Why the India-Canada Diplomatic Standoff is An Existential Crisis for Modi
India has been rocked by the allegations a week ago by Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s statement in the Canadian House of Commons that the Indian government orchestrated the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
India has dismissed the allegations as absurd and instead tried to focus on its long-standing complaints that the Sikh diaspora in Canada harbors Khalistani terrorists.
Indian TV channels are going overboard with the Khalistani narrative, despite the fact that the Khalistani movement is practically dead in India.
Many Indians are getting influenced by the nonstop TV discussion on Khalistan on Indian TV channels, and losing sight of the bigger problem.
What is the central problem here?
The central problem is the allegation that the Indian government carried out an assassination of a Canadian citizen.
Everything rests on whether this allegation is true. Why is this important? Because, as Trudeau put it in the House of Commons, “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.”
Whether Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a Khalistani terrorist and whether there are active Khalistani terrorists operating in Canada are irrelevant to this central problem.
Let me explain why.
The main reason is that if India has concerns about Khalistani activities in Canada, it can take their grievances to the Canadians, as it has, but if the Canadian government does not respond favorably, as it seems they haven’t, India has only two options: accept the Canadian response meekly, or, go to war with Canada.
India seems to have chosen the second option, if Trudeau’s allegations are true. Assassinating a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil, even one you suspect to be a terrorist, is an act of war against Canada. You are violating Canada’s sovereignty. This is a very serious matter, and India must speak to it. They must clarify if the Indian government is involved or not. Brazening it out is not an option.
And, because of something known as “The Monroe Doctrine,” it means that, if India did order the hit, it is violating the sovereignty of the United States of America.
Essentially, if the Indian government continues to brazen it out, as it has over the past week, it is declaring war against both Canada and the US. Modi has to decide if this issue is worth war with the US.
To understand this, Indians need to understand what the Monroe Doctrine is and why it is so important.
The Monroe Doctrine
Canada is part of the Western Hemisphere. The US regards the Western Hemisphere as its backyard, and has a long-standing doctrine that they will not tolerate any interference in the Western Hemisphere by anyone else against any country in the Americas. This is known as the “Monroe Doctrine,” after US President James Monroe, the fifth American President, who was in charge from 1817–1825. Monroe outlined the doctrine during his seventh State of the Union speech on December 2, 1823. The doctrine was mainly drafted by his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. At that time, the US was only concerned with European powers, and Monroe said about European powers that “we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” The US has ever since sought to enforce American hegemony on the Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas. Before World War II, the US did not always have the military power to enforce the doctrine, but they always maintained it as a matter of principle.
In 1895, in the Anglo-Venezuelan conflict, Richard Olney, the US Secretary of State under President Grover Cleveland, said in a letter to Great Britain that “The United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.”
In 1902, the seventh Canadian Prime Minister, Wilfrid Laurier, acknowledged the Monroe Doctrine as part of its own national security considerations. In 1904, US President Theodore Roosevelt extended the doctrine to mean that the USA had the right to intervene in Latin America in cases of “flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American Nation.”
After World War II, the Monroe Doctrine was extended to interference in the Western Hemisphere by any power in the world. This was necessary for the US to justify its actions against communist Cuba where the Soviet Union could intervene. President John F. Kennedy said in a speech on August 29, 1962, that “The Monroe Doctrine means what it has meant since President Monroe and John Quincy Adams enunciated it, and that is that we would oppose a foreign power extending its power to the Western hemisphere…”
More recently, the Monroe Doctrine has been used with regard to China by Rex Tillerson, Trump’s Secretary of State, who described it in February 2018 as “clearly…a success.” Tillerson also said about the Doctrine that “I think it’s as relevant today as the day it was written.” President Donald Trump himself said in the UN on September 25, 2018, “It has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere…”
The point is that the US takes the principle of non-interference anywhere in the Western Hemisphere by anyone seriously. It simply does not tolerate it. It will go to war to defend it. In the view of the US, there is only one power that can intervene in the affairs of any country in the Americas, North, South, or Central — and that is the USA.
