It was a bizarre moment. A nation of 1.5 billion people was waiting to see if its prime minister would demand an apology from the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, for the killing of three Indian sailors in the Strait of Hormuz in an American missile attack days earlier. What they got was Trump saying that the US would come to India’s defence if it were attacked, especially as long as Narendra Modi is in charge in New Delhi. The killer, in effect, was promising protection.
Equally disturbing was an incident from a media briefing by the Indian ministry of external affairs soon after the killing of the seafarers. The foreign ministry spokesperson acknowledged that Indian nationals had been killed in a US attack but then proceeded to tell reporters that two of three ships with Indians sailors hit that week were under US sanctions. Why should a victim care for a killer’s justifications for murder?
Even in an upside-down world where chaos is the norm, these two instances were telling examples of something that should worry India: the risks of New Delhi quietly giving up hard-earned strategic positions, shielded by successive governments of all political stripes over the decades.
Let us look at the case of the sailors first. Three Indian seamen were killed in international waters by a navy that India collaborates with closely, whose ships are frequent visitors to Indian ports, and with whom India participates in war games. India did protest. The ministry of external affairs summoned the US chargé d’affaires, and the foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, called the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to make India’s position clear: that the killing of unarmed non-combatant seafarers was unjustified.
Yet Rubio was not just unrepentant but doubled down, justifying the actions of his country’s navy. “The Secretary stressed that all commercial vessels should immediately comply with orders from US forces as they seek to uphold peace and security in the strait,” the state department said in a readout of the phone conversation. “He underscored that violations of the US blockade and the illicit transport of Iranian oil will not be tolerated.”
It was against that backdrop that Modi met Trump on the margins of the G7 Summit in France. While Modi spoke in general terms — about needing to address safety concerns of sailors — to Trump, it is unclear whether the Indian prime minister made clear to the US president that an angry India was demanding an apology and that the US navy killing Indians is unacceptable.
If he did not, it would sadly not be surprising. For India had already weakened its position on the matter by the time Modi flew to France. Addressing an inter-ministerial briefing on June 11, the foreign ministry spokesperson alluded to how two of the vessels were under sanctions from the US treasury department. This was an eyebrow-raising moment. At least officially, India does not accept unilateral sanctions imposed by one country against another. In other words, India does not recognise US sanctions. So why should it matter whether the targeted vessels were under US sanctions?
But the reference to US sanctions was in many ways a Freudian slip. Despite its formal opposition to the use of sanctions by powerful nations outside the United Nations umbrella, India has, for several years, adopted US restrictions against some countries. If the Manmohan Singh government reduced Iranian oil imports, India under the Modi administration stopped purchasing Venezuelan and Iranian crude entirely until the US said that it could.
Having violated its own policy to adhere to US sanctions in private, it was only a matter of time before that deference to American policy became public.
And what of Trump’s statement on defending India? India has, for long, proudly held that while it values friends and their support, it does not need active involvement from a third party to defend itself. Perhaps the government could clarify whether that has changed. For while Trump might have already forgotten what he said and Rubio might have moved on to another regime-change plot after Iran, history remembers.
Charu Sudan Kasturi is a journalist who writes on foreign policy and international relations