Bhutan Has Capitulated To Chinese Salami-Slicing Pressure In Doklam And India Is Immediately Affected

President Xi Jinping led China has made successful inroads into Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and to an extent Bangladesh, using financial inducements, project finance, infrastructure development in the host countries, and even their infamous debt-trap style imperialism.

The latest country in the neighbourhood to succumb to pressure and Chinese financial muscle appears to be Bhutan. There are a growing number of Bhutanese youth in the kingdom keen on better relations between Thimpu and Beijing. The perception is that there is much more to gain by leaning towards China rather than India. This may be short-sighted, but there is certainly a growing opinion divide in Bhutanese society on the matter.

That Bhutan should choose this juncture to make its momentous strategic move is surprising, because China’s standing in the global arena is somewhat diminished post Covid and its ostensible alliance with Russia during the Ukraine War. The West sees China increasingly as a security threat, not only to the maritime trade routes around the Taiwan Straits, the constant threatening the world over Taiwan, the near occupation of the South and East China Seas, using North Korea to not only send arms to Russia and menace Japan and South Korea, plus its difficult relationship with most countries in its littoral.

Most of the countries in India’s vicinity have not had a happy experience by letting in the dragon. Nepal has also lost territory to China without being able to raise a murmur, and has been forced into being hostile towards India albeit in a blow-hot blow-cold manner, depending on whether the pro-China Communists or pro-India Nationalists are in charge.

India, for itself, does have its remedies. These include its membership of QUAD, one-on-one alliances with powers like France, Israel, UAE, and Russia. India is now building a massive tri-services and naval base in its Grand Nicobar Islands just 80 km from the Malacca Straights, through which 80% of Chinese imports pass. Then there is its ramped up Aatmanirbhar defence manufacturing programme. There are other alliances, with AUKUS, and most recently with South Korea and Japan in a troika. It is doing all it can to counter Chinese imperial designs and aggression. Besides it is a nuclear weapons power, the great equaliser.

India’s resistance to the Chinese in Bhutan began in 2017, when China intruded into Bhutan’s Doklam Plateau with an illegal road being built unilaterally through Bhutanese territory. The intent was to drive this road all the way to Mount Gipmochi and the adjoining Jhampheri Ridge on the tip of the plateau overlooking India. This would have given China a clear oversight of India’s narrow, just 23 km wide in parts, Siliguri Corridor. The famous ‘Chicken Neck’, part of the corridor is the only land bridge to all the Indian states in the North East, including Arunachal Pradesh, that China also claims.

  In 2017 Indian troops rushed into Bhutan’s Batang La, to push back. The Doklam Plateau consisting of about 270 sq.km, is only wanted by China to gain an advantage over India, rather than to  just satisfy its urges for territorial gain from Bhutan.

In June 2017, when Bhutan discovered the intrusion, its people began protesting and its government asked for Indian help.

However, after stopping the Chinese in their tracks, and ostensibly sending them back to the Chumbi Valley to the north, into adjoining Chinese territory, India withdrew to its own borders.

The actual two-month long stand-off at the tri-junction between India, Bhutan and China at Batang La, featured much pushing and shoving, in the absence of lethal weapons being used by either side. Unlike in Ladakh and most recently near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, a few years later, the Chinese did not bring spiked clubs and other thuggish weaponry with them either.

But China soon came back to Doklam. It increased its presence, built more roads, villages, and a bridge across the fast-flowing Amu Chu river in the area. All this with complete impunity, and no further protest from Bhutan or India.

It is possible, though unconfirmed, that Bhutan may have asked India to keep out of the matter. It is also likely that India has used the interregnum, anticipating the inevitable, to strengthen its military defences in the chicken-neck area and elsewhere along the Siliguri Corridor.

