian oil and weaponry throughout the Ukraine war has caused considerable irritation in Washington. 

The Indians sometimes protest that — for national security reasons — they cannot sever ties with Russia. Some 80 per cent of Indian weaponry is bought from Russia. If fighting were ever to break out with China, India would be reliant on Russia for spare-parts or ammunition. But it must also occur to the Indians that Russia itself is now very reliant on China. There must be a question about whether Moscow would actually supply India with the munitions it needed in the event of a clash with China.

That is why one of America’s biggest long-term plays with India is to sell Delhi more weapons. There were several big deals announced during the Modi visit. This has an economic and strategic benefit for the US. The military industrial complex (yes, it exists) will benefit from the contracts. And — a decade down the line — India will be less dependent on Russia and more tied into the American military’s ecosystem. 

Both the US and India increasingly see this as a long-term relationship — and they are both prepared to invest in each other (literally and metaphorically) with the hope of reaping the benefits over many years.

But what do you think, Brooke? Will all these hopes be fulfilled? Or will the courting couple discover more unpalatable truths about each other — as they settle into the relationship? 

Recommended reading

• Indian officials often pour scorn on the western “freedom indices” that have tracked the erosion of political liberty in India. So I was interested to read this piece in The Guardian that says that, behind the scenes, the Indian government is actually quite concerned. 

• I really enjoyed this piece by David Aaronovitch on the recent national conservative conference in London. As the saying goes, he sat through three days of it — so you don’t have to.

• On balance I was pleased to be featured in this mildly amusing satirical article in the New Statesman on “The Rise of Waterstones Dad”. (Waterstones is Britain’s largest bookstore chain). On the downside, the article tags me as the kind of middlebrow thinker read by earnest but dim middle managers, drawn to “acceptable thought by a media-sanctioned intelligentsia.” On the other hand, it brackets me with authors who are incomparably richer and more successful than I am — such as Malcolm Gladwell and Yuval Noah Harari. That’s the kind of insult I like!

Brooke Masters responds

Gideon, I think you’re absolutely right to focus on the ties between the US and India. It really does feel like the relationship has taken a major step up. I have been struck over the past couple of weeks by how many top American money managers and executives have spontaneously brought up their increased focus on India. I wasn’t talking to top bankers and CEOs when American corporates first forged deep ties with China, but people who were tell me that some of today’s chatter about India’s market’s size, spending potential and growing openness to western investment sounds very similar.

There is surely a warning in that. US and European dreams that industrialisation and economic growth will lead countries to become more like western capitalist democracies have been repeatedly dashed. Modi has made clear that he, like Chinese leaders before him, is seeking access to American technology and investment to help his country grow. But India is a massively complex society that for generations has frustrated western efforts to make it choose sides. Its governments have also resisted western multinational efforts to elbow their way into its markets. The mood music is different at the moment, but who knows how long that will last. The relationship advice columnists always suggest that couples in the first flush of attraction take the time to build trust before they start sharing bank accounts or buy property together. The same is true for countries contemplating deep economic and political ties.