The United States Vice President JD Vance’s India visit seems to have been overshadowed by the Pahalgam terror attack. The attack will bring back the terrorism issue to the front and centre between India and Pakistan. World leaders have condemned the attack and offered their sympathies.
That the sponsors of the attack went ahead with it while the Vance family was in India may indicate that they may have deliberately timed it, so as to embarrass both India and the US.
On his part, Vance expressed solidarity with India. He stated on X,
“Usha and I extend our condolences to the victims of the devastating terrorist attack in Pahalgam, India. Over the past few days, we have been overcome with the beauty of this country and its people. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they mourn this horrific attack”.
Vance has not cut short his trip to India which concludes on the morning of 24 April, and he even visited Agra, where he was met by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. In diplomatic messaging, this is a clear stance of solidarity, especially from the US which is usually skittish about security concerns.
This is good, for it is concrete manifestation that the US is standing with India on terrorism. Further, that it has the confidence that despite the Pahalgam attack, India has the ability to provide security to visiting dignitaries.
Vance Visit: Overshadowed but Still Important
The Pahalgam terror attack should not prevent an objective evaluation of the Vance visit. In assessing its significance and outcome, it is important to bear in mind that in the American system, any Vice President lives and works within the confines that the President permits. He cannot move out of his shadow.
Indeed, no Vice President seeks to do so; hence, he constantly invokes the President’s policies and personality. That is so with Vance too. And, in India, he did so emphatically during his address to the Rajasthan International Centre on 22 April in Jaipur.
He obviously stuck to the Trump script in his official interaction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This does not imply that Vance did not try to win over with warm words the people of the original country of his wife Usha’s family. He spoke about the richness of India’s history and its “laser-like focus on the future”. He went on to say that India was different from many countries because here, there was a pride in being Indian.
Notwithstanding these soothing words and his immense praise for Modi., he did not deviate a jot from Trump’s basic desire to ‘re-balance’ the world in the interest of the US.
Of course, he asserted that it doing so, Donald Trump was also benefiting the world, including India. Thus, the old saying of the iron fist in the velvet glove in matters of Indo-US trade could not but escape the mind of any one who paid close attention to the implications of his speech. This was despite Vance’s assertion that the fate of this century depended on the nature of India-US relations.
Defence, Energy & Tech
In his Jaipur address, Vance mentioned three specific areas of India-US cooperation. The first was defence. He spoke glowingly the growth in India-US defence ties. He said that the US defence forces do more exercises with India than with any other country. Vance spoke of developing defence systems jointly but then he mentioned these crucial words:
“We want your nation to buy more of our military equipment, which we believe is best in class. American fifth-generation F-35s, for example, could give the Indian Air Force the ability to defend your airspace and protect your people like never before”.
Thus, while the US wants India as an important component of its chain of countries globally, but especially in the Indo-Pacific to counter China, it also wants India to buy expensive US defence equipment.
The next area of cooperation that Vance mentioned was energy security. He defended President Trump’s decision to develop US hydrocarbon resources. Indeed, he provided an ‘intellectual’ underpinning for it when he stated, “This administration recognises that cheap, dependable energy is an essential part of making things and of economic independence for both our countries. We believe that your country will benefit from American energy exports and expanding those exports”.
The message could not be clearer. Buy US oil and gas in preference to those from others, including Russia.
The problem is that US energy may be more expensive. It remains to be seen how the Indian government will tackle US pressures on the energy purchase front. Vance also specifically mentioned the change in Indian liability laws for nuclear power reactors. A strong pitch for India to look to US companies for nuclear power equipment is bound to come.
The third area of India-US cooperation that Vance mentioned was in technology. The question here is if the US will be willing to share the latest cutting-edge technology with India and thereafter allow Indian companies and other entities to build on them either individually or jointly.
The fact is that India cannot just be a consumer of technology. It has to come in the forefront of science and technology if it has to become an authentic power centre in the world.
China has accomplished that, which is why it is being perceived as the main competitor and threat by the US. India will eventually have to rely on itself in S&T, and close the gap with China and the West. But is our ruling dispensation and industry, business and academia, even focused on these aspects?
All Work, No Play
Modi and Vance took great satisfaction that the two countries' trade negotiators had agreed on the Terms of Reference for a Trade Agreement. While this is a positive step, a long rocky road lies ahead. It is difficult to visualise India agreeing to US demands in the agriculture sector and it will need to protect its start-ups.
Trump is ruthless in his pursuit of enhancing US manufacturing. Vance made that clear, even if he used mild and nuanced language to do so.
The atmospherics of the Vance trip were excellent though its protocol was strange for he did not meet his counterpart at all even though MEA announced the visit as ‘official’. But then we are living in times when Modi is impatient with the conventions of protocol and is setting new practices on that front.
(The writer is a former Secretary [West], Ministry of External Affairs. He can be reached @VivekKatju. 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.)