Ahead of his India visit on February 24-25, Donald Trump indicated that a 'very big' bilateral deal with New Delhi may not be signed before U.S. presidential elections.
The recently agreed Phase 1 US-China trade agreement reflects the reality that China has far greater clout negotiating with the US than most other countries.
From 1999 to 2018, trade between US and India surged from $16 billion to $142 billion. But the relationship is marred by disagreements on several issues.
Two questions are pertinent: Why does the Trump administration keep making the same mistakes on the peace proposal? And what does a hurried peace plan mean on the ground?
While global corporations setting up GCCs in India continue to express confidence in availability of skilled AI engineers, the panel argued that India’s real challenge lies elsewhere.
Without a Congress revival, there can be no challenge to the BJP pan-nationally. Modi’s party is growing, and almost entirely at the cost of the Congress.
There is no doubt that we need the Quad in general and the USA in particular for our strategic interest in Indo-Pacific, particularly to protect our interests against China. The ties with USA are therefore moving in the right direction. But we also need Russia, France and Israel for our other defense requirements and we need to maintain strategic autonomy to pick and choose- submarines and missiles from Russia, aircraft from France and drones from Israel etc.
On Afghanistan, Modi can have a deal with Trump for sending our forces there in exchange for support to integrate POK including Gilgit and Baltistan. The major implication for this would be physically cutting off Chinese links with Pakistan and this will be welcomed by both USA and Russia! Modi can offer combination of possibilities- like create a new state of Kashmir (excluding Jammu) under art 370 (original version!) or arrangement like Hong Kong. In fact, India can extend offer this offer to Balochees and Sindhis as well and create a ‘Hind Federation’! Offering a grand trade deal to Trump if he comes back to power in Nov 2020 as a quid pro quo should not be a big price to pay for this treatment of Pakistani migraine!! One immediate benefit of this move will be that Pakistan will become busy with itself rather than creating internal troubles for us and talking about our part of Kashmir.
There is no doubt that we need the Quad in general and the USA in particular for our strategic interest in Indo-Pacific, particularly to protect our interests against China. The ties with USA are therefore moving in the right direction. But we also need Russia, France and Israel for our other defense requirements and we need to maintain strategic autonomy to pick and choose- submarines and missiles from Russia, aircraft from France and drones from Israel etc.
On Afghanistan, Modi can have a deal with Trump for sending our forces there in exchange for support to integrate POK including Gilgit and Baltistan. The major implication for this would be physically cutting off Chinese links with Pakistan and this will be welcomed by both USA and Russia! Modi can offer combination of possibilities- like create a new state of Kashmir (excluding Jammu) under art 370 (original version!) or arrangement like Hong Kong. In fact, India can extend offer this offer to Balochees and Sindhis as well and create a ‘Hind Federation’! Offering a grand trade deal to Trump if he comes back to power in Nov 2020 as a quid pro quo should not be a big price to pay for this treatment of Pakistani migraine!! One immediate benefit of this move will be that Pakistan will become busy with itself rather than creating internal troubles for us and talking about our part of Kashmir.