These would need to incorporate nuclear and conventional missile silos, as is the case along the LaC, tunnels, reinforced bunkers, reinforced hangars for aircraft and drones, more air strips, artillery batteries, satellite surveillance, permanent troop placements not only in the corridor, but in Sikkim as well. This defensive work ongoing, along with other vast improvements in connectivity to the North East states, may be the reason that India has not said much as yet. But the pronouncements and apparent policy shift signalled by Bhutanese Prime Minister Lotay Tshering is unmistakeable.

India’s relationship with Bangladesh has been growing well under its Look East Policy.  Both countries are cooperating in the movement of goods, services, cruise tourism by  and through their respective adjacent waterways. India has given a number of billion dollar soft loans to Bangladesh of late, and most recently built a high-speed diesel pipeline jointly, ranging hundreds of kilometres, from Assam into Bangladesh.

Bangladesh may well agree to road and rail connectivity through its territory alongside the Siliguri Corridor, or even a lease of some of its land alongside to India.

This will thwart Chinese designs to a large extent, because it is trying to woo Bangladesh as well into its debt-trap diplomacy. And the chicken neck will not stay a chicken neck if this happens.

India wanted then, in 2017, as it does now, to keep the sensitive tri-junction area at Batang La unchanged. China however claims the whole of the Doklam Plateau is Chinese territory. Boundary talks between China and Bhutan have gone through many rounds, over a dozen, and most recently at Kunming, China, in January 2023.

After this last round, there was a joint statement made that an MoU on a three-step road map for expediting the China-Bhutan boundary negotiations had reached a ‘positive consensus’.

Chinese intrusions and construction also involve territory in the North of Bhutan as well as the North East, in addition to Doklam. These lay Chinese claim to some 500 sq.km. in Bhutan’s Jakarlung and Pasamlung Valleys.

As such, border talks between China and Bhutan have been ongoing since 1984.  But now, Bhutan’s prime minister suddenly claims there are no Chinese intrusions into Bhutanese territory in what appears to be an utter capitulation to Chinese pressure.

As regards the Doklam Plateau, which primarily is of interest and concern for India, Bhutan’s prime minister has just called for a three-way negotiation, including India. This, in an interview recently given to the Belgian Daily La Libre.

‘There are three of us’ said Prime Minister Tshering. ‘There is no big or small country, there are three equal countries, each counting for a third’, he added in a rather hopeful sounding message. Most analysts see by this Bhutan’s willingness to cede its territory to China, under prolonged pressure or financial inducements or indeed both.

Tshering repeatedly said the Chinese have not intruded into Bhutanese territory, nor built its infrastructure on Bhutanese land. The position on Doklam has also changed completely from earlier statements made in in 2019 when Prime Minister Tshering cautioned against any ‘unilateral’ moves.

It appears therefore that Bhutan has been induced into endorsing the Chinese salami-slicing tactics and military pressure. This of course, renders the situation into a fait accompli in favour of China. If Bhutan is willing to give up its territory there is little India can do about it. 

In Doklam, the present tri-junction at Batang La is sought by China to be shifted 7 km south to the Mount Gipmochi peak, just as was the original intent in 2017.

If that were to happen, then all of the Doklam Plateau would become part of China. And from Mount Gipmochi, China would gain a clear physical oversight of India’s Siliguri Corridor.

If India does join the tripartite talks, it can make clear that it does not accept any shift of the tri-junction from Batang La. China has already intruded into PoK over Indian objections for its road from Xinkiang to Gwadar through Pakistan. So, it remains to be seen what effect India’s objection will have.

China does respect force however, and would probably listen if India were to reoccupy PoK and Gilgit Baltistan, with American diplomatic support. Letting China get away with such blatant bullying of a tiny landlocked kingdom at this sensitive time in geopolitics, may not be countenanced by the West, if not purely for Bhutan’s sake, or indeed that of India’s, but for the precedent it sets.  

But will Bhutan see and portray the Chinese intrusions as a concordat instead,  designed for its complete benefit? It should remember the battered, bruised and bankrupt Sri Lanka post the reign of the Rajapakshas. It is India that is helping it to limp back into health with soft-loans and its good offices, and not  a predatory China.

