New Delhi is far more likely to play ball and turn its back on Moscow if the Trump administration weaponised visas instead of trade.
US President Donald Trump has long had a penchant for using ‘cowboy diplomacy’ to get his way on the international arena. As someone who is neither a career politician nor bound by ideology, the 79-year-old billionaire showman has no compunction about defying the Beltway Orthodoxy’s best practices and stooping to conquer when other countries undermine America’s national interests.
His first term in office was largely characterised by slinging mud at and clipping the wings of traditional Western foes – whether it be ripping up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and waging a “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran, threatening to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea while starving its already beleaguered economy of all viable revenue streams or helping Ukraine fend off further Russian aggression by sending its armed forces the anti-tank javelin missiles his predecessor Barak Obama denied Kyiv.
This time around, however, he appears to hold just as much – if not greater – contempt for some of Washington’s closest global partners. Early into his second incumbency, Trump proposed reducing Canada to the 51st state, annexing Danish-controlled Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico and encouraging President Putin to do “whatever the hell he wants” with NATO’s delinquent European members. The latest supposed U.S. ally to find itself in the crosshairs of an increasingly erratic White House is India.
Admittedly, there were telltale signs of strained Indo-U.S. relations at the start of this year when Trump invited Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping to his inauguration ceremony and snubbed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Months thereafter, dehumanising images and videos surfaced of 104 illegal Indian migrants wearing leg irons and handcuffs before being escorted like cattle onto a 40-hour repatriation flight.
Meanwhile, at the height of the recent India-Pakistan flare-up, Trump not only took credit for brokering an armistice between the two nuclear-armed neighbours but also went on to host arguably the most powerful Pakistani figure Field Marshal Asim Munir at the Oval Office for a luncheon in mid-June. Having crossed the rubicon and done almost everything within its capacity to alienate the “world’s largest democracy”, the U.S government went for broke by slapping India with extortionate 50% tariffs over its record consumption of cheap Russian crude.
Yet, the extent to which these punitive measures will force the ruling and fiercely independent Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) hand is anyone’s guess. Clearly, the goal here is to make an example of a Kremlin-friendly aspiring superpower without eliciting the monumental blowback a trade war with or sanctions crusade against China would bring about. Despite its vast landmass, India lacks the natural resources, rare earth minerals and other key commodities the People’s Republic boasts an abundance of – not to mention Beijing’s far superior industrial and manufacturing base relative to that of New Delhi.
Following the Trump team’s tariff announcement last week, India dispatched its National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to Moscow whereas PM Modi held a phone conversation with quasi-socialist Brazilian President and rotating BRICS head Lula da Silva which, in many ways, was tantamount to showing Uncle Sam both middle fingers. Rather than twisting the South Asian giant’s arm via ill-thought-out economic coercion and thrusting it into unholy alliances of convenience with arch-rival China and left-leaning Brazil, Washington would be better off using immigration as its primary weapon of choice vis-à-vis India.
It is worth recalling how a temporary moratorium on issuing new U.S visitor visas to all citizens of Venezuela and nullifying those previously granted left the narco-state’s illegitimate leader Nicolàs Maduro no choice but to accept planeloads of expelled Venezuelan criminals against his will. Likewise, U.S Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s zero-tolerance approach towards foreign students who indulge in pro-Palestinian vandalism and now face swift deportation has seen disruptive Hamas solidarity movements on American college campuses fizzle out.
In stark contrast to its earlier 2017 iteration, the Trump 2.0 travel ban bifurcates “high-risk” jurisdictions into two categories: a full suspension directed at predominantly failed sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern states whose nationals are prone to overstay their welcome and a partial entry prohibition for passport holders of another seven impoverished nations with a lower albeit significant proclivity for visa abuse and criminality. Although blacklisting a fellow Quad participant that serves as a regional bulwark against China may be a stretch, less severe travel restrictions can be imposed on India if it continues to bankroll Russia’s “special military operation”.
For instance, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now mandates visa applicants from Malawi and Zambia to post a bond of anywhere between $5000-$15000 as a means of ensuring they return home. There is a strong argument in favour of applying such a rule to U.S.-bound Indians that would not be without precedent. Back in 2013, the UK’s then Home Secretary Theresa May floated similar legislation aimed at combatting irregular migration from the subcontinent that had, up until a few months ago, impeded the long-awaited ratification of an Indo-British free trade agreement (FTA).
Australia, on the other hand, has outright barred students from six Indian states believed to be hotbeds for human trafficking. Making it harder and costlier for citizens of India to frequent the United States will mobilise the country’s middle-class against their country’s leadership like never before, not least since there is no alternative to the ‘American Dream’ as far as this particular cohort is concerned. At the same time, Modi’s ‘Billionaire Raj’ mega-donors may view a bold move of this kind as a precursor to a full-fledged ban on Indians and thereby lobby the BJP to distance itself from Putin’s Russia.
After all, the U.S remains the preferred destination for India’s upper echelons and business elite when it comes to setting up offshore accounts, undergoing medical treatment, pursuing commercial ventures and enrolling their children in higher education. From Washington’s standpoint, the beauty of penalising India in this manner is that there are virtually no downsides. Any mobility-related retaliation from New Delhi will prove futile, as had been the case when Canadians were temporarily prevented from entering India in response to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accusing the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of carrying out extrajudicial killings in Canada on Modi’s orders.
This is because most Americans and Canadians who visit India are of Indian extraction and in possession of an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) document which affords them unfettered access to their motherland for family reunification purposes or otherwise. Nor will the U.S. visa bond requirement have any bearing on sourcing talented professionals from India – the bulk of whom are healthcare practitioners and I.T. specialists recruited by private clinics and tech juggernauts that would have no issues forking over a $15k recoverable fee.
Repeated post-war calls by the Baltics, Poland and Finland to prohibit Russians from vacationing or settling down in the Schengen Area were shot down by Brussels because of fears that anti-establishment journalists and activists from the aggressor state would end up as collateral damage. Despite India growing alarmingly authoritarian and intolerant of its non-Hindu indigenous minorities under Modi’s watch, very few inhabitants face life-threatening persecution for their religious beliefs or political orientation that would constitute credible grounds for asylum in the United States.
Ultimately, levying prohibitive tariffs on Indian goods will upend the livelihoods of agricultural and textile workers susceptible to Modi’s demagoguery and triumphalist spin on India asserting its sovereignty. Suggesting India totally phase out its Russian energy purchases and compensate for the ensuing shortfall by ramping up oil imports from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) presupposes that Saudi killer prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MbS) and Emirati genocidaire strongman Mohamed Bin Zayed (MbZ) are somehow better human beings than Vladimir Putin.
Subjecting Indian travellers to additional red tape on top the nightmarish bureaucracy they already undergo to secure OECD visas is a surefire way of hitting New Delhi where it hurts and galvanising those who matter most within Modi’s constituency into action. Given the outsized leverage Trump wields over the Indian top brass, he must not rule out the nuclear option of eventually including India in his new and improved travel ban list if the BJP refuses to reverse course and pull the plug on its sponsorship of Russia’s reckless adventurism in Ukraine.
[Image credit: Mohamed Hassan / Pixabay]
Saahil Menon is an investment analyst based in Dubai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect TGP’s editorial stance.