It goes without saying that this is not a right given by other countries to the US. But it does not matter whether other countries do or do not accept the validity of the Monroe Doctrine. The US believes in it. And the US will go to any lengths to protect that perceived right, including war. This is what India and Indians must understand.
If India orchestrated an assassination on Canadian soil on a Canadian citizen, it has violated the Monroe Doctrine, and the US is duty-bound to respond in the strongest possible terms, not only in order to respond to the specific incident, but in order that a precedent is not set that a foreign power can violate the Monroe Doctrine and get away with it.
If India authorized the killing of Nijjar, it has crossed a red line as far as the US is concerned, and the US will not be forgiving. There will be severe consequences.
US-Canada Relations
Many Indians are trying to paint Canada as an unimportant country relative to India. What they do not understand is that Canada is always hyphenated with the US. Indians also misguidedly think that India has become indispensable to the US because of trade ties and because of India’s importance in containing China.
Indians do not understand that Canada is America’s most important ally in the world. Canada and the US share the longest border between any two countries in the world. They have the strongest trade connection between any two countries in the world, thanks first to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the US and Canada in 1988; the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada, and Mexico in 1994; and the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Because of these agreements, doing business across the border is extremely easy. American and Canadian defense forces are tightly integrated. Americans do not need passports to visit Canada, and vice versa. The joint military cooperation between Canada and the US dates to 1940, when the Permanent Joint Board of Defense was formed, which coordinates policy-level consultation on bilateral defense matters. In 1958, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was formed to jointly monitor the air defense of North America by including the top military officers of the US and Canada. American and Canadian army, navy, and air force units integrate seamlessly. Canada and the US are extremely close culturally — most professional sports franchises operate across North America, including professional basketball, baseball, and ice hockey.
To imagine that the US would take India’s side over that of Canada is delusional in the extreme.
International Reactions
Many news outlets in India tried to present Canada as being isolated in its allegations against India. But the White House has made it very clear that this is not the case in the days that followed Trudeau’s announcement, and its ally Australia has also shown solidarity with Canada.
Canada made it clear very early that it was not speaking alone when it said that its information that Indian officials were involved in Nijjar’s killing was based on surveillance of Indian diplomats in Canada, and that some of that intelligence was provided by a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence grouping, which is the group comprising the intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Trudeau repeated his charge at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, and said that he had directly confronted Indian PM Narendra Modi with the allegations during his meeting in New Delhi earlier on the sidelines of the G20 meeting. Also, a senior Canadian official made it clear that the US was on board with Canada and agreed with Trudeau’s allegations when he said “We’ve been working with the U.S. very closely, including on the public disclosure yesterday.” What this implied was that not only did the US know what evidence Trudeau was referring to, the US was also aware that Trudeau was going to name India in his House of Commons speech, and agreed with the disclosure. It is important to realize that the US has not contradicted any of Canada’s assertions regarding its involvement in the investigation on Indian state involvement in Nijjar’s killing. Another member of the “Five Eyes” alliance, Australia, also notably said in an official statement, “Australia is deeply concerned by these allegations and notes ongoing investigations into this matter. We are closely engaged with partners on developments. We have conveyed our concerns at senior levels to India.”
There is no doubt what these statements mean. They are diplomatic ways to say that these governments agree with Canada’s allegations and that they have seen the intelligence that Canada mentions. Like the US, Australia also indicated that they were aware of the intelligence that Canada spoke of (“closely engaged with partners on developments,” “notes ongoing investigations into this matter.”)
If anyone had any illusions on where the US stood, the Americans, in a series of statements by various spokespersons at high levels, left India in no doubt.
First, US Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, said, “I would just say two things. One, those who are responsible should be held accountable. We hope that traditional friends and partners could cooperate in getting to the bottom of it.” Garcetti also said, “Canada is a dear friend, ally, partner and neighbour… we happen to care deeply for Canada just as we care deeply for India. And I think that moments like this don’t define our relationship. But they certainly can slow down progress. And they’re gut checks for everybody to say how do we interact with each other? What do we stand for? How do we enforce ideas like sovereignty and international law? And what are our responsibilities to one another?” Essentially, Garcetti was asking if India believed in sovereignty and international law, because why would any nation that believed in such things carry out a hit on another country’s soil? He did not say so explicitly, being a diplomat, but the intent is clear enough.
