Analyst: Canada’s India Spat Part of ‘Carrot-and-Stick’ Effort to Bring New Delhi Back into US Orbit

Canada would never create such a rift with a US partner as it has with India without some kind of direction from Washington, an expert told Sputnik. Analysts should be wary of accepting the spat at face value, as it’s likely part of an effort to intimidate India into being more cooperative with the West.

Relations between Canada and India have continued to sour after Ottawa accused the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of a “link” with the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen who headed an Indian secessionist group known as the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), in British Columbia earlier this year.

New Delhi has denied any involvement in Nijjar’s death, calling Canada’s accusations “absurd and motivated” by a political agenda. Modi has previously appealed to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to block activities by Indian separatist groups on Canadian soil, saying they posed a threat to Indian-Canadians.

The two nations are both partners of the United States, with Canada being part of the NATO alliance and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing community, and India being part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) anti-China grouping. However, New Delhi has also remained political, military, and economic partners with Russia amid US attempts to isolate Moscow, especially since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine last year.

Writer and activist KJ Noh told Sputnik on Wednesday that it was likely Canada was being used by Washington as a bludgeon to try and force India back into line.

“I think it's significant in that, you know, Modi is clearly being tarred in the mainstream press. But the cynical part of me sees this as a carrot-and-stick approach to India. That is to say, the US is very, very unhappy with India because it refuses to align with the US, it's keeping its neutrality, it's still importing fuel from Russia,” Noh told Radio Sputnik’s The Critical Hour.

“And, of course, you know, that weakened the Quad formation. And they also want to see if they can use India to disrupt BRICS,” he added.

“And so this is part, in my opinion, of wielding the stick against Modi. They have the carrot, which is all the research and industrial collaboration or military production, which [Assistant US Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs] Eli Ratner has boasted about from the rooftops. And at the same time, they also want to do a squeeze on him and tell him: ‘if you don't come along, there's a lot of human rights stuff that we can throw at you.’”

“And I think that as far as Canada is concerned: remember, Canada is the US’ poodle,” Noh noted. “It does not do anything without the US telling it what to do, how to do it, when to end, exactly what to say...They broke every rule in their book. So Canada is clearly not interested in human rights, and it's certainly highly unlikely that this attack dog/poodle would suddenly go off the leash and make these exorbitant claims unless there was not some kind of coordination happening.”

“There's no way Trudeau would have done anything by himself. The man doesn't have an autonomous bone in his body. But realizing that these people are not your friends, they simply need to understand that being friends with the United States is deadly to them. As we've said many times, that Kissinger quote,” Noh said, referring to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s quip that the US doesn’t have permanent friends or enemies, only interests.