Besides, Bhutan needs to take into account its dependence on Indian ports. The Chinese landmass to the north is the long way around for all its imports and exports. It is a hard reality, in competition with the intangible called ‘happiness’ that expensive-to-visit Bhutan has been projecting to the world.

(1,555 words)

March 30^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Silicon, Signature, Bust, Six More US Banks Downgraded, Is It Building Towards A Global Banking Crisis?

Starting off tough as Silicon Valley Bank failed over the last weekend, the erstwhile 16^th largest bank in America, feted a few days ago by Forbes Magazine as one of the best banks in America, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen rapidly caved in. She soon announced a federal fund to prop up bank liquidity across the board.

At first the Silicon collapse was sought to be portrayed as an IT bank that took some bad decisions. But this soon became unsustainable as a position, even as IT stocks, start-ups, unicorns, including some 40 from India were hit hard by the collapse of the $209 billion bank that dealt mainly with Silicon Valley clients and IT professionals.

The Chinese bank HSBC bought the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) UK business for a symbolic one-pound sterling. SVB in UK is closely linked to the British Biotech industry

Is this latest US financial crisis, because it is not an isolated blip, due once again to banks holding illiquid sub-prime assets, based on housing mortgages  acquired during a much lower interest rate regime?

Or, is it just due to a hawkish Federal Reserve Bank policy that has been raising interest rates at each review? Can this crisis be sorted by holding further Federal Bank interest rate increases or even lowering them? The effort to calm inflation, the highest in the US in more than four decades, has not responded particularly well to the higher interest rates. However, US business and industry, and now banks, have been hit. The Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Jerome Powell, may have to look at other ways to bring down US inflation.

Concern has already spread to Europe and Japan where stocks and government bonds such as JGB, fell sharply, particularly for those banks, pension funds, sovereign funds, high street businesses like Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Mazda, other investment vehicles allied closely to US trade, industry, construction, projects, stocks, bonds - including IT and Crypto assets.

International ratings agency Moody has downgraded the American banking sector from stable to negative for the systemic risks it poses.

Come last Monday after the crash of Silicon Valley Bank over the weekend, it has certainly hit banking stocks hard in the world’s stock markets and dampened sentiment on all stock market business, other scrips, including those in India. The Swedish Pension Fund is concerned.

The Indian stock market has long been dominated by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) responsible, possibly through the anonymous Participatory Notes (P-Notes or PNs) for investors not registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). They are classified as offshore derivative instruments (ODIs).Any profits collected from these PNs go back to the original investors including the proceeds of ‘short-selling’ or shorting any stock, that is betting on a lower value of the stock than its prevailing price at any given time while the stock market is trading. This is most likely the method used by Hindenberg and friends to cause the bloodbath in Adani Group stocks post the ‘fraud’ and ‘over valuation’ accusations amongst others.

It is therefore rather ironic that Hindenberg banks its money with First Republic Bank that saw a sharp fall in its stock prices since the beginning of this trading week causing a run on its deposits. Likewise other related banking stocks like PacWest and Western Alliance.

Now, as the Western markets take a tumble and higher interest rates have largely closed the window for the arbitrage and foreign currency gains of the FIIs, it may be time for the large domestic institutional investors and the retail Indian investors to take over.

This more so because the FIIs still do not really trust the Indian stock markets or indeed the Indian economy as a sure-fire bet. America has very little investment in India compared to China as yet. They cling therefore, with notable exceptions, to the outdated notions of Western economic superiority, running mostly to US stocks at the first opportunity.

They have, it is seen, made a foolish exception for Red China, also drowing in debt, inflation and slow growth, possibly because of huge Western investments there, and the size of its economy, second only to that of the US.

As in 2008, a financial crash in America that spreads from financial institutions to main street businesses affects the economies of the whole world. However most Western countries in particular stubbornly believe all will be well, if expert analysis is to be believed.

