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In his recent critical Foreign Affairs essay, “America’s Bad Bet on India,” Ashley J. Tellis argued that the Biden administration’s India policy is “misplaced.” He accused Washington of overlooking “India’s democratic erosion” because the United States needs a reliable partner in South Asia to challenge the rise of China. The article’s perceptive analysis of the U.S.-India security partnership notes that the relationship is hardly based on mutually assured democratic trust. He notes, for example, that India is breaking with the West in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War and instead “goes it alone.”

Tellis’ conclusion is that “India’s security partnership with the United States will remain fundamentally asymmetrical for a long time to come.” While New Delhi would want Washington to prevail in a major conflict with Beijing in the East China Sea or the South China Sea, it is “unlikely to embroil itself in the fight.” This assessment is predicated largely on India’s nominal “strategic autonomy” in its foreign policy. India has evolved with a history of Soviet and Russian military ties as well as a lingering record of border conflicts with China.

However, China’s unprecedented military and economic capabilities have increasingly challenged New Delhi’s strategic autonomy. A matured India may not have a strategic alternative to sustain the past; it must thus work harmoniously and collaboratively with Washington for its national interest and civilizational heritage.

The “Return to History”

For the civilizational states of China and India, the past is often prologue. In his book, The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World, Indian external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar wrote that New Delhi believes it faces an inevitable “return to history,” rather than the Fukuyaman “end of history,” in the emerging international governance of multipolarity.

To the east, China—which holds a similar worldview regarding multipolarity and the perception of American decline—has begun to prepare itself for the coming era. To that end, it has devised an incremental “Blue Dragon” strategy for the Indo-Pacific region. This approach encompasses the country’s expansion and influences in nearby major bodies of water, supported by economic and military projects. Starting with the East China Sea, Beijing has already aimed at expanding its reach to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean to encircle India.  

To this end, China has wasted no time sitting idle over the past few years. Instead, Beijing set its eyes on the two island nations of Sri Lanka in the heart of the Indian Ocean and Taiwan in the Western Pacific to advance its’ best “core” national interests and fulfill its longstanding geopolitical ambitions. For Beijing, Taiwan has been a “breakaway province” of mainland China; Sri Lanka has maintained religious, diplomatic, and trade links to China for millennia.

Concurrently, these two strategically located island nations have become increasingly vital to American foreign policy objectives—including the freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region, the promotion of democratic governance, and the maintenance of peace and prosperity in the region. These two island nations have also long been characterized as “unsinkable aircraft carriers.” The phrase, originally attributed to General Douglas MacArthur, was used to describe Taiwan and to highlight its historical and strategic importance to China as well as to the United States.

China’s approach towards these two “unsinkable aircraft carriers” is composed of two different strategies—a carrot and a stick—aimed at China’s rejuvenation. Guided by the Blue Dragon strategy, Beijing has basically encircled the expanding vicinity of the East China Sea and Taiwan, the South China Sea and the artificial islands in the Paracel archipelagos, and the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka, located at the southern tip of India and in a perfect strategic position, has historically been important to Beijing.

Against this backdrop, are India and the United States able to jointly and harmoniously work together to make the Indo-Pacific region safe for democracy?

The Indian Conundrum

It is against this background that one must consider Tellis and other discerning observers’ questioning of India’s position as the United States’ most important and dependable democratic partner and friend. These doubts arise from the civilization dogma of “return to history,” which can be traced back to India’s millennia-old Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Such influences are nothing new; after achieving independence in 1947, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, advocated a “middle-path” non-aligned foreign policy during the Cold War period.

In his India Way, Jaishankar attempts to reconcile and transcend right-wing tendencies and left-wing aspirations by defining Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political vision, his economic agenda, and India’s security and geopolitical challenges. The Modi administration’s worldview seems to fit well with the emerging approach of “multipolarity” towards global governance, in which New Delhi could play an interlocutor role between and among China, Russia, and the United States. In his video message to the recent G20 Meeting of the Foreign Ministers in Srinagar, for example, Modi said: “As you meet in the land of Gandhi and the Buddha, I pray that you will draw inspiration from India’s civilizational ethos—to focus not on what divides us, but on what unites us.”

