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Garcetti’s ‘activism’, US State Department’s fake news treatise and outrageous remarks are incompatible with the critical nature of bilateral ties.
The trajectory of India-US ties is a little baffling. Viewed from an angle, the relationship is in the pink of health. Both the White House and 7, Lok Kalyan Marg appear determined to accentuate shared interests, intensify strategic alignment, and circumnavigate differences.
The diplomatic calendar is frightfully busy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting US President Joe Biden in Hiroshima on the sidelines of G7 summit for the rescheduled Quad leaders’ meeting, before heading to Washington in June. National security advisers Ajit Doval and Jake Sullivan have met multiple times over the last few days, Quad navies are participating in Malabar naval exercises in August, Quad commanders are meeting in California, the first-ever strategic trade dialogue between the two countries is taking place in the US next month. From Apple to Walmart to Cisco, top American companies are investing in India, while Indian FDI in the US has exceeded $40 billion, according to latest data.
Even though both nations are steadfast democracies with independent institutions in place to maintain checks and balances on political power, and a shared interest in preserving the democratic world order, the synergies in the fields of geopolitics, geoeconomics, policy, strategy, defence or commerce are not replicated in the domains of value, idea, culture, or tradition.
Here, crucial differences remain in motivations, objectives and perception of values, and these differences are increasingly becoming stark, and the prognosis worse. The core issue remains Washington’s missionary commitment to promote its brand of cultural liberalism. Along with it, the unstated agenda of maintaining the post-Cold War liberal international order and its geopolitical and ideological hegemony through tools and mechanisms such as “human rights” and “universal religious freedom” that sublimate decision-making authority from sovereign nation-states to international institutions controlled and designed by it.
Though Washington claims otherwise, this framework functions against fellow travellers, ideological adversaries, or peer competitors alike. A rising India finds that despite shared commitment over values, interests, and a similar political system, its self-determination, expression of national identity, and even sovereign authority are at risk of being undermined by America’s ‘well-intentioned’, ‘friendly, actions that include threat of economic sanctions and championing of institutions and ‘civil society’ groups within Indian shores that relentlessly hammer at the country’s religious and other faultlines.
This is backed by an intricate and multidimensional information warfare against India through mechanisms such as advocacy groups and mass media institutions that blur the line between truth, untruth, propaganda and lies. Unless Washington treads carefully, it may end up jeopardising a bilateral relationship that, according to Kurt Campbell, a key official in the Joe Biden administration, “is the most important partnership in the 21st century.”
The US Department of State, for instance, has just released a scathing report on the status of “religious freedom” and “minority rights” in India in language that is unusually harsh for a country that Washington considers as one of its closest strategic partners. The harsh language isn’t a problem. Sanctimonious preaching is America’s moral right as the world’s top dog.
Trouble is, the ‘2022 Report on International Religious Freedom’, an annual exercise by the IRF (International Religious Freedom), a wing of the US State Department, is mostly based on discredited data, sloppy research, dubious statistics, citation loops and fake news.
Fact-checking data journalist handles Disinfo Lab has pointed out that the report, that has been released less than a month before Modi travels to Washington for his first state visit, is based on disinformation from discredited sources that include notorious radical Islamist groups such as Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC).
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Home Opinion News The Biden Administration Has Launched A Full-Spectrum Disinformation War Against India, Its ‘Global Strategic Partner’
OPINION
The Biden administration has launched a full-spectrum disinformation war against India, its ‘global strategic partner’
Garcetti’s ‘activism’, US State Department’s fake news treatise and outrageous remarks are incompatible with the critical nature of bilateral ties
Sreemoy Talukdar
May 19, 2023 08:44:04 IST
The Biden administration has launched a full-spectrum disinformation war against India, its ‘global strategic partner’
President Joe Biden gestures as he boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base on 17 May 2023, as he heads to Hiroshima, Japan to attend the G7. AP
The trajectory of India-US ties is a little baffling. Viewed from an angle, the relationship is in the pink of health. Both the White House and 7, Lok Kalyan Marg appear determined to accentuate shared interests, intensify strategic alignment, and circumnavigate differences.
The diplomatic calendar is frightfully busy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting US President Joe Biden in Hiroshima on the sidelines of G7 summit for the rescheduled Quad leaders’ meeting, before heading to Washington in June. National security advisers Ajit Doval and Jake Sullivan have met multiple times over the last few days, Quad navies are participating in Malabar naval exercises in August, Quad commanders are meeting in California, the first-ever strategic trade dialogue between the two countries is taking place in the US next month. From Apple to Walmart to Cisco, top American companies are investing in India, while Indian FDI in the US has exceeded $40 billion, according to latest data.
