In the journal Foreign Affairs, former State Department official Daniel Markey writes we should look at India as it currently exists, instead of how we wish it was. Our harping on it being the world’s largest democracy, Markey believes, gives today’s India entirely too much undeserved human rights credit.
Though Markey doesn’t make the comparison, in effect he sees India’s current leader Modi being a sort of Asian version of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Turkey’s Erdogan. Which is to say, a nationalist leader who observes at least the overt forms of democracy without dealing fairly with opposing views or those who hold them.
Thus Markey suggests our collaboration with India should be based on our mutual, very much shared concerns about a China that’s trying hard to become Asia’s hegemon. I would imagine he sees our cooperation with India being like that with the Soviets during World War II, very much “the enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now” while never losing sight of our very serious differences.
Honestly, isn’t that how we should deal with all other countries, with the possible exception of the Anglosphere? I’m inclined to quote Lord Palmerston.
We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.
—————
Afterthought: In the context of foreign policy, someone should ask Vivek Ramaswamy his opinion of PM Modi, on the record. I would be very interested in his answer as a member of the Indian diaspora who aspires to our presidency.
I have written I could vote for Ramaswamy but to do so I would have to overcome my aversion to vegetarians, which he has testified before Congress he is. I’m a lifelong carnivore. Imagining state dinners in the White House with a vegetarian president is fun to contemplate … in the abstract.