Despite all this, the Russo-Ukrainian War emerged as a test for India of Gandhian morality and Buddhist ethics in international affairs. New Delhi—a longtime military partner of Moscow—called for an end of hostilities but failed to criticize the Russian invasion and declined to support UN resolutions against Russia. The United States and other Western leaders have been notably disappointed but accepted India’s neutrality and its reluctance to “condemn” Russia’s unjustified aggression. Moreover, these leaders—particularly those in Europe—understand India’s long history of reliance on Russian weapons and energy sources.

In the prevailing gamut of complexities and changing national security interests, Jaishankar summarized that “this is a time for us to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia.” For India, this approach is in keeping with the “vivid expression of [Indian] beliefs and traditions” of the middle path of Buddhism and the foreign policy of Nehruvian Panchsheel.

For the United States, however, the current situation presents an interesting conundrum. This evolving foreign policy—from the non-alignment to strategic autonomy—has prevented New Delhi from fully aligning with Washington.

There are some signs for optimism. In recent years, successive U.S. administrations have engaged with India as a reliable partner in trade and investment, science and technology, as well as security and education. Similarly, the share of weapon procurements from the Soviet vintage has gradually been declining as India has begun to buy defense weaponry from the United States and two other Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) countries: Australia and Japan. In the past, Russian defense materiel was vital for Indian defense in light of sectarian conflicts with Pakistan as well as the lingering border disputes with China. Even before the Russo-Ukrainian War, defense relations between India and Russia apparently started to drift apart and continue to “steadily drift away” after the strategic Sino-Russian “no-limit” agreement was signed at the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022—mere weeks before President Vladimir Putin launched the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

With Russia entangled as a junior partner to assertive China’s strategic and tactical gamesmanship, it is increasingly challenging for New Delhi to preserve its historic partnership with Moscow. The strategic “no-limit” pact between China and Russia hardly mentions Ukraine but has purposefully included Taiwan. Nonetheless, China now realizes that the United States and its democratic allies link their indirect efforts to weaken Russia in Ukraine to confront China elsewhere. Of course, the Ukraine war and the Taiwan issue cannot be easily compared, but the strategic resemblance of the two seems to illustrate both Russian and Chinese endgames.

Which Way, India?

As Jaishankar highlighted, New Delhi must “engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia.” However, both India’s future and democratic legacy increasingly seem to depend more on being associated with the United States. In fact, this process began with the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement in 2005—followed by the four foundational U.S.-India Defense and Security Agreements and the Quad.

As Tellis argues, the strategic but asymmetrical partnership between India and the United States—along with other American allies and democratic friends in the Indo-Pacific—may deepen to counteract a more assertive China. Meanwhile, the Russian and Indian defense and energy linkages might continue but will weaken over time.

However, Indian investment in the Quad and its military exercises—combined with the four foundational agreements on defense procurements, intelligence sharing, and cyber security—would help New Delhi to preserve its strategic autonomy in its neighborhood and against its two neighboring nuclear powers: China and Pakistan, the latter of which is China’s “all-weather” friend.

Additionally, India must recognize the medium- and long-term calculus of China’s grand-yet-veiled vision of national rejuvenation in the Indo-Pacific. It encompasses Beijing’s Blue Dragon strategy that has already put necessary footprints in the continental and maritime region of South Asia to encircle India in both security and economic domains. The subtle encirclement starts with Taiwan in the Western Pacific Ocean and extends to Sri Lanka in the heart of the Indian Ocean.

