2+2 Dialogue: Insecure India Shouldn’t Rush Relationship With US

2+2 Dialogue being cancelled by US for the 2nd time has spooked India, but hopefully, third time’s the charm.

(Photo: Harsh Sahani / The Quint)

This is what the Indian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet late on Wednesday night, that is 27 June, about the sudden cancellation of the inaugural India-US 2+2 Dialogue:

The inaugural 2+2 Dialogue was scheduled for 6 July in Washington, DC.

Conjecture Surrounding 2+2 Postponement

It looks like the 2+2 is jinxed, as this is the second time this year that this important dialogue between the Foreign and Defence Ministers of India and the USA has had to be postponed. This announcement has led to considerable speculation and conjecture in social media as to the reasons for this abrupt re-scheduling.

Some of this conjecture comprises:

• the (perceived) determination of Trump to impose stiff trade tariffs on countries like India
• to penalise those nations (like India) that have a close relationship with nations like Russia and Iran.

Those with a keen interest in the fine-print of the Beltway and who are adept at interpreting the sub-text of the whispers among the inner Trump circle of advisers, aver that General Jim Mattis – the US Defence Secretary – is next in line to receive a red card from the White House. One of the many ‘transgressions’ laid at his door is his perceived support for India over New Delhi’s military-inventory relationship with Moscow.

The Truth is Usually Simple

There is more on the conjecture circuit, related to the US National Security Adviser (NSA) John Bolton and his deep aversion to nations that are perceived by the US as ‘nuclear-defiant’. After North Korea, it is Iran that is topping Trump’s ‘fix-it’ list. President Trump recently walked out of the Iran nuclear deal, and the US plans to bring Iran back under sanctions.

US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 27 June 27, and is reported to have advised him that India must ‘cut’ the use of Iranian oil.

The extrapolation of the 2+2 Dialogue is US opposition to the India-Iran relationship and the perception that the Trump team has pulled the plug on this crucial dialogue – due to this 'unacceptable' relationship that Delhi has nurtured with Russia and Iran for decades.

However, the truth may be more prosaic.

My preliminary assessment is that the talks were called off more due to scheduling priorities for the Trump team – particularly the US State Department – than as a policy signal about the India-US bilateral going south.

Russia Sidetracked India-US Dialogue

It may be noted that this week has seen a flurry of high-level diplomatic activity between the US and Russia, and a Trump-Putin summit may be on the cards very soon. To this end, the US NSA John Bolton was in Moscow and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, 27 June. Subsequently the Kremlin stated that a summit was on the cards – in a third country ( a European Sentosa?) – and that this meeting had been planned for a long time.

Kremlin spokesman Yuri Ushakov added about the proposed Putin-Trump summit: “It has enormous importance for Russia and America, but it also has huge importance for the whole international situation. I think it will be the main international event of the summer.”

(On a lighter note, one may add that THE main international event this week is Germany crashing out of the World Cup but that may be relevant only for a Putin-Xi Jinping summit!).

Hence, my personal conjecture – seeing that there is a surfeit of ‘perceived’ wisdom about the 2+2 and its cancellation – the US State Department is scrambling to get the meeting with Putin on track, and the Pompeo-Mattis team may have asked for a time-out and a fresh set of dates that will suit the Indian Ministers Sushma Swaraj and Nirmala Sitharaman.

Third Time Lucky

This is not to suggest that the India-US relationship does not have its share of disruptions and disappointments with the ‘other’. The US, with Donald Trump at the helm, is behaving like an irate gorilla in the global drawing-room, and every major US policy decision has significant down-stream implications for countries like India.

The Trump triggered US-China trade war has already spooked the global financial system.

After the Chinese Renminbi depreciated, the Indian rupee slid to almost Rs 69 to the US dollar, and there are concerns that high oil prices will push this down to Rs 70 to the dollar. Inflation will be stoked, and this will widen the Indian current account deficit – with the high probability that the Modi government, in an election year, will have to deal with panic driven capital outflows – and rising onion prices.

There are a range of policy issues that India has to negotiate with the USA in the coming months, but the silver lining is that the bilateral political dialogue framework is likely to stay robust.

Hopefully the 2+2 will be rescheduled and it will be a case of third-time lucky for India.

(The writer is a leading expert on strategic affairs. He is currently Director, Society for Policy Studies. He can be reached at @theUdayB. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)