Takes me back to January 2021, when I watched the Presidential inauguration of Joe Biden and the first Indian-American Female Vice President Kamala Harris. I was among the millions of Indians hailing her and viewing her as an epitome of strength, progress and the great American Dream. Cut to today, she is another nationalist who is proving wrong every notion that Republicans and Democrats can actually be different. I had no expectations from Biden because he is just another old white man but the diverse, multi-racial cabinet they boasted about is still, American — people who think they are better than others and hence always interfere and moralise the East, something we all forgot about.
My disdain stems from the US repeatedly banning exports to India despite the overabundance of vaccines there. [Update: They will be sending 60 million doses worldwide] When Biden announced that ‘Diplomacy is back’, people felt that the isolationist policy followed by Trump will finally be dropped. But America’s constant contradiction to his own actions— pushing QUAD to address China’s behaviour in ‘Indo-Pacific’, committing to pooling capacities to address Covid-19 in the region and now openly hoarding resources.[They have an additional 530 million doses after inoculating their entire population]
While people might argue that is simple opportunism; I concur, but then the US ethically should not threaten or moralise China or Russia for leveraging their favourable positions — expanding geographically through warfare, establishing better alliances through vaccine diplomacy, granting lines of credit to smaller distressed countries — because this is what the US has been doing for decades. It is funny how Americans and their leaders believe that they are better than the rest (especially East) — American Exceptionalism — and feel that they have to run the world.
They have several tricks up their sleeves to deter such countries, most dreaded being sanctions. Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, China, Russia, Afghanistan among others, have had sanctions imposed on them — terrorism, human rights violation, defence deals, nuclear warfare, etc. These sanctions can cause a substantial impact when imposed correctly as they will disturb the dollar-denominated transactions. Understanding that the US is more overtly targeting China, Shanghai has started working on digital currency to limit and eventually vanish the usage of the US dollar. Too soon to comment, but something worth speculating. US’ [UK, Canada, EU too] apprehension to waive patent rights on vaccines is a clear indicator of how these monopolies are not ready to give up the control yet. The argument of ‘de-incentivise pharma companies from investing in developing medicines and vaccines in future pandemics’ is credible in usual times; however, nothing is usual right now. The times are radical and it is important that the technology be shared faster in order to vaccinate the global population as soon as possible [Studies claim that developing country will be able to vaccinate their population by 2024].
Overall, a clear picture of the India-US ties has emerged recently and it is safe to say that the optimism that once surrounded these bilateral relations is charred now. This post is a long due rant with bits of my foreign policy knowledge. Comment your thoughts!