All this points to a deterministic grand vision articulated by Beijing that is historically deeper and more geographically expansive than the United States’ conception of “strategic competition” or India’s strategic autonomy. Modern China has adhered to the advice of Sun Tzu, who long ago asserted that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Following his counsel, Beijing has succeeded in building militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea while the United States and its regional allies did not intervene because it would lead to an open confrontation with China. Likewise, if nothing changes, the Indian Ocean could eventually become China’s “Western Ocean” as described in ancient Chinese literature.

G20 leaders plan to meet in New Delhi in September of this year. Until then, Modi and Jaishankar certainly have time to reconsider their views on China’s intentions and capabilities. What New Delhi must ask itself is which would it rather see occur: China achieving national rejuvenation and global hegemony based upon military and economic strength, or an Indo-Pacific region that remains safe for democracy by fully aligning India with the United States and its allies?

Dr. Patrick Mendis, a former American diplomat and a military professor in the NATO and the Indo-Pacific Commands of the Pentagon, is currently serving as a distinguished visiting professor of transatlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland.

Image: Shutterstock.

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Insight into the relationship between the Russian government and former U.S. president Donald Trump was recently provided by a list of Americans that Moscow is sanctioning as retaliation for American sanctions on Russia because of the latter’s invasion of Ukraine. Among the 500 Americans on whom Russia is placing travel and financial restrictions are some who have nothing to do with setting policy toward Russia, are unlikely to have any dealings with Russia at all, and whose only common trait is that Trump considers them adversaries. These include: Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who resisted Trump’s pressure to alter the results of the 2020 election; Letitia James, the New York attorney general who is suing Trump for business fraud; and Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who is investigating multiple possible violations by Trump of federal law. The Russia list even includes Michael Byrd, a Capitol Police officer who shot a rioter who was at the front of one part of the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The sole plausible explanation for Russia’s inclusion of such people in its sanctions list is that Moscow had a stake in Trump gaining and maintaining power in Washington and today has a stake in him possibly returning to power.

The full scope of exactly what that stake entails is unknown to anyone but Trump and the Russians, and that is part of the problem. We don’t know because there has not been a full, unimpeded counterintelligence investigation of Trump. The investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller was limited in scope to Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election and Trump’s obstruction of inquiries into that interference, and by a policy decision not to do criminal investigations of a sitting president. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the agency that would be responsible for a counterintelligence investigation. But what steps the Bureau has taken to fulfill its responsibilities in this regard have not only been impeded but also met by a full-blown political attack aimed at discrediting the FBI and anything it might uncover.

It is highly likely that even before Trump first descended the escalator at Trump Tower and announced his candidacy for president, Russian security agencies had identified him as a promising “developmental,” as intelligence services term such prospects. The Russians already were familiar with Trump from his business dealings in Russia. In the United States, Trump was well-known, had a following, and showed political ambition. He was wealthy but also had money problems, as manifested in his multiple business bankruptcies. He lacked ethical scruples. His disjointed personal life provided additional angles the Russians could work. The mere possibility of Trump as a future agent of influence provided ample grounds for Russia to keep his case open.

Exactly what angles the Russians have worked and what vulnerabilities they may have exploited are part of what is unknown. Some of the more salacious possibilities, involving alleged conduct during visits to Russia that most people would find embarrassing, probably did not constitute a vulnerability for Trump. His salacious behavior in the United States has not seemed to hurt him politically, and he even boasts about it. A more workable angle has been pecuniary and has involved Trump’s business objectives, such as building a skyscraper in Moscow—an objective that, as Mueller found, Trump was still pursuing even after he announced his candidacy for president.

If Donald Trump were an ordinary applicant for a position somewhere in the U.S. national security bureaucracy that required a security clearance, it is unlikely he would have received that clearance. There was ample reason to disqualify him on what security adjudicators call suitability grounds, including the bankruptcies and multiple accusations of sexual misconduct. If that were not enough, then the business connections with Russia would be a disqualifier.

