By Sushil Kutty
Everybody is looking to benefit from the India-United States standoff. The Trump-Modi rift has also caught the fancy of Indian-American and Trump’s “Republican colleague” Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s United Nation’s ambassador till they parted ways and Haley took off for a presidential run on her own against, of all the people, Trump himself!
Of course, she didn’t stand a chance against the MAGA wave and Trump left her straggling if not struggling. Nikki Haley is one of the reasons why Trump stopped trusting Indians except those of them who wouldn’t let go of Trump’s apron-strings, which Nikki Haley stopped doing once she decided she was the ‘better man’ for presidential honour than Donald Trump would ever be, not in this lifetime!
And now, Haley sees opportunity in the India-United States tariff-induced rift triggered by Trump’s urge to be the best American POTUS and American dictator in 200 years. How could Haley allow It and Trump does not trust Haley. For Trump every ‘Indian’ is a mean Hindu and this has been told to him by Field Marshal Asim Munir, this sorry picture of the average Indian.
Trump looks at an Indian-American and he sees Nikki Haley, who took his crumbs and then mounted a campaign against him. Did Nikki Haley become the ogre at the top of the beanstalk? Haley is seriously fishing in Trump’s troubled waters, muddying them further. Haley’s friends in the military-industrial complex didn’t like Trump in the first place.
Nikki sees opportunity. “India must be the prized free and democratic partner that it is-not an adversary like China, which has thus far avoided sanctions for its Russian oil purchases, despite being one of Moscow’s largest customers,” Nikki Haley wrote in an op-ed in Newsweek. The former UN ambassador is suddenly a “born again Indian” with full of love and romance for India against the marauding tariffs of President Donald Trump.
Nikki Haley’s words carry weight in both Democratic and Republican circles. Haley was hailed as a better presidential pick than Trump towards the end of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2024. The sort of person that Trump is, he must have concluded that there’s no Indian or Indian-American worth the attention that Nikki Haley got.7
Haley wouldn’t ever think of becoming a mediator between President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She will never again get access to the Oval Office as long as Donald Trump remains United States President. As far as Trump is concerned, Nikki Haley is persona non grata. Now, by talking for India and laying all the blame for the India-US break-up on Trump, Haley has further alienated the Trump administration and made President Trump by far more anti-India than he was ever was.
Nikki Haley isn’t the great ambassador India should have in its corner. Nikki Haley would only add to the rancour Trump has for India. Nobody ever thought Nikki Haley was a friend of India, to start with. In fact, stories abound of Nikki Haley’s dislike for India and ‘Indianness’. Haley apparently gave up being a Sikh and became a Christian and Nikki’s Sikh moniker was a casualty.
Recalling Nikki’s maiden Indian name is a gargantuan memory-test that even the redoubtable Dr. Ben Carson wouldn’t be able to crack. Dr. Carson was a loyal Trumpist unlike the un-Trumpist Nikki Haley. This lady is never gonna be accepted by Trump or any of the other MAGA persons designing Trump’s India-centric tariffs. Nikki Haley will only add to the chaos.
Come to think of it, Nikki Haley has no friends among Indians of America. She is more ‘USA first’ in her thinking than Trump will ever be. She’s still democratic at heart. Nikki Haley can’t be Trump’s conduit to the Nobel awards committee, not even if she’s dangled a prized post in the Trump administration. The Trump administration’s punitive tariffs are not going away for as long as Nikki Haley talks against Trump.
There are ways and ways to intervene in a battle between two adversaries and this isn’t it. Trump must have a barge pole to ensure Nikki Haley never gets to approach him. Trump’s estimation of Nikki Haley is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. India will not gain anything diplomatically from courting Nikki Haley. Haley has no traction with the Trump administration.
The brash US President hasn’t so far reacted to Nikki Haley’s uninvited solicitation and that shouldn’t surprise anybody, least of all Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India’s Ministry of External Affairs. Nikki Haley is not a self-acclimatized friend’ of India and her chess moves cannot checkmate President Trump any more effectively than anybody else. Nikki Haley is playing the China Card, cautioning Indians and Americans both that Trump’s tariffs have put India in the Russia-China camp.
Haley says ties between Washington and New Delhi are on the brink of “disaster” and no return, what Haley called “near a breaking point” as if Trump didn’t know this, as if he was a babe in the woods and had foolishly missed the woods for the tree. Nikki Haley’s advice to Trump that it was “critical to get relations between the US and India back on track” hasn’t caught on like a house on fire.
Haley is essentially saying that India should be mollycoddled to keep China muzzled. Haley doesn’t fit the role of negotiator between Indian and American with that sort of mindset. The Newsweek op-ed is proof Haley doesn’t know how to negotiate peace. Nikki forgets that Trump considers himself the best dealmaker ever and had penned a book ‘The Art of the Deal’. Nikki Haley will never be a dealmaker in the league of President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Nikki Haley should know that India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are the ones driving and pushing to get closer to China and not the other way around. If in the process, the United States gets alienated, so be it. Also, Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the same page as India and China. Containing China by creating more differences between the “two Asian powers” is not going to work.
Nikki Haley in her op-ed writes that India is not the adversary that China is and President Trump should have known this and that the Trump administration still has time to “drive a wedge” between China and India.
Haley’s military-industrial complex friends would benefit if the India-China-Russia axis is put to the test. Russia supplies military goodies to India and India buys Russian oil. There is nothing more good for the US than to see India-Russia bristle and India-China cast aspersions at each other.
“To achieve the Trump administration’s foreign policy goals-outcompeting China and achieving peace through strength-few objectives are more critical than getting US-India relations back on track,” Nikki wrote in the Newsweek op-ed. “India must be treated like the prized free and democratic partner that it is-not an adversary like China, which has thus far avoided sanctions for its Russian oil purchases, despite being one of Moscow’s largest customers.”
Nikki Haley punched in the last nail in the India-China relations coffin by saying, “Scuttling 25 years of momentum with the only country that can serve as a counterweight to Chinese dominance in Asia would be a strategic disaster.” And just so that India got the drift, she noted that New Delhi is essential and critical for the United States for supply chains to be moved away from China.
“While the Trump administration works to bring manufacturing back to our shores, India stands alone in its potential to manufacture at a China-like scale for products that can’t be quickly or efficiently produced here, like textiles, inexpensive phones, and solar panels,” Haley wrote, adding that India’s clout was increasing, something which should gladden Prime Minister Narendra Modi while at the same time alienating President Donald Trump. The question boils down to what does Nikki Haley want, an India-China detente or an Indo-US breakdown of ties?
“Simply put, China’s ambitions will have to shrink as India’s power grows. Yet, unlike Communist-controlled China, the rise of a democratic India does not threaten the free world,” Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley made it clear. (IPA Service)
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