America is the most indebted country in the world with nearly $ 32 trillion in direct ‘national’ debts, amounting to 96% of current GDP. In addition, there are other US liabilities under different classifications that take this figure much higher. And yet, the bank bailout is contingent on ‘credible collateral’ like US Treasury Bonds!

Banks are naturally vulnerable to runs on their liquid assets whenever there is an upset anywhere in the system. People with US bank deposits are nervous in this instance too, and are withdrawing their money, despite assurances designed to calm panic from President Joe Biden himself and other treasury and financial officials.

Gold prices, which reflect financial instability, are seen to be instantly rising.

A global recession is gaining momentum according to the World Bank because of this raising of interest rates, tighter monetary and fiscal policies, in many countries.

Though India, dependent to a large extent on its domestic market, is continuing to grow at about 7% in GDP year on year, it is only a $3.5 trillion economy. Yet, it provides an exception to the gloom of the global scenario. This, post Covid and Ukraine and before this latest black swan event.  India is expected to become a $5 trillion economy by 2028 quite independent of this global volatility.

 That may be why the World Bank has recently sanctioned a billion dollar soft loan to improve India’s health infrastructure. India, in turn, has extended soft loans to friendly countries in its immediate neighbourhood amounting to $ 15 billion since 2014, when it was just at $ 3 billion before that.

Trade with these same friendly neighbours like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka has increased 50%. Sri Lanka is trading with India in rupees to conserve its hard currency.

In Europe, Germany’s Commerzbank and the already weak Swiss bank Credit Suisse took big hits on their valuations.

Commodities too are affected.  Copper and other base metals plus Gold went up in price in London. Gold is above the key $1,900 level.

Meanwhile, India has chosen this moment to request a sovereign ratings upgrade. This, without cracking a smile.

I1,088 words)

March 15^th 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Are agents Of Foreign Influence Joining Hands With Domestic Dissidents To Effect An Undemocratic Unconstitutional Coup Without Benefit Of Ballot?

The immediate news is of the Dream Party government in Tbilisi, Georgia, a small country located in the Caucus, withdrawing a draconian, Russian style ‘Foreign Agents’ bill. This, in the face of two days of vigorous popular protest. But the back story is interesting.

In the Caucus, the tiny populated 3.7 million people of Georgia want to be part of the increasingly tattered, battered, economically pressured, but still desirable EU to some. These people do not want to fall into the Russian sphere of influence.

At least 80% of Georgians, we are told, want EU membership. At the same time 20% of Georgia, namely South Ossetia and Abkhazia that want to break away, in a manner similar to the Donbass region of Ukraine, are already Russian occupied, as of 2008.

Russia now recognises these territories as ‘independent states’ and has stationed its troops there. The ruling Dream Party in Tbilisi is accused of being pro-Russia, and has not imposed sanctions on it after the commencement of its military action in Ukraine. Some Georgians have reportedly gone over to Ukraine to fight alongside, even as official Georgia acts as an unrestricted conduit for Western goods into Russia.

The ruling Dream Party is egged on by its founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, an eccentric billionaire, a kind of right-wing counterpart to George Soros, the diabolical Hungarian Jewish billionaire angel of the Left, acting as a thorn in the side of the Modi government in India, amongst other places. 

Georgia’s Ivanishvili made his fortune in Russia and makes no bones about wanting to ally more closely with it. In the Western propaganda war against Russian influence, the role of the ordinary, EU leaning Georgian is naturally being exaggerated and Ivanishvili and the Dream Party are being vilified.

Several if not many elected governments around the world are concerned about a neo-imperial bid to weaken and/or topple them. The attempt is to effect regime change by a combination of inimical foreign money power, local subversion, dissidence, propaganda, threats to sovereignty and unity of the republic.