If, despite those huge red flags, Trump had somehow slipped through the clearance gauntlet, he would have come to be regarded as just as much of a security error as Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts airman who freely shared classified information to impress his online buddies. Like Teixeira, Trump had no compunction about carting off to his home, contrary to U.S. law, piles of classified documents. While president, he tried to impress the Russian foreign minister and ambassador with the classified intelligence he had by showing some of that material to the Russian officials.

Trump’s mishandling of classified information may be coming full circle back to his foreign business dealings. The prosecutors under Smith who are investigating that mishandling recently issued a subpoena for information about Trump’s foreign business ventures since he took office.

But all this and the serious implications of it have been largely shoved out of the public consciousness by a huge, sustained campaign led by Trump’s political party to discredit any investigation of the matter or even any public attention to it. The initial motivation for that campaign was to neutralize the stigma of foreign influence associated with Trump’s Russia-aided 2016 election victory. The campaign has taken multiple forms, including the intentional mischaracterization by Trump attorney general William Barr of Mueller’s findings, Jim Jordan’s committee on supposed “weaponization” of law enforcement and security agencies, and Barr’s appointment of John Durham as a special prosecutor with the mission of trying to find something—anything—wrong with the FBI’s earlier investigation of matters involving Trump and the Russians. Durham’s investigation was a four-year, $6.5-million-dollar dud. Far from finding the sort of politically motivated deep state effort to defame Trump that Barr had suggested would be uncovered, Durham was a loser in the courtroom, and his recently issued final report was reduced to applying to the FBI the kind of hindsight-laden criticisms that can be found in just about any report looking back at a difficult government investigation, such as that there was insufficient “analytical rigor.”

In criticizing the FBI for acting based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” Durham either misunderstood or, more likely, intentionally misrepresented the Bureau’s work. The FBI necessarily deals with that kind of intelligence all the time. As the organization’s name implies, its business is investigation. Its job is to take available lead information—which by its nature is typically raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated—and to investigate to determine what can be corroborated and what cannot, and what is true and what is not. When the lead information points to a possibility as serious as a hostile foreign regime’s influence at senior levels of the U.S. government, the Bureau would be derelict in its duty if it did not investigate. If no action were to be taken on any information other than what is already neatly packaged, analyzed, and corroborated, then the nation would not need a Federal Bureau of Investigation.

It would be interesting—if this did not prolong further a misappropriation of public funds and attention—to do an investigation of Durham’s investigation and to apply to it the same standards that Durham claimed to apply to the FBI’s work. For example, with regard to “analytical rigor,” on the same page in which Durham asserted that he had found “no evidence” that the FBI had considered how the Clinton campaign’s interest in tying Trump to the Russians might affect the Bureau’s investigation, the report cites a message from a senior FBI official warning his colleagues of exactly that hazard.

The Republican political interest in erasing the whole smelly Trump/Russia story from the public mind has been aided by some on the Left who, evidently motivated by a desire to downplay anything that risks exacerbating U.S.-Russian tensions, also have tried to discredit not only a Trump connection to Russia but the very fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf. Whether the smokescreen is coming from the Left or the Right, the smoke has now been blown so strongly and for so long that “Russiagate” gets repeatedly and casually voiced as a mantra that is assumed to be equatable with a hoax. And the FBI appears to have been browbeaten into not pursuing the subject further.

The fact of the Russian interference, to the benefit of Trump, in the 2016 presidential election is beyond any doubt. The interference has been documented by the intelligence community, the Mueller report, and most thoroughly for the public in a bipartisan report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

As for Trump’s role and whether there was something warranting investigation, the inspector general of the Department of Justice had already determined, before Durham had gotten very far into his own effort, that the FBI’s investigation of the subject, while its conduct was subject to some legitimate criticism, was indeed warranted.

