WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has significantly invested in its relationship with India over the past four years, seeing the country as a crucial partner in counterbalancing the rise of China.
Military cooperation and a personal friendship between President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India — both domineering nationalists — have pushed New Delhi and Washington closer.
Now, as President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is set to move into the White House, American diplomats, Indian officials and security experts are resetting their expectations for relations between the world’s two largest democracies.
On one hand, experts said, Mr. Biden’s administration will most likely pay more attention to India’s contentious domestic developments, where Mr. Modi’s right-wing party has been steadily consolidating power and becoming overtly hostile toward Muslim minorities. Mr. Trump has largely turned a blind eye.
Others believe that the United States cannot afford to dramatically alter its policy toward New Delhi since the United States needs India’s help to counter China and increasingly values India as a military and trade partner.
“The real opening between the United States and India began under President Clinton, it accelerated under President Bush, it continued under President Obama, and it’s accelerating again under our President, President Trump,” said Stephen Biegun, the deputy secretary of state, in October. “One of the constants in U.S.-India relations has been that every presidential administration here in the United States has left the relationship in even better shape than the one it inherited.”
Most experts agree that China will be the driving force behind how India’s relationship with Washington morphs in a Biden administration.
“We need India for various reasons,” said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “Most important of which is balancing Chinese power in Asia.”
This year, the worst border clash between India and China in decades left 20 Indian soldiers dead. As relations between New Delhi and Beijing soured, U.S. diplomats have seen India strengthen its commitment to a multilateral partnership among the United States, India, Japan and Australia — known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad.”
China has castigated this forum as an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, one that is directly aimed at counterbalancing its interests. India, leery of formal alliances and upsetting trade relations with Beijing, was initially hesitant to fully engage.
Mr. Biden, who once spoke optimistically of China’s emergence “as a great power,” has become increasingly tough on Beijing, and some analysts said his administration would most likely use the Quad as a way to ensure that the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region does not tilt too far toward China.
“They’ll keep the Quad going,” said Richard Fontaine, chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, adding that the venue has gone from largely being considered “a meeting in search of an agenda to something real that is doing things.”
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But some Indian officials are concerned that the next administration will not be as tough on China as the current one and that Mr. Biden will adopt a more nuanced and less favorable position toward India, analysts said.
“If he’s seen as pursuing a softer approach with China, it will make New Delhi have second thoughts about a soft alliance,” said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, a think tank in New Delhi.
Mr. Biden’s administration will inherit a growing military relationship with India. In recent months, the United States and India have shared more intelligence and conducted more coordinated military training exercises. The military cooperation is closest among the navies of the two countries; just this past week Kenneth J. Braithwaite, the Navy secretary, visited India.
The United States has been trying to increase arms sales to India, but India’s history of buying weapons from other countries, including France, Israel and Russia, has complicated that effort. American officials are concerned about providing sensitive equipment to India if there is a risk that members of the Russian military or other foreign agents would then have access to that same equipment. American and Indian officials signed an agreement to share real-time geographical data through satellite images when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited India in October.
Despite the warming ties, though, Indian officials also worry that Mr. Biden might be less critical of Pakistan, India’s archrival, than Mr. Trump has been. Mr. Biden may even reach out to Islamabad for support as the United States draws down troops in Afghanistan. Early in his presidency, Mr. Trump suspended military aid to Pakistan, accusing it of supporting terrorists and giving the United States “nothing but lies and deceit.”
In contrast, Mr. Trump has said little about the increasing hostility toward Muslims within India and the divisive politics of Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. The Trump administration has kept largely quiet about Mr. Modi’s crackdown on Kashmir last year and the passage of a new, blatantly anti-Muslim citizenship law. And Mr. Modi’s recently passed pro-market agricultural policies have fueled a farmer rebellion that has snarled daily life in the nation’s capital and stirred up more anti-government feeling.
Both Mr. Biden — who is considered a strong friend of India since his days as a senator when he worked to approve the country’s landmark civil nuclear agreement in 2008 — and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are likely to be more critical of India’s human rights record, both in private and in public, experts said.
Ms. Harris, whose mother was Indian and who has remained close to that side of her family, has already indicated that she was concerned about Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim area that has long been a flash point between India and Pakistan.
Mr. Biden’s campaign documents specifically called on the Indian government to “take all necessary steps to restore rights for all the people” in Kashmir. His campaign added that Mr. Biden was also “disappointed” in Mr. Modi’s citizenship law.
Some activists in the United States want the Biden administration to go even further, and warn Indian officials that discontent over some of its current policies could imperil how strong a partner India might be for the United States.
“Human rights first is equally important,” said Simran Noor, chairwoman of South Asian Americans Leading Together, an advocacy group in the United States. “The impacts of not addressing it now could lead to a lot worse conditions in the future.”
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Another challenging issue is visas. Mr. Trump this year suspended H-1B visas for high-skilled workers. This was a major setback for American technology companies, which employ many Indians, and the wider Indian diaspora in the United States.
The two countries have also struggled to sign a comprehensive trade agreement, with talks getting hung up over imports of American dairy products and medical devices such as coronary stents. After two decades of India loosening its trade restrictions, Western officials say India has been tightening them over the past two years, embracing Mr. Modi’s mantra for a “self-reliant India.”
And many of Mr. Biden’s priorities — including climate change — will most likely require India’s cooperation, ensuring New Delhi remains front of mind for Mr. Biden’s chief diplomats.
“There is no relationship today between any two countries that is as important as the relationship between the U.S. and India,” said Nisha D. Biswal, President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs. “Neither of us can go it alone.”
Pranshu Verma reported from Washington, and Jeffrey Gettleman from Mumbai, India.
