by Modi-Trump Phone Call Reviews Bilateral Relations and Middle East Conflict; Neither Leader Commits to Specific Action, Both Express Concern
NEW DELHI, INDIA — Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a phone call from US President Donald Trump to review bilateral cooperation and discuss the situation in West Asia and the Strait of Hormuz, producing a joint readout in which both leaders reviewed, discussed, expressed, and noted various positions without announcing any specific action that would change the situation being reviewed, discussed, expressed, or noted — a format that is standard diplomatic practice and that does not reflect a failure of the conversation so much as the reality that phone calls between heads of government are generally designed to maintain communication rather than resolve crises. From Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
India’s stake in the Strait of Hormuz situation is more immediately material than the US stake, in the specific sense that India imports approximately 85 percent of its petroleum requirements and a significant share of that import passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The closure or disruption of the strait produces oil price increases that affect India more directly and immediately than the United States, which is now a net energy exporter and is considerably better buffered against supply disruptions from the Persian Gulf than it was a decade ago. India’s interest in Strait of Hormuz stability is therefore not abstract geopolitical concern; it is the concern of a country whose energy security and household fuel prices are directly connected to whether oil tankers can move through a specific body of water.
India’s Middle East Balancing
India maintains relationships with countries on multiple sides of the Middle East’s conflicts — Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar — with a calibrated neutrality that is partly principle (India’s traditional non-alignment), partly practice (India needs relationships with all of these energy-producing states), and partly the specific Indian diplomatic tradition of engaging everyone and committing to no alliance that might foreclose any relationship. This approach produces good bilateral relationships across a genuinely difficult geopolitical region and periodic criticism from all sides that India should be more decisive. India is not going to be more decisive. The non-aligned tradition is too useful for an economy that needs Middle Eastern energy, Middle Eastern remittances from the Indian diaspora, and Middle Eastern investment.
Trump’s West Asia Policy
Trump’s West Asia engagement has involved a combination of military action, economic pressure, and negotiation whose specific trajectory is determined by decisions that India is not a party to but is significantly affected by. The Modi-Trump call gives India an opportunity to communicate its interests and concerns to the decision-maker and to receive information about the US’s intentions that is more direct than what is available through public statements. Whether the communication changes anything in US decision-making is a question that cannot be answered from the readout. The call happened. The relationship continues. India’s Ministry of External Affairs is managing the situation through established channels.
The Oil Price Dimension
India is acutely sensitive to oil price increases because petroleum products feed directly into the cost of nearly everything in the Indian economy — transportation, agriculture (fertilizer production), manufacturing, and household cooking fuel. A sustained Strait of Hormuz disruption that keeps oil prices elevated adds billions to India’s import bill, widens the current account deficit, and puts pressure on the rupee in ways that the Reserve Bank of India manages through foreign exchange reserve deployment and interest rate policy. India’s economic management team is watching the West Asia situation with the attention of people whose quarterly GDP numbers depend on it.
What India Can and Cannot Do
India can communicate its interests. India can deploy diplomacy with relevant parties. India can activate bilateral channels with Iran and with Gulf states to express concern and encourage de-escalation. India cannot directly influence the military situation in West Asia, which is determined by the US, Israeli, Iranian, and other regional actors’ decisions. The phone call with Trump is one of the available tools. It is being used. The situation continues to develop independently of the tools being used to manage it.
More diplomatic satire: The Daily Mash.
India’s Strategic Autonomy Doctrine
India’s consistent non-alignment posture in West Asian conflicts is part of a broader strategic autonomy doctrine that has characterized Indian foreign policy since independence. The doctrine argues that India’s size, strategic location, and global interests are best served by maintaining relationships with all major powers and not subordinating Indian interests to any alliance structure that would constrain its freedom of action. This doctrine has been maintained across Congress and BJP governments, through the Cold War, through the post-Cold War unipolar moment, and into the current multipolar competition between the US and China. The Modi government’s implementation of strategic autonomy has perhaps been more transactional and less ideological than Nehru’s non-alignment, but the operational result is similar: India does not choose sides in ways that foreclose options.
Modi also spoke to French President Macron on the same day about West Asia, indicating the breadth of the diplomatic engagement. The conversations with Trump and Macron serve different purposes: Trump’s conversation provides direct access to the decision-maker most affecting military outcomes; Macron’s conversation engages a multilateral framework builder whose EU coordination role matters for the diplomatic track. India is using both tracks simultaneously, which is the definition of multi-vector diplomacy in practice.
India’s Non-Aligned Tradition in Modern Context
India’s strategic autonomy — the updated formulation of the non-alignment that Nehru championed and that subsequent leaders maintained with varying emphasis — is being tested in the Iran conflict context by the specific pressure from the United States to align more closely with US policy positions and by the specific pressure from Iran to maintain the relationship that has historically provided India with oil at preferential terms when US sanctions created opportunities for bilateral arrangements. India is navigating between these pressures with the established flexibility of a country that has practiced this navigation for seventy-five years and has developed institutional mechanisms for managing the competing expectations of powerful countries that both want India’s alignment and neither wants to make the cost of refusing it high enough to be worth paying.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
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