SCO summit: Bipartisan alarm in US over India’s shifting alliances

HOurs after the curtains cut down on the impress Cooperation Organisation (SCO) breast in tientsin, the strategical consequences continued to be hotly debated in America. Visuals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi attending the summit alongside Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping drew strong reactions, mostly of shock and disappointment, from across America’s political and foreign policy establishment.“It was a shame to see Modi getting in bed, as a leader of the biggest democracy in the world, with the two biggest authoritarians in the world in Putin and Xi Jinping. That doesn’t make any sense. I’m not sure what he’s thinking particularly since India has been in a cold war, and sometimes a hot war, with China for decades,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters on Monday. “We hope the Indian leader comes around to seeing that he needs to be with us and Europe and Ukraine and not Russia.”US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed the SCO gathering as “performative”. “This is a longstanding meeting, it’s called the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and I think it’s largely performative. I think at the end of the day, India is the most populous democracy in the world. Their values are much closer to ours and to China’s than to Russia’s,” Bessent told Fox News.In recent weeks, Bessent and Navarro have emerged as key critics of India’s continued purchases of Russian energy. The two also spoke after US President Donald Trump put out a post on Truth Social in the aftermath of the SCO summit, slamming India for its “totally one-sided relationship with America”.The American media’s coverage of the SCO summit focused on the perceived closeness and personal rapport between Modi and Putin. Images of the two leaders in the same car during the summit and holding hands while walking dominated coverage across television networks.The presence of Modi at a summit with the leaders of China and Russia also sparked significant criticism of Trump’s foreign policy. The President’s critics argued that Trump’s tariffs on India forced New Delhi to seek a rapprochement with China, a theme which dominated US media coverage of the SCO summit.California Governor Gavin Newsom posted a video of Modi shaking hands with the leaders of China and Russia on X, blaming Trump for the diplomatic setback. Newsom, a Democrat who is widely expected to run for the Presidency in 2028, is the most high-profile member of his party to critique Trump’s handling of India.Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton also blamed Trump’s tariffs on India and the President’s insistence on claiming credit for the India-Pakistan ceasefire reached in May for pushing India towards Beijing and Moscow. “There’s a lot of bad news here and very little good news,” Bolton said of Modi’s seeming rapprochement with China during his first visit to the country in seven years.Former US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, who was a key negotiator during the US-India nuclear deal talks two decades ago, referred to Washington’s policy as an “own goal” in a post on X.Trump-aligned media commentators like Jason Calcanis, a technology entrepreneur best known for co-founding the popular All-In podcast, also questioned Washington’s policies on India. “The downside of President Trump’s over-aggressive, and far too often insulting, tariff policy, is that we’re driving an important ally like India into the arms of dictators and despots,” Calcanis said in a post on X.