The US National Security Council’s spokesperson, Adrienne Watson, also said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that “Reports that we rebuffed Canada in any way on this are flatly false. We are coordinating and consulting with Canada closely on this issue.” She was responding to a report in the Washington Post that suggested that Canada and the US did not see eye to eye on the Nijjar issue.
Later, in a press briefing, Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Advisor, said, “It is a matter of concern for us. It is something we take seriously. It’s something we will keep working on, and we will do that regardless of the country. There is not some special exemption you get for actions like this. Regardless of the country, we will stand up and defend our basic principles. And we will also consult closely with allies like Canada as they pursue their law enforcement and diplomatic process.” Again, there was no explicit accusation on India, but the tough words were unmistakable. Essentially, they meant: if India did this, there will be serious consequences from the US, regardless of our relationship with them.
And perhaps the strongest words came from US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, who said, “From our perspective, it is critical that the Canadian investigation proceed, and it would be important that India work with the Canadians on this investigation. We want to see accountability, and it’s important that the investigation run its course and lead to that result.” He also added, “We are extremely vigilant about any instances of alleged transnational repression, something we take very, very seriously. And I think it’s important more broadly for the international system that any country that might consider engaging in such acts not do so.”
What should be clear to Indians from all these statements is that if India is seen to have orchestrated the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil, the US will not be influenced by its current relationship with India — the fact that it has been viewing India as a counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific. The reason for this is not that the US is a very moral and ethical state, but because, as was already pointed out earlier, the violation of sovereignty happened on the American continent, which is a violation of the Monroe doctrine, which is a red line for the US.
Many Indians on social media accuse the US of being hypocritical in its reaction to India’s alleged killing of Nijjar on Canadian soil. Didn’t the US kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan? Didn’t it kill Qasem Soleimani in Iran? What, then is wrong with India killing Nijjar in Canada, if indeed it did so?
The answer to that question is simple: might is right. The US knew it was committing an act of war against Pakistan with the assassination of bin Laden and against Iran with the missile strike on Soleimani. It was ready for the consequences because it is a superpower. It knew that Pakistan would not go to war with the US over this, nor would Iran go to war over the attack on Soleimani. But Pakistan responded when India attacked it in Balakot. The world is not symmetrical. Is India ready for war with Canada and the US over the hit on Nijjar, if indeed it had ordered it? The Monroe Doctrine is hypocritical and unilateral. The US sticks to it because it has the military might to enforce it. It is worth mentioning that the Monroe Doctrine was developed in 1823, and for more than a century, the US really did not have the military might to enforce it. But ever since the end of WWII, it has had that strength, and it enforces the doctrine. Of course it is hypocritical. The US claims that it has the right to strike anyone anywhere if it feels that there is a threat to its national security. But it does not give others the same right. That’s simply how the world is. There’s no point crying over reality.
While considering international reactions, it is important to realize what was not said. At this stage, Canada’s allegations are still only allegations to the world as a whole. Trudeau may have shared it with Modi, and the other members of the Five Eyes group might know of the evidence, but the rest of the world does not know. And yet, other countries in the world have not stood up for India. It is important to realize that saying that Canada’s allegations are serious and that India must cooperate with a probe are not the only way to react. A country like Brazil or Egypt could easily come out and say that while these are serious allegations, they do not believe that India would have done this. And yet, despite India’s pretensions to be a leader of the Global South, only two countries have so far publicly taken India’s side and made supportive statements: Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, Ali Sabry, called Trudeau’s allegations “outrageous and unsubstantiated” and claimed that “terrorists have found safe haven in Canada.” Bangladesh’s foreign minister gave India a vote of confidence, saying, “I think it is very sad. I don’t know the details of it, so I cannot make any comment. But we believe we are very proud of India because they don’t do immature things. We have a very solid relationship with India and these are based on values and principles.”
