Trump's Re-Hyphenating India, Pak Ties Can Make IOR Waters, Too, Hotter

New Delhi has adequately responded to the US President Donald Trump's tariff-war on India and even his accompanying criticism of India and Russia as 'dead economies' . The same cannot be said of its reaction to his simultaneous condemnation that India and Russia are 'dead economies and will go down together' while Washington and Islamabad were shaking hands (after a time), aimed at oil joint oil exploration in Pakistan required to be seen in perspective.

Whether intended or otherwise, Trump has revived America's Cold War rhetoric for South Asia. It was embedded in Establishment America's psyche, only that post-Cold War Presidents before Trump had dismantled, brick-by-brick, the nation's hyphenated equation with India and Pakistan. His curse that India was a 'dead economy' along with Russia is the sharpest attack on India by any American President.

Where does it all leave India? If the Cold War is back in South Asia at American instance and insistence, then New Delhi too needs to re-visit and re-calibrate all its deals and dealings with the US. The Government has since denied western media reports that New Delhi had pressed the pause button on certain military procurements from the US. Yet, even independent of the re-hyphenation project, Trump, for all what you know, can freeze contracted sales of weapons, fighters and civilian aircraft to India. He can also freeze or further delay the supply of GE engines for India's Tejas project. The added question is if Trump, as unpredictable as ever, will also freeze $ 250-plus million Indian investments in US Treasury bonds, to pressure Indians into yielding whatever he wants on whichever front.

Down the road, if re-hyphenation is actually in the American mind, India should be worried about future supply of spares for procured machines, civil or military, as much as the immediate honouring of contractual commitments. It pays to be cautious. Post-Independence experience stood New Delhi in good stead. The US should realise that this one factor along with comparable prices and the readiness for technology transfer for production in India, alone made Moscow a dependable supplier, Soviet Union or not.

It is now becoming increasingly clear that the tariff-war is even more about India opening up its agriculture sector for American imports. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's declaration that he was ready to pay a 'personal price to protect the interest of Indian farmers' is loaded in more than one way. Past Prime Ministers in his place too had not yielded an inch on this score. They should also understand that every time you talk of America and agriculture, the Indian street-opinion on the PL-480 American food-aid from the early sixties continues to influence New Delhi's decision.

Through his tariff-war, Trump has weaponized trade, making it a strategic weapon against nations, India included. On the economic front, China has already been wooing India's northern neighbours, where Bangladesh is no more the dependable friend as under the Hasina regime, which was overthrown in August 2024. Today, using the tariff-war with India as a possible entry / re-entry point, the US too is looking up for opportunities in the region. It has already fixed negotiated tariffs with Bangladesh and possibly also India's southern neighbour, Sri Lanka .

According to reports, the US is also negotiating with Sri Lanka for including West Texas Intermediary (WTI) crude in the island-nation's oil import basket . How such initiatives would impact on the tri-nation energy hub involving India and the UAE in Sri Lanka's eastern Trincomalee remains to be seen. For now, the Sri Lankan Supreme Court has dismissed petitions challenging the seven MoUs signed during Prime Minister Modi's Sri Lanka visit this year. One of them covered the energy-hub.

Strategic consequences

By repeatedly claiming credit for ending India-Pakistan tensions during Operation Sindoor and later hosting Pakistan army chief Asim Munir for a White House luncheon , a rare gesture, Trump did send out an advance message to India. This has since been followed by Asim Munir's second visit to the US in quick succession. His threat to 'take half the world down with us' if a nuclear war is forced on Pakistan, seems aimed at forcing Washington to intervene in all matters India, including Kashmir and now, the Indus Water Treaty that New Delhi has since suspended , post-Sindoor. It remains to be seen if the US, Trump or no Trump, is going to yield to such an open black-mail. It is worse than the veiled Pakistani threat to use tactical nuclear weapons if the Indian troops crossed the international border during the Kargil War (1999).

Re-hyphenation or not, experience shows that in a situation as the one evolving, the generals in Rawalpindi know how to pressure China and the US against each other to get the best out of both, in political, economic and military terms. The last one has always been aimed for targeting India. That could include India's southern waters, where the prevailing US dominance at Diego Garcia military-base and increasing Chinese presence can also help Pakistan bolster its naval activities against India.

China, with its geo-strategic ambitions and continual despatch of 'spy ships' to these waters in as many years, with berthing rights in Sri Lankan and Maldivian ports, did cause serious concerns for India. Though distanced by about a decade, Sri Lanka had hosted two Chinese submarines , which strained bilateral relations with India. Now however, Colombo's Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for clearing passage and port-calls by foreign 'research vessels' of the kind has kept China away, at least for the time being. Maldives' Mohamed Muizzu, after failing to enthuse Turkey and China – two nations he visited in the early weeks of his presidency - has suspended, if not stopped, all adversity against India, which is the only nation to fund and finance the nation's economy, which otherwise has failed to revive.

For India, China is no more the only cause for security concerns, whether on land or in the Oceans. While Trump's re-hyphenation has the potential to open a new and unwelcome chapter in India's bilateral and multilateral ties, especially on defence and strategic ties, the presence of another non-regional player has made the IOR waters murkier than already. Turkey under President Erdogan may want to relive the Ottoman Empire experience but at no time in the past had the nation entered untested IOR waters as it is doing now. Apart from military drones for Pakistan, Turkey also sold civilian drones for Ocean surveillance to Maldives last year. It has since followed it up with the gift of a 40-plus year old missile-capable naval vessel , for the use of which the archipelago-nation has to first create a regional enemy.

Strategic autonomy

In the changed circumstances, the US has left India wonder if they are friends and allies or not. India has for long maintained 'strategic autonomy' , which has not been to America's liking. India also began playing down its Quad presence after the US-initiated initiative also involving Australia and Japan cleared its intention to become a military alliance (against China?). In its place, the US hurriedly created a military alliance, AUKUS, with Australia and the UK, whose role in the Indian Ocean, over and above the Diego Garcia base, remains unclear.

Through the past decade and more, the US has been working on step-by-strategic alliances with Sri Lanka and Maldives, that too behind the back of the Indian friend. Both nations however have since declined to upgrade their independent Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) into Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). It was unlike the Cold War years, when Moscow never took any strategic step in India's neighbourhood without consulting New Delhi. The only time they tried it, adventurism in Afghanistan caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Warsaw Pact.

Without re-hyphenation, India saw the US in Diego Garcia and France in Reunion Islands as partners in securing the Indian Ocean neighbourhood against possible Chinese misadventure in the future. New Delhi cannot be so sure any more, but only on the American front. Instead, it has reminded India about the Nixon-Kissinger era, when the US dispatched the Seventh Fleet to stall India's victory against Pakistan.

Is history repeating itself – in our own times? Only Trump and Time can answer this question.

(The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator, based in Chennai. Email: ...)

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