Narendra Modi Is Having A Difficult Time In Dealing With His Good Friend Trump

By Anjan Roy

The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, demonstrates the predicament of a man fighting an unseen foe. Prime Minister’s address on Monday night was meant for the outside world, though it had its import on those inside the country. He was fighting what has been cast broad and wide without really being mentioned. It was the rumour mills in Washington and America that the sudden ceasefire was brokered by USA in the light of their intelligence inputs that Pakistan was planning a nuclear attack faced with the devastating fire powers of the Indians.

While this was in the background, the fact remains that the ceasefire was spelt out by the US president Donald Trump, before it was disclosed in India. It is in that context that prime minister’s statement and his pronouncement of nuclear doctrine of India has to be read. The real facts of the behind the scenes moves and countermoves would possibly revealed years later when, hopefully, the internecine conflicts would only be memories.

But the US president’s public statement and his reiteration of it on television makes a mockery of the situation. In the process the high office of the US president looks like in the hands of a maverick who is seeking for his own publicity. Donald Trump had no understanding of the confrontation between the south Asian neighbours.

India, most unfortunately, has been swallowed into a medieval conflict with Pakistan, who is waging a holy war against its neighbour. Look at the grotesqueness of the initial flare up. A bunch of terrorists murdering people in cold blood, going by their identification through their private parts. If a future historian would be writing about the confrontation, he might just as well describe this as the “Penis War”. The atrocity of the crime was gross as beyond mention.

What is even more incomprehensible is that a state in the twenty-first century would even strive to protect the perpetrators. On the other hand, look at India’s predicament: India is sucked into the inevitable whirlpool around this crime. It could not have let these terrorists off, without punishing except in the most demonstrable way.

In this context, hear what Donald Trump was saying as the explanation for the ceasefire. He said to the effect: I told the leaders of these two countries, stop this fight. I will trade with you. Lots of trade. Stop this fight. Stop this fight right away and I will trade. If you don’t I will not trade with you. And they stopped fighting.

Could anything be more silly. Ludicrous. The high and mighty US president was stopping a holy war with prospects of trade. This was a visceral conflict of the psyche — the national psyche articulated only a little while back by none other than the Pakistan army chief Asim Munir, appropriately known by the epithet Mulla Munir.

How can this psyche be addressed? This is the psyche of the jihadist. It can be only if a nation’s psyche can be played before a psychiatrist for counselling and cure. Not in the battlefield, until that psyche is destroyed in physical terms. In that mind, right or wrong, here is moral dimension. This is the goal dimension that Ernst Hemingway describes in his war novels when he is writing about the Spanish civil war. There is this dimension in William Faulkner’s novels too.

Now, watch out. What is Donald Trump’s war with China?. He is frothing often in the mouth about China having a huge surplus of trade with USA, China has stolen research secrets and technology from America. China has misused the world trading system to wipe out America’s manufacturing industry. He wants to keep Chinese imports from American markets.

With those inputs from America and money from the Americans, China has built up its arsenal of early weapons. It has its stockpile of nuclear weapons, its hypersonic missiles, its naval warships which now threaten American power all over the world. A super power challenged and the emerging superpower almost displacing the existing one.

Look at the contrasts. One is a medieval war, the other is an economic war gliding into a geo-political struggle. Two different concepts. Two different ideas. Both are equally dangerous. Because the medieval war is not being fought with bows and arrows and swords and spears. But with the deadly weapons of the twenty-first century.

It is in that specific context that Narendra Modi was facing the predicament of explaining India’s position without spilling the beans. He was making sure to his countrymen that the ceasefire was not the decision of the outsiders. He was reiterating to the foreigners that the initiative remained with India for now and ever.

He said in his address that no extent of nuclear threat from Pakistan would cower India to compromise on its war against terror from the neighbour. Modi’s statement of India’s nuclear doctrine, in a very categorical manner, clears a lot of confusion over the matter since ceasefire was declared.

There is the other version of the goings-on as well. The US president had miserably failed to bring peace in Ukraine and Russia has steadfastly opposed and rejected Trump’s proposals. Donald trump had sniffed a chance to regain his deal making reputation in claiming a ceasefire in south Asia when both the countries had established dialogue with each other. The prime minister on his part said that the ceasefire was arrived at after the two sides spoke to each other.

Nevertheless, these claims and counter-claims clearly set India and US at loggerheads with each other. Pakistan has already thanked the US leadership for brokering peace, which India is denying. Pakistan, doing not a single thing, has been able to put a spanner between the former friends.

On the other hand, China, set against India over the Himalayan borders, would continue to help Pakistan. China has already established considerable economic presence in Pakistan and would now be able to pursue these further. China is now in a position to sell more weapons to Pakistan.

On the other hand, given that the US president and his team craftily working out a trade deal with China, India stands rather isolated in the global geo-political scenario. India is possibly no longer the preferred bulwark in Asia against China in America’s global geo-political view. India would now have to defend itself singlehandedly.

Significantly, Prime Minister Modi, never mentioned US role, or for that matter, anyone’s interference in bringing about a ceasefire. India’s stated position for all times has been that the Kashmir issue is a bilateral one and no third nation was needed for mediation.

In this situation, India might again have to tilt towards Russia as a trusted friend and weapons supplier. This had frayed slightly recently following the Ukraine war. Russia has also maintained a rather neutral stance over the current stand-off between the neighbours.

What is of value in the current context is to watch how far the newly found trade bonhomie between China and USA lasts, given the inherent animosity between China and the USA for their global competition to achieve overall superiority. (IPA Service)