Given India’s long traditions of democracy and the rule of law, one would probably have expected that more countries, without knowing all the facts of the matter, would publicly state their confidence in India’s innocence in the matter. That nobody other than these two countries have said so indicates that despite Indian PM Narendra Modi’s innumerable foreign trips and attempts to court foreign leaders, despite the outreach to the African Union, despite hosting the G20 and BRICS summits, and many other efforts, including participation in SCO, outreach efforts with the Gulf states, etc., Indian diplomacy has essentially failed in the last nine years under the leadership of Modi and External Affairs Minister Jaishankar.
The Larger Western Context
It is important to see the Western reaction to India’s alleged violation of Canadian sovereignty in the larger context of Indo-US ties. By far, the most important international agenda item of the Biden administration has been the war in Ukraine. The US has already spent $150 billion on the war in military and economic assistance to Ukraine and has been at the forefront of trying to crush Russia through economic and military means. It has pushed all its European allies to stop trading with Russia even though they depended heavily on Russian energy for their prosperity. Two countries have steadfastly refused to join sanctions on Russia: China and India. China is too large an economy for the US to effectively pressure, but the US has tried its very best to try to stop India from buying Russian oil. Not only has India refused to stop buying Russian oil, it has also steadfastly refused to criticize Russia in UN Security Council resolutions. All this has been a serious irritant for the US. The US has refrained from slapping sanctions on India in retaliation because it sees it as a counterweight to China. But given how hard the US is trying to help Ukraine win against Russia, India’s fence-sitting must be extremely frustrating to Biden.
India is also a key member of BRICS, and a key plank of BRICS is de-dollarization — the move to decouple the partner countries in BRICS from the US dollar. The US wants the world to use the dollar as the currency for international trade. The war in Ukraine has made the global South realize that the US has the power to economically choke them, just as it tried to choke Russia by banning it from SWIFT. So the BRICS nations want to use a non-dollar currency. Such a move would greatly reduce American power. India’s presence in such a coalition despite being part of the US-led Quad alliance in the Indo-Pacific, along with Australia and Japan, has been a constant source of irritation to Washington.
At the same time, India has annoyed both China and Russia by being reluctant, both about BRICS expansion as well as about a BRICS non-dollar currency. The Global South is increasingly seeing India as not too keen on creating an alternative power center out of fear of antagonizing the US.
As a result of trying to please both the US as well as Russia and China, India has ended up pleasing nobody. This is why Russia, traditionally a strong ally of India, has made no statement regarding Canada’s allegations. India used to buy most of its defense equipment from Russia. But since Modi came to power, there has been a shift towards buying American equipment. This has not pleased Russia, and it has even gone ahead and worked on defense deals with India’s arch-rival Pakistan.
With China, India is anyway embroiled in a live military conflict in the Himalayas. The two countries have a very tense relationship. India routinely makes confrontational statements on China, accuses it of hiding the origins of the Covid pandemic, and accuses China of imperialism in the South China sea. India has even talked of prospecting for oil in the South China sea jointly with Vietnam, a move calculated to annoy China. So India cannot expect any diplomatic support from China.
The end result of all this is that India has very few friends left in the world if the West is against it. It has already burned its bridges with the other Great Powers. It has backed out of leadership roles in the Global South. As already mentioned, only Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have made statements backing India.
The US is not really concerned about human rights, religious freedom, or sovereignty. It has never bothered about human rights in various instances where there were egregious violations of human rights, as in the case of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, or Chile, to give just a few examples. The US has not worried about the sovereignty of other countries, as in the case of Yemen, where it has helped Saudi Arabia attack and invade Yemen with American aircraft and pilots. In Pakistan, which was a US ally for the longest time during the Cold War, people were and are routinely murdered for blasphemy, but this did not stop the US from giving billions of dollars in military and economic aid to Pakistan.
