In a piece titled "The India Dividend: New Delhi Remains Washington’s Best Hope in Asia" published in Foreign Affairs journal, authors Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis argue that the Trump Administration should continue the US policy of "strategic altruism" with India that began with US-India nuclear agreement. They want President Trump to ignore the fact that the US companies and economy have only marginally benefited from this policy. They see India as a "superpower in waiting" and urge Washington to focus on the goal of having India as an ally to check China's rise. They see Chinese support for India's archrival Pakistan and China’s growing weight in South Asia and beyond as threat to India.
Who is Ashley Tellis:
Ashley Tellis was born and raised in Mumbai, India. Back in 1999 as a “researcher” at RAND Corp, he contributed to a report for US Department of Defense (DoD) that forecast Pakistan would “disappear” by 2015. It proved to be wishful thinking.
Here are the Key Points of Pentagon's Asia 2025 Report on South Asia region that Ashley Tellis contributed to:
1. Pakistan is "near collapse" in 2010 while India is making "broad progress".
2. Iranian "moderation" in 2010 while Afghanistan remains "anarchic hotbed".
3. Pakistan is "paralyzed" after an "Indo-Pak war 2012".
4. US launches conventional strike on "remaining Pakistan nukes" after the "Indo-Pak war 2012.
5. China "blinks at US-India Collusion".
6. Pakistan "disappears".
He is promoted as a South Asia "scholar" by various Washington Think Tanks he has worked for. Currently, he is with Carnegie Endowment For International Peace in Washington DC. His hostility toward Pakistan shows through in all his work.
Criticism of Trump's India Policy:
Blackwill and Tellis have praised Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama for ignoring long-standing US policy on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and for pushing US-India nuclear deal through. At the same time, they have criticized Trump for "leaving even staunch pro-U.S. stalwarts such as Modi wondering whether India could ever count on the United States to come to its aid in the event of a major crisis with China".
The authors take President Trump to task for "focusing less on India’s potential as a partner than on its unbalanced trade with the United States". The Trump administration has recently withdrawn India’s privileged trade access to the United States under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program.
Trump's Afghan Policy:
The authors are unhappy with administration’s approach to peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan for for failing "to consider Indian interests". They complain that their expectation that "Trump might put less pressure on India regarding....its relations with Pakistan" have not materialized.
Blackwill and Tellis don't explain how Trump can end America's longest war while protecting Indian interests in Afghanistan.
Strategic Alturism:
Blackwill and Tellis want Trump administration to continue "generous U.S. policies" not merely a favor to New Delhi but a "conscious exercise of strategic altruism". They praise the US administrations that preceded Trump in the following words:
"A strong India was fundamentally in Washington’s interest, even if New Delhi would often go its own way on specific policy issues. Both Bush and his successor, Barack Obama, turned a blind eye to India’s positions in international trade negotiations, its relatively closed economy, and its voting record at the United Nations, all of which ran counter to U.S. preferences".
Summary:
Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis argue that the Trump administration should continue "generous U.S. policies" not merely a favor to New Delhi but a "conscious exercise of strategic altruism". The authors are unhappy with administration’s approach to peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan for for failing "to consider Indian interests". They complain that their expectation that "Trump might put less pressure on India regarding....its relations with Pakistan" have not materialized. In other words, they want US-India relations to be a one-way street where all the benefits flow from US to India in the expectation that at some point in the future India would be useful to counter China's rise in Asia.
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Riaz Haq
Trump Truth Social Posts On X
@TrumpTruthOnX
I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World. Likewise, Russia and the USA do almost no business together. Let’s keep it that way, and tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!
https://x.com/TrumpTruthOnX/status/1950776077204513135
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Jayant Bhandari
@JayantBhandari5
Who would have thought that in comparison to India, Pakistan would be better friends with the US and Russia and be a deep friend of China? Modi and Chouhan's grotesquely corrupt and braindead regime made that possible.
https://x.com/JayantBhandari5/status/1950735268014944354
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Amir Husain
@amirhusain_tx
President Trump has announced an energy partnership with Pakistan. CPEC has made immense progress. Gwadar port and airport are done and ramping up. Thousands of megawatts of energy have come online. Large dams are being built. Pakistan has one of the fastest growing solar economies in the world. A new cutting edge, 1.2GW Nuclear reactor based on third gen tech is presently being built with China. Pakistan will drive 600% growth in shipping capacity over just the next three years. Road networks have been added at great speed. Pakistan Railways has hit record revenue. Just last year, hundreds of kilometers of highways were built. This year over 1,000km have been approved. Oil lies off Pakistan’s coast, in Sindh and Balochistan. At least ten new discoveries have been made since just 2024. An estimated fifty trillion dollars’ worth of rare earths and minerals lies beneath the surface. A partnership is emerging with China in this area. The Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum was a huge eye opener. There were hundreds of international delegates there to do deals. At the last IDEAS conference in Karachi, $30B in defense MoUs were executed, a few billion of which have already converted to orders, including with Azerbaijan. The PSX stock index is near all-time highs while Pakistani equities remain one of the most affordable in the region based on P/E multiples. There is massive interest in Pakistan’s economy right now.
