Strategic ally to regional pawn | Trump’s envoy pick ‘Gores’ India

The US move risks weakening India’s role in countering China and reshaping its image in global forums like BRICS and the G20.

At a time when India-United States ties are moving through a testing phase, US President Donald Trump has nominated his confidante and erstwhile White House Chief of Personnel, Sergio Gor, as the ambassador-designate to India.

Except that he will not just be the US ambassador to India but also Special Envoy for South and Central Asian Affairs.

He has no diplomatic experience, and his only credentials for the job are that he apparently has walk-in privileges vis-à-vis the US president day or night.

Although this single move downgrades India as a standalone global partner of the US, it has elicited no protest from the Government of India. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s response was non-committal, “Yes, I have read about it.”

However, some Americans and Indian strategic analysts have lauded the move. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former Chief Strategist, defended the move saying, “I couldn’t think of a better pick.” A prominent Indian-origin venture capitalist based in the US, welcomed the nomination, describing Gor as one of Trump’s closest confidantes. An Indian defence analyst even said that it showed Trump was recognising the damage done to India-US ties by dispatching a member of his innermost circle to New Delhi.

Gor’s dual designation should have sent alarm bells ringing in New Delhi. However, the Narendra Modi foreign policy is still at sea, having yet to fashion a credible strategy to deal with the punitive tariffs imposed by Trump.

As Gor will be overseeing 12 other countries besides India — the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — the Trump administration is clearly signalling that it does not see India as a strategic peer but a part of the regional bloc. With 13 countries under his charge, Gor’s diplomatic bandwidth to engage with India will be drastically reduced.

Viewed through a regional prism, India will once again be bracketed with Pakistan, a hyphenation Indian diplomacy had succeeded in breaking over time. The US is also likely to lean harder on regional disputes. Trump has already expressed his desire to mediate the Kashmir issue several times. It is unthinkable that Gor will not be engaged with regional disputes in South and Central Asia, including presumably the tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

New Delhi is now faced with the same dilemma as in 2012, when the US had tried to introduce a regional rather than a bilateral approach in diplomatic ties. The Barack Obama administration had initially decided to appoint Richard Holbrooke as its envoy for South Asia. Indian protests led to his re-designation as envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

At that time, the New Yorker had reported White House sources as saying that India had gone ‘berserk’ at Holbrooke’s proposed designation. The then outgoing US ambassador David Mulford’s cables (revealed by Wikileaks) said that then Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon had informed him of the ‘sensitivity on the issue of a special envoy with a mandate to address the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir.’

A week later, Mulford reported that Pranab Mukherjee, the then external affairs minister, met him: “(Mukherjee) was deeply concerned about any move toward an envoy with a broad regional mandate that could be interpreted to include Kashmir. Such a broad mandate would be viewed by India as risky and unpredictable, exposing issues of vital concern to India to the discretion of the individual appointed. ‘A special envoy smacks of interference and would be unacceptable,’ he said.” The US eventually kept India out of Holbrooke’s mandate in the face of Indian protest.

This time around, one does not know whether India has made its feelings equally clear. Although such moves are not public, there is no sign of rallying the public mood in the direction which the government wants to move.

In any case, the public mood is likely to swing away from the US given its targeting of India through tariffs and its criticism of the H1B visas as a ‘scam’. Over 70 percent of all approved H-1B visa petitions each year since 2015 have gone to Indian nationals. In an emerging anti-Trump, if not anti-US, atmosphere, Gor will likely be at his wits in resuscitating India-US ties, despite having Trump’s ear.

Nor will Gor’s dual role leave him much time to focus on key aspects of India's partnership with the US, such as trade, and co-operation in defence and technology. Such co-operation may get refocussed through a regional lens which is not good news for India.

The shift in the US attitude will also undermine India’s pursuit of being recognised as a global power. India’s centrality in countering China’s regional influence, especially through the QUAD, is now likely to get diluted. As the US focus changes and India seeks closer co-operation with an anti-Western bloc, its image may also suffer in forums like the G20 and BRICS as a countervailing force to the Russia-China combine.

Could India refuse to accept Gor’s appointment? Article 4 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961 mandates that a receiving state must grant formal approval (called, agrément) before an ambassador-designate can assume office. India, therefore, has the right to formally refuse the appointment of Gor without giving any reasons publicly.

Such refusals are considered sovereign decisions which need no explanations. They are rare, hardly ever publicised, and there is no record of India refusing approval for any ambassador-designate.

But is the Modi government prepared to bear the political cost of such a decision? A refusal to give approval by India will be seen as both a political and an individual snub, given Gor’s closeness to Trump. It will most certainly lead to retaliatory measures from a mercurial and irrational Trump, and as usual, there will be a great amount of unpredictability about his reaction.

A slighted Trump may become even more aggressive in India-Pakistan matters, embarrass India by repeating his mediation offers, and lean away from India on South Asian regional issues.

India, however, still has time for quieter diplomacy as Gor still awaits the approval of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate itself. If it accepts the appointment without demur because it is unwilling to face a volatile Trump, India will have to be satisfied with assurances that Gor’s dual role will not lead to the downgrading of India-US relations. This would mean accepting all the symbolic consequences of his dual role and living with it.

Bharat Bhushan is a New Delhi-based journalist.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.