Even without access to all the material that the FBI and the inspector general had access to, the public has seen enough that ought to justify both worry and further investigation. Recall what is a matter of public record regarding how Trump and his entourage dealt with the Russian interference. Trump publicly urged Russia to hack into his opponent’s emails, and a few days later the Russians did exactly that. Mueller reported that the Trump campaign and members of the Trump family replayed material created by the Russian trolls who were Moscow’s main cyber instrument for interference in the election campaign. The Trump campaign chairman repeatedly met and shared polling data with a Russian intelligence agent. Senior members of the Trump campaign and family met in Trump Tower with a Russian known to have ties to the Russian regime, for the purpose of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton. And as Mueller determined and documented in his report, Trump repeatedly obstructed investigation of the Russian interference.

Once in office, Trump provided additional reason for suspicion about the nature of his relationship with Moscow, with perhaps the most suspicious thing being how he choreographed his meetings with Russian president Vladimir Putin. In a highly unusual way of handling such meetings, Trump shut out his own staff and officials with responsibilities involving relations with Russia, not even giving them an after-the-fact debrief. After his first meeting with Putin, Trump confiscated his interpreter’s notes and ordered him not to disclose to anyone what he had heard. In other conversations with the Russian president, he used Putin’s interpreter, with no Americans present besides Trump himself. To this day, we do not know what they discussed.

Trump said and did a number of things favorable to the Russian regime while he was in office, including publicly siding with Putin rather than U.S. intelligence agencies when the Russian president falsely denied interfering in U.S. elections. Such sayings and doings represent part of the payoff that Russia has gotten for its investment in Trump. Another big part of the payoff is the exacerbation of political division in the United States and discrediting of American democracy that Trump has done so much to foment. Most or maybe all of this was part of the approach Trump would have taken anyway in his bid for power, but it is a consequence that is in Russia’s interest and very much against U.S. interests.

Trump’s advocacy on behalf of the Russian regime has continued while out of office. Two days before the start of Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine, Trump was calling Putin a “genius” and lauding him for his “smart move” in deploying a “peace force” to the border with Ukraine. Such talk is not explainable in terms of any U.S. grand strategy, Republican foreign policy ideology, or even the culture-war-driven sympathy that some on the American Right have shown for Putin’s anti-woke themes. It becomes explainable only by postulating that there is even more to the relationship between Trump and Russia than has yet come to light.

Today, Donald Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Some polls show him going on to win the general election. If he does, Russia may again have an asset in the Oval Office. Because of what is still unknown, the exact nature of the Trump-Russia relationship could be anywhere along a spectrum of the sorts of relations that a foreign power can have with an asset in the United States. On one end of the spectrum is the useful fool, who is not consciously doing a foreign regime’s bidding but acts for his own reasons in that regime’s interests. On the other end is a Russian version of a Manchurian Candidate.

It is inexcusable, in the face of what may be one of the most serious cases ever of malign influence by a foreign power at high levels of the U.S. government, for politicians and commentators acting out of partisan motives—or even the ostensibly noble motive of minimizing U.S.-Russian tensions—to discourage the vigorous investigation that is needed to fill the remaining gaps in this disturbing story.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as a National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

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Yemen’s vicious civil war, ongoing since 2014, has now claimed close to 400,000 lives. Yet since April 2022, this war, which initially pitted the remnants of the loyalist forces with the backing of a Saudi-led coalition against the Iran-backed Houthi regime in Sana’a, has been frozen due to a temporary ceasefire. Given that the Houthis have established a solid grip over Northern Yemen and control approximately 200,000 troops, it is hard to imagine the scattered loyalists and fatigued Saudis being able to decisively defeat them on the battlefield. As such, negotiations to end the conflict are ongoing, but there is no end in sight.

Meanwhile, the power vacuum opened by the government’s collapse allowed the rise of a third force: the Southern Transitional Government (STC). This entity hopes to reestablish an independent South Yemen and maintains effective control over Aden and the most productive areas of the region. Here, too, reverting to the status quo ante bellum appears unrealistic, and the STC will likely remain the dominant force in the South for the foreseeable future.