https://x.com/amirhusain_tx/status/1950711516950638846
Jul 31
Riaz Haq
Why Trump’s Tariffs on India Are Part of a Wider Geopolitical Game: George Friedman – The Singju Post
https://singjupost.com/transcript-why-trumps-tariffs-on-india-are-p...
https://youtu.be/dgPROuLq2gA
India’s Strategic Value to the US
GEORGE FRIEDMAN: Well, the relationship between US and India has been moderately good. But India is not an essential country from the American standpoint. We have fundamental allies that we need badly, and then allies which we give, lose or win doesn’t much matter. India goes into that category.
When the Chinese cut were unable to continue to sell to the United States, everybody looked at India as an alternative. It’s not. It’s far from the level of the Chinese economy. And therefore, while we had good relations, this was an opportunity at the cost to India, which we didn’t much mind to both signal things to the Chinese and Russians, which we do mind. So different signals to both sides. But on the other hand, India is not a critical element in our strategy.
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GEORGE FRIEDMAN: Well, trust is not a major term in international relations. Interest is we did not do these things with India before. We’ve had a non confrontational strategy toward China. We’ve not done anything particularly aggressive against China. China has on a number of occasions done some things aggressive against our allies. We’ve been defensive but passive in that.
So when you ask the question, what’s more important in the United States, a changed relationship with China, a changed attitude on the part of Russia or a relationship with India? If you have to ask the question, which is the most dangerous things in there? It’s Russia and China, which is least in that configuration? It’s India.
So if you can signal and then turn around and drop tariffs too, if it works, if you can just signal to the Russians that we will raise tariffs on anyone who trades with you and we’ll start with one of your biggest customers and the strongest, that’s helpful. Same with the Chinese side. If we signal that we are not going to go to war with you, that’s a good signal.
Strategic Unpredictability as Foreign Policy
In other words, when you are engaged in diplomacy or buying a house, there are two things you do. You act like you don’t want it and then you manipulate it until you can get your best price. Diplomacy is not necessarily best a consistent policy. Doing the unexpected. Sometimes when you’re carefully moderated, and this was carefully moderated, doing the unexpected and feeling the pressure is a possible way to reach an accommodation.
India was in this sense a victim, a minor, relatively minor cost to the Indians, certainly nothing to break relations over. On the other hand, it did signal to the Chinese that we’re not going to be going to war with them, which they worried about India and to the Russians that we really are going to impose tariffs. The most useless thing to do is say we’re going to really hurt you and never hurt them. The other thing not to say is, we’re going to attack you and then attack them. So in both cases, diplomacy consists both of having some advantages presented and some disadvantages, and this did both.
Aug 29
Riaz Haq
While Trump Rattles the World, China Basks in the Limelight - The Wall Street Journal.
https://www.wsj.com/world/while-trump-rattles-the-world-china-basks...
BEIJING—The leaders of three of the world’s four most powerful nations will meet in China this weekend to discuss how to react to the upending of the international order wrought by the fourth: the U.S. under President Trump.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is currently being wooed by Washington, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country—long cultivated by the U.S. as a centerpiece of its aspirations to contain Beijing—has just been slapped by punitive American tariffs.
They will be joined by several other national leaders, including those from Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan, at a summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin that starts Sunday and aims to showcase Beijing’s global economic and political clout.
Putin and some of these guests will then stand alongside Xi, North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, and the presidents from countries as far afield as Cuba and Zimbabwe, to watch the Sept. 3 military parade in Beijing. The event will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II—or, as China calls it, the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance.
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To some in the Trump administration, the outreach to Putin at the expense of Ukraine and European security makes sense as part of a “reverse Kissinger” approach. The grand idea is to drive a wedge between Russia, which is seen as a power that could be accommodated, and China, which is considered a challenge to America’s global pre-eminence.
In a Fox News interview after the summit in Alaska, Trump openly mused about how Russia and China are “basically natural enemies” and blamed former President Joe Biden for bringing them together. “Russia has tremendous amounts of land. China has tremendous amounts of people, and China needs Russian land,” he said.
The entire population of Russia’s Far East region, which accounts for 40% of its territory, is fewer than eight million people, or smaller than the number of inhabitants in a medium-size Chinese city like Shenyang or Foshan.
During the first Trump administration, Chinese officials were genuinely alarmed by the prospect of a U.S. rapprochement with Russia at Beijing’s expense, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center in Berlin and an expert on Sino-Russian relations. But today, he said, they no longer consider it a serious concern because of just how dependent Russia has become on China as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.
“The Chinese understand that Russia is in their pocket to a much greater extent than before the war, and they also understand that because of Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, a normalization of Russian relations with the West as a whole remains impossible,” Gabuev said. “Xi and Putin also know just how mercurial Trump is—and that the Russians can’t trust any American promises and inducements.”
Aug 30