REFLECTIONS | Will Trump’s Man In Delhi Help India Mend Fences? | Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

Since no country’s imperatives abroad have changed one jot since they were famously defined by a 19th century British Prime Minister, it is quite unnecessary for anyone in New Delhi to feel uneasy at Sergio Gor’s appointment as the next US ambassador to India.

On the contrary, it represents the pinnacle of achievement where diplomacy is all about contacts and connections and has no bearing on the human condition. It follows that whoever occupies Roosevelt House, the US ambassador’s palatial residence on New Delhi’s Shanti Path, makes little difference to President Donald Trump’s South Asian priorities. There might be differences of style, but as Lord Palmerston put it, no country is a permanent ally or enemy. “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies,” he declared. “Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

The challenge for any ambassador anywhere today -- as much for Indians as it is for Americans -- is to get away from what Subrahmanyam Jaishankar calls the “politics of convenience”. If treating India at par with Pakistan is convenient for the US, India’s newfound honeymoon with Israel is also convenient for New Delhi. So are oil purchases from Russia. India quite understandably resisted President Barack Obama’s attempt to send the veteran Richard Holbrooke as special envoy for the India-Pakistan-Afghanistan region for the portmanteau designation diminished India by bracketing it with Pakistan and aroused fears of meddling in Jammu and Kashmir.

Having already served as a special presidential adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan, working under President Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Holbrooke might not have been easily stoppable even though the President he served was neither an egoist nor a bully.

India must also beware of the sleight of hand practised by some American diplomats when Jawaharlal Nehru was clamouring for a defence pact while other Indians sought a military treaty, demanded B-25 bombers and other long-term weapons, sought special supplies of ammunition and the exchange of confidential strategic information. The US refused everything, but far worse than the denial was the subterfuge surrounding Washington’s rejection: the state department noted smugly how cleverly it had solved “the problem” of Indian importuning by classifying India “upwards to the category of countries receiving ‘restricted’ US military information”, and making “a deliberate effort to furnish the Indian military attaché with relatively harmless but somewhat impressive military information”. India was of “negligible positive strategic importance” to the US while Pakistan, occupying “one of the most strategic areas in the world”, was the more attractive partner. It could provide “a staging area for forces engaged in the defence or recapture of Middle East oil areas”. It was ideal for “ideological and intelligence penetration” of the former Soviet Union, while Pakistani cities like Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar were potential launching pads for air operations against the Soviet industrial heartland.

Perhaps the US discovered during Nehru’s 1956 visit that the greatest of Indian leaders could also be petulant and petty. Nehru’s grumbling about exactly the same tickertape welcome being readied for Pakistan’s Liaquat Ali Khan, whose visit followed his, seemed to pragmatic Westerners like a medieval potentate complaining that a lesser princeling had been allowed access to his exclusive rank. No wonder the British government commissioned a leading English architect in 1866 to design the Durbar Court, a grand reception hall in the former India Office building in London, now part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which allowed several Indian princes, all extremely jealous of their rank, access at exactly the same moment. It was the politics of convenience at its most feudal.

Of course, there are weightier factors behind India’s decided lack of enthusiasm for Mr Gor, who was born in Tashkent as Sergey Gorokhovsky and is currently the director of the Presidential Personnel Office in Washington. There is no mention of the Indo-Pacific region in his appointment or of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue comprising the US, Japan, Australia and India, by which Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets so much store in the Sino-Indian context.

Surprisingly, for a people weaned in a durbari culture, Indians may not have grasped that Mr Gor’s real importance lies in the access that he enjoys. The Indian-origin venture capitalist, Asha Jadeja Motwani, didn’t make that mistake.

Recognising that the appointment of a close aide of the President must be a major development for India-US relations, which are in danger of becoming engulfed in controversy, she calls Mr Gor one of the most important figures in Mr Trump’s inner circle. As a vigorous MAGA (Make America Great Again) warrior, he has the President’s ear and can give India direct access to the highest levels of the administration.

This emphasis on personal factors recalls another British grandee’s equally famous description of an ambassador as “an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country”. But it would be a mistake to conclude from this saying of Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639) that a successful envoy must be a master of manipulation or driver of deception.

Delivering the 1977 Dr Saiyidain Memorial Lecture on the “Changing Patterns of Diplomacy”, the veteran K.P.S. Menon cited Kurt Waldheim, the former UN Secretary-General, to draw attention to diplomacy’s loftier purpose by lamenting that “the world cannot be safe, secure or economically sound when global military expenditure was nearly $300 billion and the annual arms sales came to $20 billion”. The combined arms sales and military services by the top 100 companies and the US touched $592 billion in 2021. With Russia on the rampage in Ukraine and Israel wreaking havoc in Gaza, those grim figures are growing still.

Mr Gor may or may not have any impact on this savagery. He may not succeed in sparing India President Trump’s crippling tariffs. His boss may not even want India saved. One doesn’t know. But a suffering world cannot but wonder if true diplomacy, such as Krishna’s mission as an envoy of the Pandavas to the court of their bitter rivals, the Kauravas (which also Menon cited), has ceased to exist. The ambassadorial jaunts, summit meetings and press conferences are only the politics of convenience by another name.