The United States, which officially backs the Saudi-led coalition with military and intelligence support, has few interests in Yemen other than stopping the bloodshed and stabilizing the country. Given Washington’s interests and the conflict’s intractable nature, a change in tact is required. To resolve the war in Yemen, a north-south partition of the country is necessary.

Understanding the Yemen Divide

North Yemen gained independence from the Ottoman Empire right after the end of World War I, while South Yemen remained a British protectorate until 1967. The South soon gained Soviet support, while the North grew closer to Saudi Arabia and the West. Aden and Sana’a fought two wars to unify the country until an agreement in 1990 led to a peaceful merger. However, southern separatism became a perennial problem, and tensions reemerged after the Arab Spring.

Interestingly, the current demarcation line between the Houthis and the STC roughly corresponds to the former North-South Yemen international border. Since the Houthi regime controls most of former North Yemen and the STC dominates the southern seaboard, rooting for the losing loyalists makes little sense. The loyalist government has lost control of the country’s most populous and wealthy areas. It still stands thanks only to Saudi support and has no path to victory.

Moreover, the internationally-recognized authorities are notoriously corrupt and show little concern for the Yemeni public’s well-being. The Houthis and the STC are no better, but they are the ones with effective control over Yemen’s core—the country’s future is now in their hands. Reviving the old North-South Yemeni border with a Houthi government in the north and an STC government in the south is Washington’s best bet to end the war for good.

Can America Push for a North-South Divide?

Some may disagree with Washington speaking against respect for territorial integrity. But the United States has broken with this norm in the past. It supported Montenegro’s independence from Serbia in 2006 and Kosovo’s in 2008. Moreover, it recognized South Sudan as a sovereign state in 2011 after it seceded from Sudan. At the end of the day, internationally-recognized borders are just that; a line on the map. Borders are not fixed for eternity, but merely the expression of a certain balance of power at a certain time. The United States accommodated secessionist states in the past and should do it again for South Yemen.

If the United States chose to pursue this diplomatic route, it may find support from its regional allies. The United Arab Emirates supported the rise of the STC and would readily accept a partition of Yemen. Saudi Arabia, too, has an often overlooked but essential security interest in a divided Yemen. The country’s population is almost as large as the kingdom’s, and it is growing quickly. Moreover, a robust unified Yemen could use its oil and gas reserves to kick-start its economic growth, which could in the long-term break Riyadh’s domination over the Arabian Peninsula and be a formidable competitor.

However, Riyadh might resist such a partition plan, as the Saudis have long feared the presence of a pro-Iranian Houthi stronghold on their southern border. Nevertheless, the Saudis are eager to exit the Yemeni war and have come to increasingly acknowledge that the Houthis are here to stay. Additionally, the recent thaw in Saudi-Iran relations has alleviated some of Riyadh’s concerns about Iranian clout.

Still, if diplomacy fails to sway the Saudis, light American pressure might. Washington could leverage its military support; for instance, restricting the U.S. supply of ordnance and spare parts to the Saudi Air Force would limit Riyadh’s ability to bomb the Houthis in the future. This would push Saudi Arabia toward accepting partition and a definitive peace with the Houthis. Yemen is one of the rare ongoing crises where America could reach a relative international consensus. Outside the Middle East, China, Russia, and other major powers have little stake in the Yemeni civil war’s outcome and are unlikely to oppose an American peace plan.

President Joe Biden pledged to end the Yemen war. A partition plan acknowledging realities on the ground appears as the last viable path toward a lasting settlement. The administration stands to lose nothing from trying, and a successful partition would be hailed as a major victory for U.S. diplomacy. Will Biden seize the opportunity?

Dylan Motin is a Marcellus Policy Fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society and a former visiting research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies. Dylan was named one of the Next Generation Korea Peninsula Specialists at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a Young Leader of the Pacific Forum. His research expertise revolves around international relations theory, and his main interests are balance-of-power theory, great power competition, and Korean affairs.

Image: Shutterstock.