In the first high-level contact with the incoming Trump administration, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has met Congressman Michael Waltz, US President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for National Security Advisor (NSA). Jaishankar, who is currently on an official visit to the US from December 24-29, said on social media platform X, “Delighted to meet” Waltz “this evening”. “Enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation our bilateral partnership as well as current global issues. Look forward to working with him,” he said. Waltz, 50, would replace Jake Sullivan as the National Security Advisor on January 20, when Trump would be sworn in as the 47th President of the US. A three-term Congressman from the sixth Congressional District of Florida, he is Republican Co-Chair of Congressional India Caucus, which is the largest country-specific Caucus in the US House of Representatives. Waltz is a known China hawk and has held pro-India views over the years. He has advocated strengthening US defence and security cooperation with India. He has also criticised China’s trade and economic practices and has long called for reduction of American dependence on China’s manufacturing, and strengthening US technology. The choice of key officials on foreign and national security policy is a window to the priorities of the Trump 2.0 administration. Waltz also co-led a Congressional delegation to India in August last year and attended the Independence Day celebrations at Red Fort. He has been the sponsor of several India-friendly legislations in the House of Representatives. While there has been a bipartisan consensus towards strengthening Indo-US ties in both New Delhi and Washington, the change in the administration, especially after an extremely polarising campaign and a divided polity, poses certain risks in the short term. Jaishankar, who has handled the US account for almost four decades as a diplomat and then as a minister in the last five-and-half years, is aware of the political environment, and wants to insulate the bilateral engagements and mechanisms from being derailed due to the change in the administration. And, that is the effort, especially the ones which are extremely important from a strategic perspective. New Delhi is not worried about the Quad initiative that was revived by Trump in his last administration in 2017 and was elevated by Biden to the leaders’ level. But, it wants to ringfence one of the key initiatives launched by the Biden administration, the iCET (initiative for critical and emerging technologies), that has got NSA Ajit Doval and US NSA Sullivan to lead the conversation cutting across tech and strategic domains, from AI to quantum computing, semiconductors to space. Waltz will take over from Sullivan, and the meeting with Jaishankar is an important step towards strengthening that initiative. With Beijing making inroads and leaps in these sectors at a rapid pace, India would want the US to further strengthen this initiative – New Delhi wants to be part of the whole supply-chain ecosystem.