And so, American outrage on human rights violations, curtailment of religious freedom, or the violation of sovereignty by any country cannot be viewed in isolation. It must be seen in the context of America’s aims with regard to that country. When it is in America’s interest, the US ignores all problems with an ally. When the target country is not an important ally or is an adversary, the US talks daily about such violations, as for example in the daily rants on Xinjiang.
The US reaction to India’s actions with regard to Canada need to be viewed from this lens as well.
Does the US believe that India has outlived its usefulness to them?
There are many indicators that this might be the case. Complaints about human rights and religious freedom have become more and more shrill in Western countries over the last year. For example, just recently, the UN special rapporteur said that “India risks becoming one of the main generators of atrocities.” Also in 2023, Freedom House rated India on political freedoms and civil liberties as “partly free.” While there is no doubt that religious freedom in India is reducing, and civil liberties and human rights are decreasing in India, the fact that the West is only talking about these now and not in the last 9 years, when lynchings of Muslims, the bulldozing of their homes, random arrests, attempts to stop them from praying as they wished or eating what they wanted were commonplace, raises eyebrows. India has not been a great place for human rights ever since Modi came to power in 2014 — why is the West only talking about this now? Earlier, the BBC aired a documentary about Modi, talking about the pogrom in the state of Gujarat under his rule in 2002 and the lynchings and other human rights abuses since Modi became India’s PM in 2014 — all of it true, no doubt, but why a program on this in 2023? One of Modi’s top cronies, Gautam Adani, was recently stung by the American shortseller Hindenburg, which published a report accusing Adani of corporate malfeasance. Most people in India believe this, anyway, even without the Hindenburg report, but the report caused a tsunami in India and led to a marked decline in Adani’s fortunes. In June 2023, Time Magazine published a feature on India saying that “India’s Worsening Democracy Makes It an Unreliable Ally.” In March 2023, the New Yorker ran a piece titled, “Has Modi Pushed Indian Democracy Past Its Breaking Point?” The Guardian ran a piece accusing India of backsliding on democracy in June 2023. Also in July 2023, the Financial Times ran a piece titled, “Modi’s India is moving in an illiberal direction.” None of this is wrong, but all of it comes a few years late. Yes, things are bad in India. But they did not become bad in 2023. For example, on 31 August, 2019, India published the results of its “National Register of Citizens” in the state of Assam, in which more than 1.9 million Muslims were declared stateless and had to spend the remainder of their lives essentially as bonded slaves and prisoners. Many of these Muslims who had been declared stateless had lived in India for three generations, and did not know any country as a home other than India. Despite this outrageous violation of human rights, the US honored Modi with a state visit. The outrage seen today about the deterioration of religious freedom and erosion of human rights was not seen in the Western press when Modi was invited for a state visit.
So American media outrage on human rights and religious freedom is extremely selective, and is usually triggered to help the US government’s political objectives. The same America that was not worried about Pinochet’s death squads and Saudi Arabia’s capital punishment for adultery and amputation for theft is suddenly seized with the matter of human rights and religious freedom in India.
All this leads one to speculate (admittedly, this is only speculation) that perhaps Modi has outlived his usefulness to the US, which is why, if India is indeed involved in Nijjar’s killing, the US and Canada are taking it so seriously. Which is not to suggest that the incident is not serious (it is), but that getting rid of Modi may be an added motive.
If indeed this speculation is true, then Modi is in serious trouble. The US has an impressive past record of overthrowing rulers, whether in dictatorships or in democracies, and this cannot be taken lightly. India is also an extremely corrupt country. If the US decides to bribe enough people, they will be willing to not only put Modi in jail, but also expose all his crimes and tarnish his legacy and ruin his standing with the Indian people.
But even before they get to that stage, the US has several weapons to completely ruin India. All they have to do is brand India a state sponsor of terror. This will mean that India’s American and European partners will stop buying things from India, and stop selling things to India. They will completely cut ties with India. Indian companies will face the kind of hounding that Huawei faced in America. Indian businesses will have to shut shop in the West, and no Indian business will get a loan from any Western agency. The US could put India on the Grey List of the FATF, which Pakistan labored under for years. These are economically extremely expensive, and could cause a total economic collapse in India, and the fall of Modi’s popularity and his government. After that, regime change will be trivially easy. The US will not need to cajole Modi any longer. They can simply install a compliant puppet in New Delhi and have military bases all over India. Game over.
