The landscape of the U.S. presidential race has changed dramatically over the past few days. On July 13, Republican candidate and former U.S. President Donald J. Trump survived an assassination attempt, literally by inches. A few days later, he selected Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate. Vance shares much of Trump’s worldview and foreign policy instincts, thus cementing Trump’s allies’ hold on the Republican Party’s policy program.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party to which President Joseph R. Biden belongs was rocked by the news on July 21 that the president would not be standing for reelection. As the primaries — the process by which a nominee is selected — have already concluded, the Democrats are unlikely to face an open nominating process for Biden’s replacement. Rather, Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris is the probable nominee of the Democratic Party. President Biden and much of the Democratic establishment have already endorsed her.
It should be noted that both parties’ tickets have an Indian connection. Kamala Harris is half-Indian on her mother’s side; her mother was a Tamil Brahmin immigrant from India (her father is a Jamaican immigrant). On the other side of the aisle, Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, is the daughter of Telugu-speaking Indian immigrants from Andhra Pradesh. Usha and Vance were married in an interfaith Hindu-Christian wedding, and continue to practice their own faiths, while raising their children in both.
That Vance and his wife are raising their children in both faiths reveals something interesting about the direction of younger Republicans, a group that also includes Vivek Ramaswamy, a practicing Hindu: the right in the U.S. is gradually becoming more hospitable toward Indian traditions and culture in general, something already true of the left, a fact that will facilitate political connections, economic investment, and cultural ties. Evidencing these increasingly close ties between elites in both countries, was the large number of American celebrities and politicians who were guests at the wedding of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant.
Regardless of the specific policies either party’s leading candidates pursue toward India, the presence of Indians at the highest level of American politics will certainly enhance people-to-people links between the United States and India and smoothen relations between the governments of the two countries.
India has some sense of what to expect from a Kamala Harris administration, as she is already the sitting vice president, and it is unlikely that her policies will differ greatly from Biden’s. What could be more interesting, though, is what India can expect from a Trump-Vance administration.
Both Trump and Vance share a foreign policy worldview that differs sharply from other recent Republican and Democratic administrations and presidential candidates. These individuals took for granted global deference to the United States and promoted a U.S.-led world order based on democratic values, interconnectivity and free trade, and a liberal internationalism based on institutions and, at least, lip service toward certain global norms. This world view has never appealed to either Trump nor Vance, who have variously been described as non-interventionists, realists, isolationists, or as having transactional foreign policies. Regardless of how their views are characterized their views tend to be more oriented toward a give or take that is colored by emphasis on the United States’ national interest rather than a knee-jerk emphasis on rights and values.
Indeed, isolationism, withdrawal from the world, or disengagement would be mischaracterizations of the “America First” worldview, because Trump and Vance very much do want to remain engaged with the world in a realist fashion, and have a sense of great power politics: they have a sense of which countries the U.S. should cleave toward — like India, for example — and which ones the U.S. should balance against, such as China. Their worldview is more reminiscent of the great power politics of the 19th century.
This could work in India’s favor. At the most basic level of public relations, a Trump-Vance administration is unlikely to ruffle any feathers in India by lecturing or berating Indian governments about civil and human rights-related issues, or comment on social, economic, and political trends. Vance went out of his way as a senator to block the appointment of “woke” ambassadors, who are generally more likely than not to comment on the domestic political and social arrangements of other countries. In other words, Vance (and Trump) would seek to staff their administration with less ideological individuals, and instead focus on transactional relationships with other countries. According to State Senator Niraj Antani of Ohio, an ally of Vance, “U.S.-India relations were good under Trump, who stayed neutral on many Indian political issues. Biden, by contrast, has criticized India’s Citizenship Amendment Act and the abrogation of Article 370.”
Vance, who, like Trump, is prolific on social media and has occasionally shared his views on India policy on X, formerly Twitter. In a post on X from March 9, 2022, he pushed back against hypothetical sanctions against India that some in the U.S. had suggested should be implemented because of continuing Indian ties with Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In another post from May 2 this year, he referred to India (along with Japan) as one of “our two most important allies” and slammed the Biden administration for criticizing India — the world’s most populous country — for not allowing more immigration.
Vance’s stances toward Russia and China, which reinforce Trump’s previously stated beliefs, could also be beneficial for India. Both Trump and Vance have consistently pushed for a de-escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war and better relationships between Russia and the U.S. Trump has argued that his policies, ability to forge interpersonal connections, and transactional nature prevented conflicts ranging from Ukraine to North Korea to Gaza. At the very least, Trump’s transactional nature seems to have convinced Russian officials that Russia’s interests would not be undermined by Ukraine during Trump’s presidency. Trump at least purported to have saved Ukraine from invasion; Vance went further by stating in 2022 that he did not care what happened to Ukraine, “one way or another.”
From an Indian perspective, anything that reduces the pressure on Russia would be beneficial because it is not in India’s interests for Russia to become weak, or worse, subordinate or dependent on China. India and China are rivals with an active border dispute and conflicting geopolitical spheres. In this context, Vance’s recent statement that China is the biggest threat to the U.S. can only be helpful to India. While Trump has not said as much, he has consistently pushed back against Chinese business practices, and his selection of Vance would imply tacit support of Vance’s positions as well as a desire to support realists in the Republican Party over neoconservatives, free traders, and institutionalists. Some foreign policy analysts have referred to this faction as the “Asia First” contingent.
India is in Asia, of course, and would be placed more prominently on the radar of U.S. foreign policy in such an approach. A Trump-Vance administration would presumably shift U.S. resources and military operations away from Europe and the Middle East and toward Asia, ramping up pressure on China. They may well decide to deepen military cooperation and the transfer of weapons and technology to India, while redirecting investment and jobs away from China to India.
U.S-India ties have grown so much over the past two decades that it doesn’t matter much from India’s point of view who wins the next U.S. election: economic, military, and cultural ties will continue to grow. But India certainly has much to gain from a Trump-Vance administration; likely more than if a Democratic ticket won the election. A Republican administration, especially one run by the realist duo of Trump and Vance, would cease ideological lecturing, continue the military and economic policies of previous administrations, while also improving India’s geopolitical position by easing off on Russia and ramping up pressure on China.
Trump and Vance enjoy warm, personal ties with India and Indians and think highly of the U.S. relationship with India, while both are very wary of China. This could only be to India’s benefit.