India’s Diplomatic Decline: Modi’s Strategic Autonomy Falls Flat

What a difference six months makes. In August 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Ukraine, ostensibly to help negotiate an end to Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine that began three years ago. Modi had visited Moscow a month earlier and met President Vladimir Putin. However, as soon as Modi’s aircraft’s wheels lifted off from Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the media he had raised with Modi the matter of India buying oil from Russia despite international sanctions against Moscow. His spokesman clarified that while it was important to have a dialogue with India, New Delhi had no negotiating role. 

Six months later, US President Donald Trump has single-handedly ended the “special military operation” without visiting either Kyiv or Moscow. He will meet Putin, but India will not be the host; Saudi Arabia will, perhaps before the month is out. In the month that he’s been in power, Trump put on a stunning display of raw power that has not only ended Europe’s 500-year run since the Renaissance (its meltdown typified by the Munich Security Conference chairperson literally in tears), it has left the world without time to even contemplate “Modi who?” 

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Since the G-20 meeting in September 2023, we’ve heard faffing, primarily from External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, about India’s “strategic autonomy”. This dovetailed into a narrative of the regime’s constant drumbeat that Modi is a consequential world leader: a Vishwaguru.  

This peaked in February 2022, with Indian TV news headlines of how Modi would end the war between Putin and Zelenskyy in days as if all that the two schoolboys required was a proper ear-twisting. I showed these headlines to my late father while visiting him, and he—despite being a staunch BJP supporter and a Modi fan—could not help but giggle at such fanciful notions. (It did not stop Modi, however, from claiming during last year’s parliamentary election that he tried to stop the War on Gaza during Ramzan). 

Last week, however, during Modi’s visit to Washington, DC, it was clear that his Vishwaguru narrative was deflated. What did he expect from disrupter-in-chief Donald Trump? True, Modi’s team recognised that US President Donald Trump is transactional and went to Washington prepared to kneel, bow their heads, and kiss the ring.

But Trump has been annoyed with Modi for visiting the US last autumn but not dropping in on him. (Modi did not drop in on Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris either, but such balancing acts are for tariffs, not kings). As a result, last week when Modi slinked into Washington DC, like Gogol’s The Government Inspector, no heavyweight came to the airport or even the White House porch to receive him. Israel’s and Japan’s leaders received warmer welcomes, which implied Modi had not been invited but had sought (and got) an appointment. 

First, Modi had to clear a meeting with self-styled puppet master Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who wants more, at least from India. The man who is doing liposuction on the US bureaucracy wants India to buy his Tesla cars and allow his satellite-based internet service, Starlink. (He probably also sees India’s commercial space program as competition, but this is unlikely to have come up.) 

Oddly, the same Musk, in a November 2024 post on his own social media platform, called the F-35 fighter jet expensive and obsolete, and making little sense in the age of drones. Trump nonetheless, saying that India had to rectify its trade imbalance with the US, made Modi promise to buy these F-35s, each at an estimated ₹80 crore. Now, it might be a better fighter jet than the Russian Su-57, but this is an opaque political purchase suddenly sprung on the Indian taxpayer. Yet since when has transparency been the Modi regime’s hallmark? 

Worse, Trump also directed Modi to buy oil and gas from faraway USA, which will be expensive compared to nearby Russian oil. Though the average Indian did not see the benefits of cheaper oil, he/she will certainly feel the pain of a higher import bill, and higher inflation.

Sure, Modi got some nice return presents. Trump pushed Modi’s chair in for him, as he did for Israeli butcher Benjamin Netanyahu; Trump signed a book calling the Prime Minister a great man; and he assured the extradition of Mumbai attack conspirator Tahawwur Rana. Trump and Modi also promised nuclear commerce—a promise we’ve been hearing for 20 years.

However, this was all undermined by the US government, two days after Modi’s return and while he was basking in the $10 billion glow of Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, which asked the Indian government to serve notice on billionaire Gautam Adani’s group, who is accused of misleading US investors by bribing Indian officials. Trump paused the law governing this (he called it anti-business) before Modi’s visit, but it seems the paperwork was still to catch up. Just a small reminder, in case Modi tries to go back on his word, of who the boss is.

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One gift Trump could have given was to remove the shackles of the second planeload of 100-odd illegal immigrants, who returned to India. Surely, illegally sneaking into the US by economic migrants is less heinous a crime than bribing Indian officials. Or perhaps we should be thankful that Modi was not bundled back from Washington.

Modi’s, and India’s, humiliation is there for all to see. His supporters may parrot what a Vishwaguru he is, but to the powers that actually be, he is just a fancy-dress simpleton.

Already the Chinese are leaking speculative stories that India is to be kept at strategic arm’s length from the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) grouping. Even the Egyptians and the Saudis had the audacity to refuse to meet Trump after he spoke of evicting the Gazans so that he could build another riviera—it’s probably a sop that Trump picked Riyadh to meet Putin.

And India can give up hope of ever getting into the UN Security Council as a permanent member. No room for an American lapdog there.

Aditya Sinha is a writer living on the outskirts of Delhi.