In less than four months, the 59th quadrennial elections for the still-most powerful office in the world i.e. President of the United States, takes place. The 45th and the incumbent President Donald Trump will lock horns with his presumptive Democrat nominee, Joseph R Biden. There are other political parties like the Libertarian and the Green Party, but it essentially remains a two-horse race.
The tumultuous Trump tenure has been marked by unprecedented upheavals and international belligerences, besides an embarrassing vote of impeachment and remaining mired in the Covid-19 pandemic that has statistically impacted the United States the worst. None of this turbulence impacted the initial enthusiasm for Trump’s re-bid with him romping home with 94.06 per cent of popular votes to his nearest rival, Bill Weld, with just 2.25 per cent in the Republican Party primaries.
Meanwhile the Democratic Party’s primaries were a more intense battle for the former-Vice President of United States, Joe Biden, who had to ward off a spirited fight from Bernie Sanders. Biden secured 49.4 per cent of popular votes to Sanders’ 27.5 per cent. The essential difference between the two Presidential candidates is that Joe Biden has predicated his campaign on a restorative and reformative ‘battle for the soul of this nation’, whereas Trump promises the continuation of his ‘rebuilding’ towards his notion to ‘keep America great’.
Amid this cacophonous, bitter and personalised campaign are 1.2 million Indian American voters, part of the mushrooming 23 million US immigrant voters. Only Mexican-origin voters numbering 3.5 million and Philippine- origin voters totaling 1.4 million are numerically stronger than the eligible Indian diaspora. While Trump has never been a favourite of immigrants owing to his divisive language and outlook on immigration, he will hope the Indian diaspora is different, given his assiduous wooing of the community.
Trump embarked on high-profile engagements with the Indian Prime Minister, from ‘Howdy Modi’ in Houston to ‘Namaste Trump’ in Ahmedabad ~ where the undercurrents of reciprocal political gratification had been unmistakable. While Trump has claimed to favourably tilt towards Indians, his infamous and misplaced axiomatic support for India, ‘We love the Hindus, we love India’ displays the sort of ignorance that endears him to his core constituency of ‘rednecks’.
Hoopla aside, an overwhelming 80 per cent of Indian Americans had voted for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in 2016. While Indian Americans have traditionally voted for Democrats, 2020 is a different world, with deeply polarised stirrings of ‘uber-nationalism’ abounding in India which could contextualise Trump’s peeves favorably, that is China and Islamophobia (and by extension, Pakistan). But is that simplistic logic enough to swing preference towards Trump by the Indian Americans?
Shrill rhetoric and theatrics aside, Trump’s ostensible support to India in crunch times like the recent Galwan incident or on terror with Pakistan, has been low on substance and high on meaningless vacuity. His inane recent statements like ‘love people of India, China. Want to do everything for peace’ or earlier offers to ‘mediate’ on Kashmir have hardly been helpful or reassuring in moments of tribulation.
Trump’s flip-flops on Pakistan are not driven through the lens of the fragile Indo-Pak distrust, but through its own topical necessities; therefore, the normalising of relations with Pakistan and with Taliban to the detriment of Indian interests, was brazenly unilateral. If indeed India has been provided US military hardware and technology, that has been for purely commercial considerations, and concerns pertaining to China reverse-engineering any potential supplies to Pakistan.
Donald Trump above all, has been most transactional, temperamental and has not shied away from publicly insulting India, for example the comment on India not supplying hydroxychloroquine provoking his “there may be retaliation, why wouldn’t there be?”. In the makebelieve world of Trump’s ‘America First’, the pretense of ‘allies’ is more in words than action.
Meanwhile Joe Biden is a product of the Democrat school that is fundamentally more restrained, inclusive and internationalist. Biden’s position on opposing NRC and CAA in India was slammed and heavily criticised, but that is in consonance with the Democrat Party’s stand of liberalism, that incidentally neither questions India’s position on J&K nor offers to take away the solution from the ‘bilateral’ framework, as favoured by India. Unlike Trump, Joe Biden has a more incisive take on the subcontinent and as a Democrat he had voted in favour of the landmark civilian Nuclear Deal that altered Indo-US relations for posterity.
His ideological steadfastness in criticising the Indian nuclear tests was nuanced with a deferential acknowledgement, ‘India is not a rogue state. It is not a Libya, a North Korea, or an Iraq. It is the world’s largest democracy and it is a country with which we share much in common’. Biden had famously posited the $500 billion trade target in the Indo- US realm (same as US-China), whilst on a State visit in 2015 and along with Team Obama, pegged India as the strategic ‘pivot’ to Asia.
Even from the H1B visa perspective, Biden is committed to a more immigrant-friendly approach. Lower on thunder and bile, Biden will be more predictable and reasonable on India’s strategic concerns like affording more space to manage its regional aspirations with Iran, unlike Trump’s blanket intransigence despite India’s protestations. As far as China and Pakistan are concerned, the natural preference towards the ‘pivot’ of India cannot change, irrespective of the White House incumbent.
Already the Biden campaign has established a compelling lead of 51 per cent to 40 per cent against Trump. Nowhere has Biden reflected any fundamental concern against Indian interests, other than those in the realm of democratic freedoms within the largest democracy in the world. Instead of shunning the Biden camp as was done by our diplomacy following his NRC and CAA comments, the Indian Government will do well to not be obsequious towards Trump, who has spoken more than delivered.
The Biden lead is increasing by the day, and Trump is getting increasingly exposed for his mismanagement of Covid and other international relationships to the detriment of the world at large. India cannot be the oddity in punting on the wrong horse ~ historically, Indian Americans have shown better judgement and preference.
(The writer IS Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands & Puducherry)