Ted Cruz: 'Relations With India Have Worsened Significantly' Under Biden

 

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

At Wednesday's (March 2nd, 2022) Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized US-India relations under President Joe Biden. 

Ted Cruz: 'Relations With India Have Worsened Significantly' Under Joe Biden. Sen. Cruz blamed the Biden administration for India's abstention.

"Past year under the Biden-Harris administration, relations with India have worsened significantly, as was manifested, among other things in their latest abstention in the United Nations on the issue of Russia and Ukraine."

He said that it was due to the Joe Biden administration changing the priority of the Quad that is made up of India, the United States, Japan, and Australia from countering China to issues like climate change and development.

Ted Cruz in his House speech said:

I traveled to India in 2019 and I had the privilege of welcoming Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi to Texas to my hometown of Houston. When he came to the united states in the past year under the Biden administration relations with India have worsened significantly as was manifested among other things in their latest abstention at the united nations on the issue of Russia and Ukraine. Assistant secretary lew why is that what mistakes has the Biden administration made to cause the relationship between our nation and the nation of India to deteriorate over the last 14 months.

Lu replied and said:

Thank you, senator Cruz I will acknowledge that India and the united states have not voted the same at the united nations over this past week, I assure you that we continue to have an important dialogue with India at the highest levels to try to narrow that gap and to help India to see the importance that we place on a coordinated message to Moscow. 

Let me say though that in our outreach to India we have not failed to try to leverage India's relationship with Russia to try to call for a Russian withdrawal and a ceasefire that in the days immediately following the Russian invasion we have been in touch with Indian leaders and prime minister Modi called both presidents Putin and president Zielinski to call for an end to the fighting. 

In addition, we are asking for India to do more, and as I said well Mr luke the the the problem. 

you're asking them to do more but the relationship keeps getting worse and one of the aspects that has driven that India is a critical part of the security architecture that coalesced during the trump administration against China.

Countering china's aggressive behavior requires viable partners in Asia and beyond and the u.s India relationship is a cornerstone of our multilateral efforts as you know and as we've discussed our efforts to counter china were institutionalized in recent years in the quad framework. But under the Biden administration, the security dimensions of the quad have been significantly deprioritized in favor of other priorities such as climate change and developmental assistance meetings in march.

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