The Biden administration is nervously watching a dispute between Canada and India, with some officials concerned it could upend the U.S. strategy toward the Indo-Pacific that is directed at blunting China’s influence there and elsewhere.
Publicly, the administration has maintained that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations that the Indian government may have been involved in the killing of a Sikh separatist near Vancouver are a matter between the two countries.
But U.S. officials have also repeatedly urged India to cooperate in the investigation. Those calls have been ignored thus far by India, which denies the allegations.
Behind the scenes, U.S. officials say they believe Trudeau’s claims are true. And they are worried that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi may be adopting tactics to silence opposition figures on foreign soil akin to those used by Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and North Korea, all of which have faced similar accusations.
This might just be an ploy by US to make sure that India toes its line in condemning Russia, which it should do inspite of everything else, and stop buying Russian oil. Canada is being made a scapegoat in this without getting its own hand dirty.