And yet, a 360-degree view paints a different story.
RELATED ARTICLES
US, India want stability in Pakistan
'US, India want stability in Pakistan': US envoy to India Eric Garcetti
US, India want stability in Pakistan
Reducing visa waiting time a priority of Joe Biden administration, says US envoy to India
Even though both nations are steadfast democracies with independent institutions in place to maintain checks and balances on political power, and a shared interest in preserving the democratic world order, the synergies in the fields of geopolitics, geoeconomics, policy, strategy, defence or commerce are not replicated in the domains of value, idea, culture, or tradition.
Here, crucial differences remain in motivations, objectives and perception of values, and these differences are increasingly becoming stark, and the prognosis worse. The core issue remains Washington’s missionary commitment to promote its brand of cultural liberalism. Along with it, the unstated agenda of maintaining the post-Cold War liberal international order and its geopolitical and ideological hegemony through tools and mechanisms such as “human rights” and “universal religious freedom” that sublimate decision-making authority from sovereign nation-states to international institutions controlled and designed by it.
Though Washington claims otherwise, this framework functions against fellow travellers, ideological adversaries, or peer competitors alike. A rising India finds that despite shared commitment over values, interests, and a similar political system, its self-determination, expression of national identity, and even sovereign authority are at risk of being undermined by America’s ‘well-intentioned’, ‘friendly, actions that include threat of economic sanctions and championing of institutions and ‘civil society’ groups within Indian shores that relentlessly hammer at the country’s religious and other faultlines.
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This is backed by an intricate and multidimensional information warfare against India through mechanisms such as advocacy groups and mass media institutions that blur the line between truth, untruth, propaganda and lies. Unless Washington treads carefully, it may end up jeopardising a bilateral relationship that, according to Kurt Campbell, a key official in the Joe Biden administration, “is the most important partnership in the 21st century.”
The US Department of State, for instance, has just released a scathing report on the status of “religious freedom” and “minority rights” in India in language that is unusually harsh for a country that Washington considers as one of its closest strategic partners. The harsh language isn’t a problem. Sanctimonious preaching is America’s moral right as the world’s top dog.
Trouble is, the ‘2022 Report on International Religious Freedom’, an annual exercise by the IRF (International Religious Freedom), a wing of the US State Department, is mostly based on discredited data, sloppy research, dubious statistics, citation loops and fake news.
Fact-checking data journalist handles Disinfo Lab has pointed out that the report, that has been released less than a month before Modi travels to Washington for his first state visit, is based on disinformation from discredited sources that include notorious radical Islamist groups such as Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC).
The IAMC, according to reports, is headed by Rasheed Ahmed, who was executive director (2008-17) of Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) that was accused of looting COVID funds. IMANA’s director of operations Zahid Mahmood is an ex-Pakistan navy official. The IAMC has been accused in the past of maintaining links with terror outfits such as SIMI and Pakistan-based LeT.
The IRF report also sources ‘data’ from Christian evangelist outfits like the Federation of Indian Christian Organization in North America (FIACONA), United Christian Forum, Open Doors USA, Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) and International Christian Concern. Disinfo Lab has done a great job of debunking the report on Twitter so I need not go into details.
These reports, that are mandated and backed by American lawmakers, are so blatantly false and utterly ridiculous that they don’t even need thorough debunking. America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, last year while releasing the 2021 edition had called India a country where “religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities are under threat.”
Comically, PEW Research Center released a major survey in 2021 involving 30000 adult Indians on issues such as religious freedom, nationalism and ‘tolerance’.
The survey found that 84 per cent of Indians say, “it is very important to respect all religions” and people “in all six major religious groups overwhelmingly say they are very free to practice their faiths, and most say that people of other faiths also are very free to practice their own religion.” In figures, 91 per cent Hindus and 89 per cent Muslims in India say, “They are very free to practice their religion.” Incidentally, PEW is a Washington-based, nonpartisan, American think tank.
A report that says chances of “mass killings are extremely high in India”, a slur that a US State Department official repeated, cannot be taken seriously. India typically reacts to these by issuing “total rejection”. The Ministry of External Affairs has several times in the past called these reports “flawed”, “biased”, motivated”, based on “misinformation and flawed understanding”. That could have been the end of it. A dubious annual ritual followed by routine rejection. Yet it isn’t. The repercussions go much beyond rhetorical pinpricking.
It is not the reports per se, but the implicit threats that these hegemonic exercises carry that require closer scrutiny. The US openly declares that its “core foreign policy objective” involves tracking “religious discrimination worldwide” and it reserves for itself the right and role to function as a supra-sovereign authority that may punish countries with economic sanctions if it believes that they are “guilty”.
