External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that India’s relationship with the United States would only grow in the years to come.
He was of the view that the US is likely to become more isolationist irrespective of who becomes the country’s next president. The US presidential election, he said, was unlikely to reverse what he called a long-term trend in US policy.
“Probably starting from (President Barack) Obama, the US has become much more cautious about its global commitments,” Mr Jaishankar said, pointing to America’s reluctance to deploy troops and its withdrawal from Afghanistan under President Joe Biden.
“President Trump may be more articulate and expressive in that regard,” he said during a panel discussion with the foreign ministers of Australia and New Zealand in Canberra last night.
“It’s important to look at the US more nationally than purely in terms of the ideology of the administration of the day,” Mr Jaishankar said.
“If we are truly analysing them, I think we have to prepare for a world where actually the kind of dominance and generosity which the US had in the early days may not continue,” he added.
All three foreign ministers said their nations needed to step in to create the global environment they wanted.”We all have an interest today in creating some kind of collaborative consensual arrangement,” Mr Jaishankar added.
“There is more protectionism,” said New Zealand’s Winston Peters.”The world we were once trying to build on is changing, and we’ll have to react and change with it.”
Speaking at a joint press conference on Tuesday with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong at Parliament House in Canberra, Mr Jaishankar also credited Mr Trump with reviving the QUAD alliance in 2017, marking a significant development in Indo-Pacific cooperation.
“We have seen steady progress in our relationship with the US over the last five presidencies, including a previous Trump presidency,” he said.