People on the ground are encouraged to mass protest to attract the media, conduct acts of arson and destruction of public property, mount illegal blockades, engender and instigate communal riots, all in the absence of success at the ballot box. There is a lot of clandestine money being funnelled in to finance such activities.

This lack of ability to win votes too is not being owned up to. Instead, it is likened to the effects of fascism with compromised institutions of government, unfair elections, crackdown on freedom of expression, communal, caste, and tribal bias, wherever applicable, and a general action to weaken democracy and perpetuate the hold of those in power.

The Modi government is constantly painted in these lurid colours by elements of the Indian opposition and their cheer leaders abroad. Dependent on foreign funding as such opposition is, from those that want to install a weak government in its place. They are hoping that it will be them, installed with this foreign help.

This methodology is now clearly out in the open in long established and vigorously functioning democratic countries like Italy and India. Both have moved against such forces with laws that scrutinise foreign contributions and the purposes they are put to.

Russia has had quite a draconian law, in place since 2012, against foreign intervention in its affairs, now receiving much attention in the Western media in the context of the NATO/EU war of Russia via Ukraine. Every clause is being mulled over to illustrate the totalitarian bent of Putin’s government, that did not seem to bother the West till about a year ago.

Others too are facing problems with unelected people using subversive street politics that cause both law and order problems and undercut democratic processes.

Israel is facing intense protests because its current right-wing coalition government under Benyamin Netanyahu is in process, and determined to reform its judiciary. It wants to stymie a largely Leftist cabal of judges out to subvert and overturn initiatives of the legislature and the executive. The popular protests there include a bizarre siding with the Palestinians against the government of Israel, that has encouraged sectarian clashes between Arabs and Jews.

India has in fact tightened a  Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) Law in place since 1976, several times over the years, and most recently twice, in 2020 and 2022. There have been curbs put on a think-tank cum NGO funded partially by George Soros and his affiliates recently.

But that is not all. In addition to Russia, India, Italy, and of course Red China, countries that have anti-foreign influence laws include Belarus, seen as a staunch Russian ally, Hungary, Algeria and Zimbabwe.

The Dream Party Of Georgia has indeed retreated from a  mirror version of the 2012 Russian Law. The protests, probably instigated by Western forces in Georgia, saw the withdrawal of the proposed law for the time being. Ostensibly, the worry is that Georgia would be debarred from joining the EU in future. This, even though its candidature was denied in favour of Moldova and the war-torn Ukraine. The latter was however denied the possibility of NATO membership in the face of intense Russian objections.

All Georgia got, in turn, was a ‘European perspective’ status from the EU instead of an actual and formal candidate status. Joining NATO is not on the table.

The Russian law demands, amongst a plethora of restrictive and punitive clauses, the production of financial reports by a given foreign funds receiver on a quarterly basis, it wants to know the composition of the management bodies of such NGOs on a semi-annual basis, and a state audit annually if not at any time.

But the broader question that arises is why such laws are being put in place or tightened with increasing frequency nowadays, in more and more countries. Democratic process relies primarily on the voter to elect its representatives and the opposition to highlight the shortcomings of the ruling dispensation in parliament. But recent tactics seem to be a throwback to 19^th century style attempts to  overthrow an elected government by other means, short of, but not always excluding bloody revolution.

This desperate stratagem appears to be a phenomenon of economic turmoil and distress roiling the world after the twin blows of the Covid pandemic and the damaging war in Ukraine.

Even attempts at pension reform in France have occasioned massive street protests.

In Afghanistan, Iran, parts of Africa, there are ruthless suppressions of women and their rights, that have also seen brave and often bloody protests. These appear to be morally right against the excesses of brutal state power. But there is little or no foreign intervention to set things right.  Their problem is not the West’s problem.

Pakistan is facing civil war-like tendencies in facing up to its bankruptcy. And while there is some concern because it is a nuclear weapons state, it is nevertheless being largely left to its own devices. International law applies where the West has a vested interest.