The thing to note here is not that the Biden administration is unlikely to take any action against India despite these adverse reports due to unprecedented strategic convergences, shared concerns, and interests. The issue is the implicit threat that these twisted reports and dubious narratives carry, and the justification that these may provide for eventual action against India — that has been designated four times as ‘country of particular concern’ — in the future when convergences may fade, and differences become greater due to a shift in India’s development curve.
If a rising India ‘concerns’ the US enough for it to issue such dubious, discredited reports based on sources that have clear conflict of interests, it stands to reason that a more powerful, strategically autonomous India, the world’s most populous nation and the largest democracy, may make the US even more insecure.
Separately, the activist impulse that is woven into America’s pursuit of liberal hegemony, leads it to believe that championing the cause of inalienable rights of humans is its god given duty, and it must remain committed to this cause even if it means undermining sovereign authorities abroad. This creates the basis for America’s social engineering and interventionist policies as a legitimate instrument of statecraft.
For instance, the US state department official while discussing the 2022 IRF report on India, said, “we’ll continue to work very closely with our civil society colleagues on the ground, with courageous journalists that are working every day to document some of these abuses…”
This attitude is further reinforced by the choices the Biden administration has made with regards to India. Former LA mayor Eric Garcetti, the controversial figure who has been chosen by Biden as the US ambassador to India, has said multiple times in the past that he will keep “human rights activism” at the front and centre of his job in India.
During one of his confirmation hearings, Garcetti said on ‘human rights situation’ in India he will “engage directly with civil society. There are groups that are actively fighting for human rights…They will get direct engagement from me.”
True to his word, as soon as Garcetti landed in New Delhi, US embassy of India initiated a programme in partnership with IREX, an organisation supported by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and Ford Foundation, among others, for “teaching” Indian youths to “think critically”.
Well may Garcetti partake ‘bun maska’ in a Mumbai café or meet Shah Rukh Khan, his nefarious agenda is clear. While it remains to be seen how South Block tackles Garcetti’s ‘activism’ — it has so far been guarded and cautious — the portends are worrying. America should be more careful in nurturing his critical partnership.
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/t...ia-its-global-strategic-partner-12617542.html
The trajectory of India-US ties is a little baffling. Viewed from an angle, the relationship is in the pink of health. Both the White House and 7, Lok Kalyan Marg appear determined to accentuate shared interests, intensify strategic alignment, and circumnavigate differences.
The diplomatic calendar is frightfully busy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting US President Joe Biden in Hiroshima on the sidelines of G7 summit for the rescheduled Quad leaders’ meeting, before heading to Washington in June. National security advisers Ajit Doval and Jake Sullivan have met multiple times over the last few days, Quad navies are participating in Malabar naval exercises in August, Quad commanders are meeting in California, the first-ever strategic trade dialogue between the two countries is taking place in the US next month. From Apple to Walmart to Cisco, top American companies are investing in India, while Indian FDI in the US has exceeded $40 billion, according to latest data.
Even though both nations are steadfast democracies with independent institutions in place to maintain checks and balances on political power, and a shared interest in preserving the democratic world order, the synergies in the fields of geopolitics, geoeconomics, policy, strategy, defence or commerce are not replicated in the domains of value, idea, culture, or tradition.
Here, crucial differences remain in motivations, objectives and perception of values, and these differences are increasingly becoming stark, and the prognosis worse. The core issue remains Washington’s missionary commitment to promote its brand of cultural liberalism. Along with it, the unstated agenda of maintaining the post-Cold War liberal international order and its geopolitical and ideological hegemony through tools and mechanisms such as “human rights” and “universal religious freedom” that sublimate decision-making authority from sovereign nation-states to international institutions controlled and designed by it.
Though Washington claims otherwise, this framework functions against fellow travellers, ideological adversaries, or peer competitors alike. A rising India finds that despite shared commitment over values, interests, and a similar political system, its self-determination, expression of national identity, and even sovereign authority are at risk of being undermined by America’s ‘well-intentioned’, ‘friendly, actions that include threat of economic sanctions and championing of institutions and ‘civil society’ groups within Indian shores that relentlessly hammer at the country’s religious and other faultlines.
This is backed by an intricate and multidimensional information warfare against India through mechanisms such as advocacy groups and mass media institutions that blur the line between truth, untruth, propaganda and lies. Unless Washington treads carefully, it may end up jeopardising a bilateral relationship that, according to Kurt Campbell, a key official in the Joe Biden administration, “is the most important partnership in the 21st century.”