And, therefore, Modi has only three choices before him.
One, if India is not guilty of what Canada is alleging, come clean, cooperate with the investigation, and prove its innocence. On the basis of all that has so far been revealed by Canada, the US, and Australia, this looks unlikely. They seem extremely confident of the allegations.
Two, if India is indeed guilty, then offer something to the US that will get India off the hook — something like completely abandoning Russia and BRICS and moving over to the American camp.
Three, completely abandoning the US and seek protection from China and Russia.
This is because international relations are not based on right and wrong. They are based on power. The strong dominate the weak. The only option for weak nations like India is to find strong partners and become their vassals, so they can protect them from the other strong nations out there. It is no different from a shopkeeper paying protection money to a gang to save him from another gang.
And so, if India has fallen out of favor with the US, the only thing that can save Modi is to curry favor with China and patch up India’s differences with China at any cost, including surrendering territory demanded by the Chinese. Then India would come under Chinese and Russian protection, and Modi would be safe. There is no room for true “non-alignment” in the world. India is a founding member of the so-called “Non-Aligned Movement,” but in reality, it was always aligned with the Soviet Union, and for good reason. The Soviet bear was right next to India, and America is 10,000 miles away. Nehru and Indira were smart.
But the current strategy of brazening it out is extremely dangerous. If the US decides to use its expertise in regime change, Modi’s hubris could see him come to a sorry end, maybe like Gadhafi in Libya or Ceausescu in Romania. Only having a powerful patron on his side, like China and/or Russia, can guarantee Modi’s safety. Alternatively, he could apologize to the US and Canada, and agree to whatever they want from him as payment for the offence — perhaps making a decisive move to join the West completely — no more BRICS, no more SCO, no more arms sales from Russia, stopping the sale of S-400s, an explicit condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, hosting US military bases in India — and also hand over some minor Indian official to Canada and say that he acted alone without authority, with an assurance that India will ensure that such a thing will not happen again, and Canada will agree to quietly bury the issue.
There is no middle ground here.
In other words, Modi’s days of fence sitting have come to an end. Modi needs to pick a side, or he will be doomed.
An Alternative Vision: The Tale of Erdogan and Gulen
There are many people in India who think that if India actually killed Nijjar, it was the only response if he had actually been guilty of Khalistani terrorism.
But, as already discussed, carrying out an assassination on foreign soil is a violation of sovereignty and is a very dangerous thing for any state to contemplate.
For those asking what other options India has other than carrying out such assassinations, the tale of Turkey’s President Erdogan will be useful.
Erdogan has one enemy above all: the Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who once was his partner but with whom he fell out. Since 1999, Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania in the US.
The charges against Gulen by Turkey’s government are far more serious than those against Nijjar. Turkey accuses Gulen of trying to repeatedly overthrow the government. In 2016, there was a coup attempt against Erdogan, and Erdogan named Gulen as the mastermind of the coup. A Turkish court issued an arrest warrant for Gulen in 2016, and demanded his extradition to Turkey.
However, the US refused to believe Turkey’s claims that Gulen is a terrorist, and have refused to extradite him despite the most serious charges levelled against him. They have requested Turkey to give adequate proof to justify their allegations, and have claimed that the evidence submitted by Turkey is inadequate. Gulen has even been given peace awards by American institutions. Gulen is now 82, and will probably die a free man in America.
Yet Turkey has not assassinated Gulen on American soil. Erdogan knows how serious the consequences of such an act are.
So Turkey keeps trying to persuade the US to extradite Gulen. They will likely never succeed.
That is simply the way things are in international relations. You do not always get what you want.
Hopefully India did not do something foolish like order the killing of Nijjar. But if they had done so, things are going to get very ugly for Modi and his government.