Foreign intervention therefore is seen as an economic tool designed to effect hegemony over countries that are not falling in line with the strategic designs of powerful external forces. Weak and biddable governments suit such forces, not strong ones with the backing of its people, nationalistic, patriotic, and often right-wing.

But in Europe, experiencing rampant inflation, food shortages and high prices, fuel prices that are forever climbing, grain shortages as the wheat from Ukraine is difficult to access, high unemployment, things are coming to a head.

However, it is not NATO and the EU that appears to be winning in Ukraine despite putting in massive military and financial resources. The ability of the world’s mightiest military machine to subdue Russia and effect regime change is faltering. This is giving the lie to its infallibility and moving the tectonic plates of the world order.

New multilateral power blocks are forming that have the potential to change the strategic assumptions of the West. In the past, the two world wars completely changed not only the maps of Europe, and elsewhere, but the economic standing of Europe.

It led to the eclipse of the European colonial powers and the rise of America as the main challenger to the countries of the Warsaw Pact, the Iron Curtain, and the USSR.

Today, the churn will see a greater emergence of India, a moderation of Chinese imperialism vis a vis the United States, as it is likely to lose control of its ‘One China Policy’ in Taiwan, despite all its sabre rattling.

This will also be done to wrest its attempted control of the East and South China Seas and the maritime passages through them. The threat to all the countries in the littoral and Australia is also not acceptable to the US.

There will be new, stronger ties with allies for Russia, in West Asia, Africa and of course India. This is already coming to pass.

So, the foreign contributions laws and their attempts at neo-imperialism are, at best, only the tip of the iceberg. Much as the West and those it has bought over may protest them, a counter movement has started by the states affected, that will be difficult to snuff out.

Playing Chess with the nations of the world, instead of fair negotiations will simply not work, not the least because it is an outdated notion.

 (1,564 words)

March 11^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

India May Be A Strategic Quad Partner But Has Had No American Ambassador For Over Two years

The American Embassy in New Delhi has been operating throughout the Biden Administration without benefit of an ambassador. This has, no doubt, affected the pace (read-negligible), at which strategic and military cooperation initiatives have been advancing. Despite statements from on-high in America that India is an important strategic ally of the United States, and a highly valued, even ‘indispensable’ QUAD partner, and the signing of several strategic agreements between the two countries, not much change has been wrought on the ground.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken described the US-India partnership, as the ‘most consequential in the world’.

It is a glaring fact that Beijing, or indeed bankrupt Islamabad, does not go for long without an American ambassador in place, and yet, India is purportedly the important ally in the region being built up as a bulwark against Chinese hegemony. There are American ambassadors in place in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh as well. It is only India that seems to be a victim of America’s currently dysfunctional political system.

Routine matters at the New Delhi American Embassy too are not exactly in the pink, such as the issuance of visas to Indians. The healthy bilateral trade, such as pharmaceutical exports from India, particularly since the Covid pandemic, seem to be running on auto-pilot, monitored, no doubt by the Charge d’affaires in place.

The shadows in the empty Roosevelt House, the ambassador’s residence in New Delhi, have recently been compounded by friendly American overtures to Islamabad. These include a $450 million deal to refurbish Pakistan’s F-16 fleet, and once again calling Pakistan a strategic Non-Nato ally. There have been motivated statements against the Indian position in Jammu & Kashmir, voiced by the American Ambassador and other American Congressmen from so-called ‘Azad Kashmir’ known as Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) in India.

There have been little beyond supportive words with regard to Chinese belligerence along the long LaC. Meanwhile, the Chinese are relentlessly building up infrastructure and offensive military capacity in various hotspots of illegally occupied Indian, Bhutanese, and Nepalese territory. Where are the American sanctions now, so readily applied to Iran and Russia?

Perhaps much more than this cannot be properly expected to be put on track and advanced without an American ambassador in place. An ambassador can drive processes and initiatives between India and America to provide sorely needed content and meaning.