The US Department of State, for instance, has just released a scathing report on the status of “religious freedom” and “minority rights” in India in language that is unusually harsh for a country that Washington considers as one of its closest strategic partners. The harsh language isn’t a problem. Sanctimonious preaching is America’s moral right as the world’s top dog.
Trouble is, the ‘2022 Report on International Religious Freedom’, an annual exercise by the IRF (International Religious Freedom), a wing of the US State Department, is mostly based on discredited data, sloppy research, dubious statistics, citation loops and fake news.
Fact-checking data journalist handles Disinfo Lab has pointed out that the report, that has been released less than a month before Modi travels to Washington for his first state visit, is based on disinformation from discredited sources that include notorious radical Islamist groups such as Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC).
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IPL 2023
India
World
Sports
Tech/Auto
Opinion
Explainers
Entertainment
Cricket
Home Opinion News The Biden Administration Has Launched A Full-Spectrum Disinformation War Against India, Its ‘Global Strategic Partner’
OPINION
The Biden administration has launched a full-spectrum disinformation war against India, its ‘global strategic partner’
Garcetti’s ‘activism’, US State Department’s fake news treatise and outrageous remarks are incompatible with the critical nature of bilateral ties
Sreemoy Talukdar
May 19, 2023 08:44:04 IST
The Biden administration has launched a full-spectrum disinformation war against India, its ‘global strategic partner’
President Joe Biden gestures as he boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base on 17 May 2023, as he heads to Hiroshima, Japan to attend the G7. AP
The trajectory of India-US ties is a little baffling. Viewed from an angle, the relationship is in the pink of health. Both the White House and 7, Lok Kalyan Marg appear determined to accentuate shared interests, intensify strategic alignment, and circumnavigate differences.
The diplomatic calendar is frightfully busy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting US President Joe Biden in Hiroshima on the sidelines of G7 summit for the rescheduled Quad leaders’ meeting, before heading to Washington in June. National security advisers Ajit Doval and Jake Sullivan have met multiple times over the last few days, Quad navies are participating in Malabar naval exercises in August, Quad commanders are meeting in California, the first-ever strategic trade dialogue between the two countries is taking place in the US next month. From Apple to Walmart to Cisco, top American companies are investing in India, while Indian FDI in the US has exceeded $40 billion, according to latest data.
And yet, a 360-degree view paints a different story.
RELATED ARTICLES
US, India want stability in Pakistan
'US, India want stability in Pakistan': US envoy to India Eric Garcetti
US, India want stability in Pakistan
Reducing visa waiting time a priority of Joe Biden administration, says US envoy to India
Even though both nations are steadfast democracies with independent institutions in place to maintain checks and balances on political power, and a shared interest in preserving the democratic world order, the synergies in the fields of geopolitics, geoeconomics, policy, strategy, defence or commerce are not replicated in the domains of value, idea, culture, or tradition.
Here, crucial differences remain in motivations, objectives and perception of values, and these differences are increasingly becoming stark, and the prognosis worse. The core issue remains Washington’s missionary commitment to promote its brand of cultural liberalism. Along with it, the unstated agenda of maintaining the post-Cold War liberal international order and its geopolitical and ideological hegemony through tools and mechanisms such as “human rights” and “universal religious freedom” that sublimate decision-making authority from sovereign nation-states to international institutions controlled and designed by it.
Though Washington claims otherwise, this framework functions against fellow travellers, ideological adversaries, or peer competitors alike. A rising India finds that despite shared commitment over values, interests, and a similar political system, its self-determination, expression of national identity, and even sovereign authority are at risk of being undermined by America’s ‘well-intentioned’, ‘friendly, actions that include threat of economic sanctions and championing of institutions and ‘civil society’ groups within Indian shores that relentlessly hammer at the country’s religious and other faultlines.
You May Like
Husband Sees Wife Got Yellow Wristband At Hospital And Instantly Called The Police.
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by Taboola Sponsored Links
This is backed by an intricate and multidimensional information warfare against India through mechanisms such as advocacy groups and mass media institutions that blur the line between truth, untruth, propaganda and lies. Unless Washington treads carefully, it may end up jeopardising a bilateral relationship that, according to Kurt Campbell, a key official in the Joe Biden administration, “is the most important partnership in the 21st century.”
The US Department of State, for instance, has just released a scathing report on the status of “religious freedom” and “minority rights” in India in language that is unusually harsh for a country that Washington considers as one of its closest strategic partners. The harsh language isn’t a problem. Sanctimonious preaching is America’s moral right as the world’s top dog.
