Biden will continue to champion potential US-India relations

Singapore – Experts told CNBC that strengthening US ties with India is likely to be the focus of the Biden administration.

Democrat J B Biden is set to defeat incumbent Donald Trump in the race to become the next US president, NBC News predicted on Saturday. However, Trump has refused to admit and his campaign has raised a number of legal challenges over how the ballot is being tablet.

According to Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Wilson Center and a senior associate in South Asia, India is one of the few issues where there is harmony between Biden and Trump and the prospect of consistency in American policy toward the South Asian country.

He said both men see the US-India partnership as a strategic imperative. “That shared view is at the core of the bilateral consensus in Washington and Washington that the US-China rivalry is here to stay and that New Delhi shares a common ideology that shares the US goal of controlling Beijing in a wider area,” Kugelman said via email.

However, he said in a tweet that Biden would not make foreign policy (not less than South Asia) an initial priority. “Instead, its initial focus will be on the domestic front, facing issues such as Covid-19, the US economy and reconciliation.

Indo-US relations under the Trump administration have had mixed results.

On the trade front, tensions erupted after the USA removed India from a long-running program last year, allowing the South Asian country to export many of its goods to the US without tariffs. In response, India imposed retaliatory tariffs on selected US products.

But on the military front, US-India relations have strengthened in light of growing tensions between India and China. Last month, U.S. And India struck a major defense deal that Washington signed with Washington’s particularly close allies, prompting New Delhi to allow the U.S. to target missiles and other military assets. Access to satellite data will be allowed.

Harsh Pant, head of the Strategic Studies program at the Serbzur Research Foundation in New Delhi, told CNBC that President-elect Biden was “a long-time champion of US-India relations.”

According to Pant, the Indian government was “a little hesitant” during the Obama administration. “Things are different today,” Pant said. New Delhi has a “great perception” that the South Asian country’s “global ambitions, as well as a strong US-India relationship are important for managing China breathing down the Himalayas.”

Earlier this year, India and China were caught confronting a tense border in the Himalayas, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed. Experts said it was a turning point in Indo-China relations at the time and that it would help New Delhi to reach out to the US. Ga can build relations with such countries while still maintaining its strategic autonomy.

India is part of an informal strategic dialogue that includes the US, Japan and Australia, also known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – commonly known as the Quad. The U.S. State Department describes Quad’s role as a “collective effort to advance a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific.”

“While Biden and his advisers have not specifically mentioned Quad, it is likely that they will strengthen that dialogue, and cooperate with India in multilateral settings,” Akhil Berry, a South Asia analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk adviser, told CNBC. Akhil Bere, the group’s South Asia analyst, told CNBC.

According to Barry, Biden has long been a champion of US-India relations.

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 2000s, he replaced George W. Bush. Urged the Bush administration to impose sanctions on India and later helped the shepherds through a civil nuclear deal between the two countries. During the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president, India was also appointed as a key defense partner, allowing New Delhi to buy more advanced and sensitive technologies from the US, Barry said.

Defense sales to India by the US are likely to continue under the new Biden administration, Barry said in a note last month, adding that the potential issue of friction is New Delhi’s plans to buy a surface-to-air missile system from Moscow.

However, Berry said it was unlikely that the U.S. under Biden would be able to do so. Directly engage itself in the ongoing border dispute between India and China.

According to Barry, the Biden administration is likely to focus on all-round bilateral relations with India rather than trade with trade. This could mean that the U.S. Under the previous program, India would not re-establish trade privileges that allowed a South Asian country to export many of its goods to the US without tariffs.

On the immigration front, Barry said Biden’s policy agenda included a commitment to reform the visa program that would benefit India.

The Trump administration sabotaged the H-1B visa program – skilled work visas used by U.S. This is done by immigrants, including Indians working in the tech sector. The move comes as U.S. There was harsh criticism from companies that rely on visas to hire thousands of staff.

Kugelman of the Wilson Center added that Biden would be even more keen to explore new areas of partnership with New Delhi, including issues such as climate change.

He added that, moreover, Biden’s more traditional and speculative leadership style would mean that New Delhi’s confidence would be a partner with less Trump in the White House.

However, experts predict that the Biden administration will raise human rights concerns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, especially if there are more instances of sectarian violence in India than were seen earlier this year.

“Biden and the congressional Democrats will be more vocal in their criticism of India’s human rights than Trump,” Barry wrote last month. The main concerns include the detention and detention of politicians in New Delhi’s Kashmir, he said, as well as “divided Hindu nationalist social policies and anti-Muslim rhetoric.”

In one of his policy agenda documents, Biden expresses frustration with New Delhi’s stance on Kashmir, as well as the controversial citizenship law, which grants citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim minorities fleeing Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The law excludes Muslim minorities from fleeing oppression and is against secular leaders in India.

“These measures are inconsistent with the country’s long tradition of secularism and the perpetuation of multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy,” according to the Biden campaign website.