India cannot be blamed however, if it doubts American sincerity, given its frequent changes in policy based on pulls and tugs in its State Department and Pentagon’s Foggy Bottom. American perfidy and covert activity via the CIA is commonplace, as is its knack of either exploiting or letting down its allies.

Ironically, some observers have noted that India was graced with distinguished and influential American ambassadors, when it was certainly not a strategic partner of the US. Perhaps it was keen on weaning India away from the influence of the USSR at the time.

Is there then, a certain complacence on the part of America now. Does it think that India has nowhere to go. That it has to rely on America and the West, given its strained relationship with China. And the preoccupation of Russia with the Ukraine that is drawing Russia closer into the dragon’s embrace?

Still, it must be noted that Russia has delivered three out of the four S-400 systems ordered from them to India so far through the conflict and despite American pressure against the purchase in the first place. So, if America is writing off the Indian relationship with Russia in spite of its over 50% reliance on Russian military equipment, engineering, spares, collaboration - it may be in for a surprise. Russia, in fact, and the USSR before it, have been steadfast allies of India over the decades. But after the Russo-Ukraine War it is unlikely that there will be any love lost between Slavic Russia, America, and European NATO.

 The latest person acting as head of the mission in New Delhi, is a 74 year old career diplomat of 38 years standing. Charge d’affaires A. Elizabeth Jones, has been holding the fort since October 26^th, 2022. America has appointed six such interim envoys to New Delhi since former US ambassador Kenneth Juster’s departure in January 2021.  In the past, a new ambassador has usually taken up the position within six to seven months after the former ambassador departs.

Even American senators, embarrassed by this unusual situation, are calling this an insult to India, which India, on its part, has graciously chosen to ignore. Former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal has suggested the Garcetti may as well stay in Los Angeles as his appointment has lost ‘priority’. There is not a great deal of time left before the first term of the Biden Administration comes to an end in 2024. It typically takes any ambassador about six months in-country to get settled in, said Sibal.  

The 52 year-old American ambassador designate, Eric Garcetti, apparently a good friend and associate of President Joe Biden, was first nominated in July 2021. He is accused of ignoring sexual misconduct involving a senior political aide under his watch. Garcetti, on his part, has repeatedly denied the charge.

Nevertheless, various Republican and even Democratic Senators have objected to Garcetti’s appointment to what is considered a strategically important diplomatic post.

Garcetti is a former Mayor of Los Angeles, and has not been confirmed by the US Senate. You would think that President Biden would substitute the controversial candidate with another. But instead, the incumbent was reconfirmed as the Ambassador to India designate afresh in January 2023.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez scheduled a vote on Garcetti’s nomination as recently as on February 28^th 2023. However, Republican Senator Mark Rubio, the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, placed a hold on his nomination. The vote is now postponed to March 8^th.

If this inability to appoint an acceptable ambassador to India is partly because of India’s independent stance on the Russo-Ukranian War, it doesn’t explain the two-year-plus delay.

India’s business dealings with Russia, including the buying of almost all its crude oil from Russia, at a time when Russia is suffering heavy American and NATO country sanctions, can’t be palatable to Washington. However, the war is just over a year old, and Garcetti has been in limbo for over two.

Meanwhile, US visa processing from India can take upwards of a year and statements to speed things up from time to time have not, as yet, borne fruit. Contrast this with the just one week it takes to obtain a US visa from Bangkok.

So what has really worked for the relationship? It is summit diplomacy that has largely kept the Indo-American relationship on track. Visible warmth from the high officials of America. Prime Minister Modi is shortly to visit Washington on a state visit. Recent visits to India by the secretaries of state, defence and treasury, have all been most cordial. Perhaps this is the big difference. Other countries have ambassadors. India has close relations with the very top of the American power structure.  This is more or less undeniable. It does not afford  Red China much room to smirk.

(1,197 words)

March 6^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee