 Hello and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup, where we will be talking about U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to India. This is Donald Trump's first state visit to India, and there's been a lot of speculation about what each side has been seeking to achieve. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Prakash. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so Donald Trump and Narendra Modi have met eight times since Trump became the president. And some months ago, we saw Modi had gone to Houston in the U.S. There was this huge gathering where, which was called Howdy Modi and where basically Modi declared that Trump would be the next president and there was a huge PR movement. And now as Trump is coming again, the Indian government has gone all out to welcome him. It's a massive, very expensive program that we have here. But on a more substantive basis, what do you think that both the U.S. and India are seeking from this visit in terms of concrete achievements? Or is it just, you know, a reciprocal show, so to speak? Well, it's not a reciprocal show because even that show was really by the Indian expatriate community in Houston who organized that. So in both cases, it was really Modi going out of his way to give or promote Trump. In that case, it was to promote Trump to the Indian expatriate community and hopefully delivering there for the Indian votes to Trump. That's what seems to have been the idea and seeking, therefore, certain benefits for India. Now that didn't happen. As we know, Trump has been very clear. He has what he calls America first and that continues. Even in this visit, if India was expecting certain softening of the American attitude towards trade issue and that's where the economy is starting to hurt in some ways, Trump has made clear that he has no intention of reaching any agreement on trade issues with India and he's given various statements about Indians being bad and how they are cheating Americans and that he's not going to accept any of these things. And India has to accept what the U.S. is asking out of India. So it seems that that Indian government is really hard pressed to accept what the Americans are asking because they're all unilateral demands outside the framework of the WTO trading agreements and they have no basis on any reality except America's arguing that all the trade balances have to be equalized irrespective of whether we have something to buy or sell. That's one part of it. So on that, it seems to be a spectacle again, which has been planned. Nothing is coming on trade issues. We have to see whether something should come on geo-strategic issues. We can discuss that later. It doesn't seem India or the United States have much wiggle room on that either. So it comes back to what you said. Is it not a spectacle? But all what we can understand from the media reports, by all means, it seems to be something which is going to be a spectacle. And the only things coming out of it for the United States could be nuclear deal on again, the reactor issue has come up. Yes. And also the question about helicopters being bought, some more arms being bought. But it does not look like there is any other big ticket item on the agenda for India. For the US, yes, of course, as we know, the president of the United States has always been the biggest salesperson for the American military industrial complex. So there something may happen. Help the United States. Maybe the nuclear reactors would again be on the anvil for selling to India. A disaster, which we can talk about later. But I do not see anything coming out of it. There are talks about seven million people who line up, which would all the route that Trump is going to go. More than the population. Yeah, it seems that, you know, there would be perhaps the same way that we have seen walls being constructed to hide the the slum clusters. Similarly, we could have walls constructed of people who'd be counted in the seven million. So maybe there'll be a facade, which will also include the people. But it's very unlikely that it will be seven million as it being claimed. But, you know, in the United States, 500,000, 100,000, 200,000 huge numbers. So given that, given that, whatever Trump gets, it will appear to me to be, as he calls it, huge. So you're going to say huge rally by Trumpian standards. So I think that's where it really is. So to go to one specific issue that is the arms deal that you're talking about. So the likelihood is that at least $2.6 billion worth of helicopters will be purchased by the Indian Navy specifically for the Indian Navy. So Russia has traditionally been the most significant supplier of arms to India. But in recent times, there has been much more heightened Indo-US military cooperation. Of course, Israel is also a part of that. So how do you see this rising trend towards cooperation in the military sector vis-à-vis India's traditional relationship with Russia? You see, there are two things which are very important here. One is that the US is really arms deals do not have transfer of technology. Generally, they insist there has to be interoperability. Which means that they have to have equipment which operates in the native equipment. The question is, they can also shut off this equipment if they want. Now, as you know, intelligence or what's called artificial intelligence, digital communications, all of this are software based. So it's easy to shut them down if you so want. And this has been always the military, Indian military's problem. Do we really have control over the American arms that we receive? On the case of Russian arms, the situation has been much more transparent. And India had access to whatever equipment Russia was giving us. So this is one issue that is there with these deals. But leaving that out for the time being, the issue that comes up is the price ticket. They're expensive, they're far more expensive than comparable Russian equipment. And there is no indigenization that India seems to have with this kind of equipment. So effectively, it means, I would call it military aid in some sense. We give money to the US military industrial complex in the belief that we soften America to ourselves and what could be our strategic interest. So instead of paying Trump in terms of a trade deal, what we are doing is buying him off by buying arms for from him. So this seems to be the transaction that Indian government wants to do. Retain certain relationships with the United States, which could break down on the issue of trade. So therefore, soften the United States up by buying arms from him. So in some sense, it is a typical Trumpian tactic that I extort things from you, either on trade or some other account. In this count arms deals and even possibility of a nuclear reacted deal. Which would be a complete disaster in today's terms, because nuclear power is far more expensive than renewable energy. And there is no economic logic for it, apart from all the other issues which are involved with nuclear power, as we have seen from Fukushima reactors to others, the safety related issues are very, very important. But more than that, the cost of nuclear power doesn't warrant going this route, particularly the Westinghouse reactors, which will cost at least, if we take the levelized cost of electricity from that, will not be less than 15 rupees per unit. Today renewable energy is available on the grid for at best 3 to 3.5 rupees per unit. If it is cold, it is available for much less, not much lesser cost, but almost at the same cost a little lesser. So given the cost issues, the nuclear power route is the most expensive in the world today. 3 times to 5 times what you will get with cold or renewables. So this today's technology, today's economics, it makes no sense. And these are going to be huge costs. The two reactors itself would cost something like 7, 8 billion dollars. We are talking huge outflows that will take place if this is there for very questionable value because you will never be able to dispatch those power in the Indian grid given its cost. So on an associated note, since we talked about the geo-strategic aspects, the Indo-US military relationship. So there's also, India and the US also have had a complicated relationship as far as the region is concerned. So on the one hand, both of them do share a specific approach towards China. And that is visible in the kind of, say the cooperation on the Quad, where Australia and Japan are also involved. They have been military drills. At the same time with respect to Pakistan and Afghanistan, they're on very, very different poles. So do you see the possibility of any kind of bridge in terms of these approaches or are they just likely to continue on very different tracks? You see, India needs the United States more than the US needs India at the moment. If we look at the way we have played our cards, we have become essentially almost one-dimensional anti-Pakistan in terms of a foreign relationship. That's become a touchstone for everything. So that's one problem. We have a completely one-dimensional foreign policy. With respect to China, India has again less flexibility. Because Pakistan and China have a certain economic relationship, India has decided China is also to be put on the enemy camp. Virtually, though it doesn't say so, doesn't do so because China is too big economically. But at the same time, geostrategically, it certainly is not on the same page with, say, Iran, Russia and China, who are talking about Eurasian landmass coming together of various Asian and European countries on the landmass and trying to work out to their mutual benefit. On the question of Indian Ocean, India's force projection in that area is going to be of little, very little use to the United States. It has enough force projection if it wants against China in that area. Whether that's enough is a different question. Because strategically, those kind of old-fashioned military or naval armadas do not have much consequence today. Very vulnerable also. Extremely vulnerable because any ballistic missile strike on them would sink them. So given that India is very little to contribute, so what is the real issue at the moment, the Afghanistan settlement, which Americans are seeking with the Taliban. America needs, if it wants to get out of Afghanistan, it needs Pakistan support because all said and done, what is Afghanistan's land borders? There is one side China, Central Asian Republics, Iran, Pakistan. India has no land border. So these are the countries who have a stake in what's happening in Afghanistan. And with that, apart from Pakistan, they have really no friends over there. Central Asian Republics are going much closer to China and Russia. Again, for simple geostrategic reasons, their major economic powers around them are Russia and China and possibly Iran. So that doesn't make for a very convenient American alignment. So what's happening is the need Pakistan more than Pakistan today needs the United States. If they want to get their tail out of Afghanistan, which they badly want to. Trump would like to declare peace in Afghanistan, get himself out, hopefully, or ride his impeachment debacle in terms of public perception and get a victory. So to say that I have solved one major problem which we are bleeding and then reclaim the presidency in the next election. So given Trump's very, very narrow objective, India has no place in that. India may say what it wants, but effectively it's frozen out of the Afghanistan peace process. Whether peace will take place or not, we don't know. Whether this agreement will hold given the fact that Afghanistan has just had an election. Two sections have declared victories. And though Gadi is now claiming to be the president and has been declared so by the machinery which was responsible for election commission over there, the reality is Abdullah is also equally powerful and he represents a different set of sections in Afghanistan. And he has decided that he doesn't accept this. So we have the situation, but the Afghanistan parties are not seeking peace with each other. But there is an independent peace being worked out by Taliban and the United States. So I don't know whether this works, it will work or not. Taliban may let Americans pull out of Afghanistan and then settle their scores with the Afghanistan other parties over there. But it will let Trump leave with quote unquote honor and claim his election victory in the United States. And that seems to be Trump's immediate goal. So in this India has really no role. So unfortunately for Modi, he may give Trump a rousing welcome, mobilize Ahmedabad's population for it, build facades to hide some of the ugly realities of Indian cities and give him a visible boost and hopefully ride on the tail of that to claim some of it for himself. But in terms of actual benefit to India, looking at all of this, I don't see anything that India is going to get. I do see what Trump is going to get out of it. Thank you so much for being here. That's all we have in this episode of the International Roundup. We'll be tracking Trump's visit to India closely next week. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.