The Chinese regime will remain a key factor in defining the U.S.–India strategic partnership over the next five years, experts say, as both countries navigate elections and potential leadership changes in 2024.
India recently held the world’s largest election, a weeks-long process involving more than 900 million voters, resulting in a third consecutive win for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With the United States gearing up for presidential elections in November, now is a good time to take stock of the relationship between the two countries, experts who spoke to The Epoch Times said.
“Their defense partnership, their economic partnership, their global partnership in multilateral forums will continue.”
The Quad alliance—a diplomatic and security partnership between India, the United States, Japan, and Australia—“has grown and deepened” and will continue to strengthen in light of China’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific region, she said.
“It sends a message to China. It helps build a sort of cooperation on the defense and strategic areas, without actually being a security partnership,” she said.
Pande believes that three major factors will determine U.S.–India relations in the next five years: relations with China, the United States’ support for India’s economic rise, and India’s human capital.
New Delhi-based Harsh V. Pant, vice president for studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation and author of the just-released “India–U.S. Relations in the Modi Era,” told The Epoch Times that in the past decade, the relationship between the two nations has continued to evolve in a very positive direction despite changes in administrations.
“We have had Obama, then Trump and Biden, and in India, you had Manmohan Singh and then Modi. We have continuous growth in the relationship based on some fundamental convergence of interest, and I think that’s likely to continue as the center of global politics continues to shift to [the] Indo-Pacific,” he said.
Pant said that both India and the United States desire a stable Indo-Pacific and are coordinating their efforts to achieve this.
India’s ‘Golden Age’
Modi frequently refers to his vision for India as “Amrit Kaal,” roughly translated as “golden age.”In line with this perceived golden age is “Viksit Bharat@2047,” the Indian government’s roadmap for economic progress. Meaning “Developed India,” it lays out Modi’s goal for India to become a completely developed economy by 2047.
“This is the period in the history of India when the country is going to take a quantum leap,“ Modi said during a related event targeting India’s youth. Citing examples of other countries that have become developed nations, Modi said that, “For India, this is the time, right time.”
India’s rising generation of workers has the skill set and the capacities to sustain technological growth, Pant said. But even so, if India is to become a developed economy by 2047, it will need to speed up the pace of its development.
Pande highlighted the role the United States might play in this. “India needs foreign investment [and] technology, and by and large India will use the U.S. as the trusted partner for this,” she said.
One of the fastest-growing economies in the world, India is widely projected to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2027.
“So, American companies, American investment, American technology, especially in the civilian realm, defense, yes!” Pande said. “But [the] civilian [sector] is important, because India needs job creation.”
American businesses know they can’t completely move out of China right now, but they see India, alongside Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as alternative options for “economies of scale or bigger companies and technology,” she said.
A US–India Tug of War at the WTO
Although U.S.–India bilateral ties are improving overall, including in their strategic and economic partnership, there is one distinct exception: the countries’ ongoing rivalry at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Every year, the diplomatic missions of the two nations battle it out in Geneva and at other WTO venues over trade rules.“India is a developing economy; it still has millions of people under poverty and so it is keen to ensure that its subsidies—primarily agricultural—are viewed favorably. The U.S. and many European countries differ with India on this issue,” Pande said.
She said India wants to ensure protection for its domestic industries and is concerned that totally free trade will hurt them. That’s why it has “strong protectionist tendencies.”
“At a time when many countries around the world are turning protectionist, including the U.S., India’s actions are not altogether surprising,” she said.
“This Mutually Agreed Solution (MAS) negotiated by both sides marks the culmination of protracted negotiations, and it is unprecedented in WTO history,” the Indian ministry said in a statement.
Pant said that despite these challenges, “a certain maturity has come in the relationship, and the two sides can deal with the differences in a very mature manner.”
That maturity has come about as the result of institutionalization in the relationship, he said, which takes the form of multiple channels of communication between the two sides, and regular interfacing between the two bureaucracies.
“Based on that, we'll continue to see growth in this very, very important relationship in the next five years,” he said.
Human Capital
India needs investment to enhance the potential of its human capital—in other words, its future workforce—and the United States has an important role to play, Pande said.According to a July report from global management consulting firm McKinsey, for India to achieve its economic goals, the country will need to create 90 million jobs by 2030 and 600 million jobs by 2047. To meet its development goals, it will need to raise income sixfold, to over $12,000 per capita.
If this is to happen, India urgently needs to enhance the skills of its workforce, Pande said.
The United States can help to do this in two ways, she said: first, through R&D supported by American companies, and second, by allowing Indian workers and students into the United States in greater numbers.
When Indians study in the United States, “some [stay] back to contribute to the American economy, but a large number [go] back to India,” Pande said. “The human capital investment which India needs will only grow if [the] India–U.S. partnership grows, for there’s no other country which can help India’s lower- and upper-end labor as the United States can.”
Pande said there is little cause for concern about Chinese competition with the United States for human capital, so long as “there are always opportunities for young people to study in multiple [countries].”
“An autocratic state, which incentivizes students to come and study—will not be able to create the same paraphernalia and environment as a democratic state. Second, the language barrier will always remain. For Indians, it is easier to talk in English,” she said.
Will India’s Russia Ties Hurt Its US Relationship?
Modi visited Russia in early July—his first state visit since returning to office in June. It was also the Indian prime minister’s first trip to Moscow since the start of the Ukraine war.The visit raised questions in the West about India’s stance on the war and sparked concern about the impact of India–Russia relations on India’s friendly relationship with the United States.
Both Pande and Pant said that the India–Russia equation will not impact U.S.–India relations on a strategic level.
The United States understands that India sees Russia as a “continental balancer” against China, Pande said. Pant agreed, saying that this understanding will prevent any major disruption in relations between the United States and India.
The role goes back to the days of the Soviet Union, “because for India on the Asian landmass, it needs that support,” Pande said.
However, “the challenge will actually come for India in the coming years, as China gets stronger.” The present Russia–China dynamic is different from the USSR–China dynamic of the past, she added. During the Cold War, Soviet Russia was stronger than China. Today, China is much stronger economically than Russia. And Pande does not see that inequality changing in the short term.
“Will Russia for its own interests decide to side with China and not India? Let us not forget [that until] 1966, the Soviet Union supported China; in the 1962 war, [the] Soviet Union supported China, not India,” Pande said. As a result of the Sino–Indian War of 1962, China annexed almost 15,000 square miles of Indian border territory.
As China gets stronger, India will be watching to see how far Russia will go to support India’s interests, including militarily, Pande said. While India views Russia as a balancing factor, Russia will have a different perspective.
Meanwhile, how the India–Russia strategic partnership evolves over the next five years will affect how the India–United States strategic partnership grows in the same period. Russia has been the source of more than half of India’s weapons purchases over the past two decades. Although the volume of purchases has been steadily declining, if a third of Indian military equipment is of Russian origin, that will raise concerns in the U.S. defense establishment.
Unless the India–Russia defense partnership begins to limit itself to smaller military equipment and “not the big items,” the India–United States partnership will not reach its full potential, she said.
Moreover, Pande said, the “Russia factor” does not sit well with Americans, just as the “Pakistan factor” does not sit well with Indians.
