Trump and Modi Bromance Won’t Do Much for Democracy
The values they share aren’t the kind that underpin a global liberal order.
Birds of a feather.
Photographer: T. Narayan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For decades, the relationship between the world’s two largest democracies, the United States and India, has been held together by two things: hope, and shared values. Hope that India’s rise will not be too long delayed, and that the U.S. will welcome it as an exemplary, responsible great power that helps maintain the global liberal order — because of the values both countries profess to share. This is supposed to be what ties the two together.
But Donald Trump’s visit to India has revealed those foundational assumptions are beginning to look outdated. The cricket stadium — the world’s largest — where he and Narendra Modi addressed a joint rally in Ahmedabad was plastered with photographs of the two of them, alongside text that read: “two strong nations, one great friendship.” Perhaps the reference was to Indo-U.S. ties; but, in fact, it reduced that complex bilateral relationship to the camera-ready camaraderie between the two leaders.