Trouble is, the ‘2022 Report on International Religious Freedom’, an annual exercise by the IRF (International Religious Freedom), a wing of the US State Department, is mostly based on discredited data, sloppy research, dubious statistics, citation loops and fake news.
Fact-checking data journalist handles Disinfo Lab has pointed out that the report, that has been released less than a month before Modi travels to Washington for his first state visit, is based on disinformation from discredited sources that include notorious radical Islamist groups such as Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC).
The IAMC, according to reports, is headed by Rasheed Ahmed, who was executive director (2008-17) of Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) that was accused of looting COVID funds. IMANA’s director of operations Zahid Mahmood is an ex-Pakistan navy official. The IAMC has been accused in the past of maintaining links with terror outfits such as SIMI and Pakistan-based LeT.
The IRF report also sources ‘data’ from Christian evangelist outfits like the Federation of Indian Christian Organization in North America (FIACONA), United Christian Forum, Open Doors USA, Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) and International Christian Concern. Disinfo Lab has done a great job of debunking the report on Twitter so I need not go into details.
These reports, that are mandated and backed by American lawmakers, are so blatantly false and utterly ridiculous that they don’t even need thorough debunking. America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, last year while releasing the 2021 edition had called India a country where “religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities are under threat.”
Comically, PEW Research Center released a major survey in 2021 involving 30000 adult Indians on issues such as religious freedom, nationalism and ‘tolerance’.
The survey found that 84 per cent of Indians say, “it is very important to respect all religions” and people “in all six major religious groups overwhelmingly say they are very free to practice their faiths, and most say that people of other faiths also are very free to practice their own religion.” In figures, 91 per cent Hindus and 89 per cent Muslims in India say, “They are very free to practice their religion.” Incidentally, PEW is a Washington-based, nonpartisan, American think tank.
A report that says chances of “mass killings are extremely high in India”, a slur that a US State Department official repeated, cannot be taken seriously. India typically reacts to these by issuing “total rejection”. The Ministry of External Affairs has several times in the past called these reports “flawed”, “biased”, motivated”, based on “misinformation and flawed understanding”. That could have been the end of it. A dubious annual ritual followed by routine rejection. Yet it isn’t. The repercussions go much beyond rhetorical pinpricking.
It is not the reports per se, but the implicit threats that these hegemonic exercises carry that require closer scrutiny. The US openly declares that its “core foreign policy objective” involves tracking “religious discrimination worldwide” and it reserves for itself the right and role to function as a supra-sovereign authority that may punish countries with economic sanctions if it believes that they are “guilty”.
The thing to note here is not that the Biden administration is unlikely to take any action against India despite these adverse reports due to unprecedented strategic convergences, shared concerns, and interests. The issue is the implicit threat that these twisted reports and dubious narratives carry, and the justification that these may provide for eventual action against India — that has been designated four times as ‘country of particular concern’ — in the future when convergences may fade, and differences become greater due to a shift in India’s development curve.
If a rising India ‘concerns’ the US enough for it to issue such dubious, discredited reports based on sources that have clear conflict of interests, it stands to reason that a more powerful, strategically autonomous India, the world’s most populous nation and the largest democracy, may make the US even more insecure.
Separately, the activist impulse that is woven into America’s pursuit of liberal hegemony, leads it to believe that championing the cause of inalienable rights of humans is its god given duty, and it must remain committed to this cause even if it means undermining sovereign authorities abroad. This creates the basis for America’s social engineering and interventionist policies as a legitimate instrument of statecraft.
For instance, the US state department official while discussing the 2022 IRF report on India, said, “we’ll continue to work very closely with our civil society colleagues on the ground, with courageous journalists that are working every day to document some of these abuses…”
This attitude is further reinforced by the choices the Biden administration has made with regards to India. Former LA mayor Eric Garcetti, the controversial figure who has been chosen by Biden as the US ambassador to India, has said multiple times in the past that he will keep “human rights activism” at the front and centre of his job in India.
During one of his confirmation hearings, Garcetti said on ‘human rights situation’ in India he will “engage directly with civil society. There are groups that are actively fighting for human rights…They will get direct engagement from me.”
True to his word, as soon as Garcetti landed in New Delhi, US embassy of India initiated a programme in partnership with IREX, an organisation supported by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and Ford Foundation, among others, for “teaching” Indian youths to “think critically”.
Well may Garcetti partake ‘bun maska’ in a Mumbai café or meet Shah Rukh Khan, his nefarious agenda is clear. While it remains to be seen how South Block tackles Garcetti’s ‘activism’ — it has so far been guarded and cautious — the portends are worrying. America should be more careful in nurturing his critical partnership.
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/t...ia-its-global-strategic-partner-12617542.html
