Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has cancelled his visit to Malaysia to participate in the summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations to be held from 26–28 October in Kuala Lumpur. The opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, has alleged that Narendra Modi backtracked from his visit to avoid meeting President Donald Trump. The bilateral relations between the two countries are at their lowest ebb. It appears the distrust between Narendra Modi and the US leader, Donald Trump, has reached a point of no return. Both have big egos, and their vanity as leaders of powerful states knows no bounds.

The case of the four-decade-long deepening bilateral relations and the sudden rupture of friendship between India and the USA demonstrates how far the conduct of inter-state relations is vulnerable to sudden changes in the geopolitical and geo-strategic landscape, and the temperamental swings or ideological preferences of leaders. The clash of geo-economic and geo-strategic interests between countries impacts the entire gamut of bilateral relations. President Donald Trump, in his first tenure, was initially very fond of Narendra Modi and dealt with him as the loyal guardian of the geo-strategic interests of the US in South Asia by countervailing the Chinese leadership.

The American leaders have always treated India and Pakistan equally. The American leadership made a conscious decision to prefer Pakistan over India as an ally in this region against the expansion of communism. This was perhaps done because of the leftist leanings of the Indian leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru and his close aides in the Congress Government. General Ayub Khan, as Air Marshal Asghar Khan claims, captured power at the........

© The Friday Times