US President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee for secretary of defense Patrick M Shanahan, which was announced Thursday, will have really big shoes to fill in New Delhi\u2019s estimation as he succeeds James Mattis, who had emerged as this administration\u2019s most fervent supporter of ties with India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But shoes that he seeks to fill are large, too large in \nfact, for Indians. Mattis has emerged as the key figure in the Trump \nadministration for ties with India after his path-breaking pubic appeal \nto US congress at a hearing to exempt some countries from US sanctions \nfor buying Russian defense equipment. He had named India and Vietnam as \namong them, though not specifically asking for them to be exempted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shanahan\n has been acting secretary of defense since December, when Mattis quit \nprotesting Trump\u2019s decision to withdraw troops completely from Syria. \nHis nomination will need to be confirmed by US senate, which is not \nexpected to be a problem as it is controlled by Republicans, the same \nparty as the president, and Shanahan has been largely uncontroversial \nand unproblematic so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since being designated acting secretary\n of defense, he has kept a low profile and focused on delivering not \nshaping White House directives and initiatives such as the Space Force \nand diversion of appropriated defense funds towards the president\u2019s \nborder wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India remains in talks with Russia for the S-400s \nand though no transactions have taken place yet, sanctions under US law \nCountering America\u2019s Adversaries Through Sanctions continue to cast a \nshadow over the proposed purchase and ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the Trump \nadministration, Shanahan has been a good bet. \u201cBased upon his \noutstanding service to the country and his demonstrated ability to lead,\n President Trump intends to nominate Patrick M. Shanahan to be the \nSecretary of Defense,\u201d White house press secretary Sarah Sander Huckabee\n said in a statement.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee for secretary of defense Patrick M Shanahan, which was announced Thursday, will have really big shoes to fill in New Delhi\u2019s estimation as he succeeds James Mattis, who had emerged as this administration\u2019s most fervent supporter of ties with India. But shoes that he seeks to fill are large, too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60976,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60974\/revisions\/60976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}