A jolt out of illusions

Indian policymakers should not be destabilised or thrown into panic because of US President Donald Trump’s ruthlessness in announcing his arbitrary high tariffs against Indian exports, including severe penalties for economic and military relations with Russia and other threats to Delhi’s foreign and trade policy autonomy. Nor should they be thrown off by Trump’s patently gratuitous affront of branding India as a ‘dead economy’.

Underlying these attacks on India is Trump’s fear that Indian technological, economic, financial and military strength may within 20 years spawn another peer challenger to the US’ global dominance similar to China. To prevent that, he wants to coerce a subservient junior strategic partnership on India, designed to make Delhi a proxy tool for promotion of the US interests in South, Southeast Asia and ASEAN.

At the same time, military strategists in the US would like to turn India into a military deterrent to China in support of the US leadership. They do not need Indians to fight in any war with China over Taiwan. But they do want Delhi to be under Washington’s control similarly to US control over NATO, the European Union, Japan and South Korea, which has curtailed their foreign and security policy autonomy for over six decades.

There is no need for panic because Trump needs Modi more than the other way around. Without India behind him, he will become the cause of steady disregard for America’s benign intentions in Asia and Africa. It will drive everyone further into the orbit of China, their near neighbour. Having already lost China, if Trump also loses India, he will be left without any reliable friend in Asia. Japan and South Korea are fair-weather friends, because they still have US occupation forces stationed on their territories. 

Delhi should now take a hard look at the broader situation and turn its focus on courting Americans and America, instead of Trump. He is already losing voter support because of coercive domestic and foreign policies that put his personal ideas at the centre, rather than the carefully balanced interests of all Americans.

Despite his pretensions, Trump is not America or Americans. In fact, most Americans, especially the young seem to like him less each day, because of his broken promises about bringing peace to Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Palestine. That includes many in Trump’s own MAGA movement of core supporters.

In just six months in the Oval Office, Trump has expanded Israel’s war against terrorists in Gaza to Lebanon, Syria and Iran. That is a direct result of his unconditional supply of lethal weapons and diplomatic support for Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s manifest harshness in Gaza and the West Bank and grabs of new territories in South Lebanon and South Syria.  Netanyahu has violated almost all central rules of the UN Charter, humanitarian laws and conventions governing war.

Through his astonishing bombardment of Iran, Trump has driven Tehran to resolutely renew its military strength with help from Russia, China and North Korea. He has put Egypt, Jordan and Azerbaijan on edge and pushed Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar to distrust his intentions in their neighbourhood.

In an egregious attempt to separate Pakistan from China, Trump has directly alienated India by siding with Islamabad, especially with raw material deals that prompted him to mockingly declare that Pakistan could soon become an oil supplier to India instead of Russia.  Hopefully, this short-sighted behaviour and his sudden bromance with Pakistan – despite its deliberate use against India of Jihadi terrorists in military alliance with China – has jolted Modi out of illusions about Trump’s character.  Hopefully, he is now being compelled to recognise that Trump seeks hegemony not friendship.

Trump lives in his own 20th century world, out of touch with modern realities, where he must adapt to other countries, whether foes or friends, because they no longer accept coercion. In this emerging geopolitical system, old military alliances or political groupings cannot intimidate other countries into subservience. Trump's coercions have forced each significant country, including NATO members, EU allies and India, to build its own economic and military strength by reducing dependencies on others.

Perhaps, Trump is driven to self-promote as a global strongman for fear that he might lose Republican majorities in the November 2026 congressional elections. When that happened in his first term, Congressional enemies imposed two successive impeachments on him, ousted him out from office in 2020 and tried to use ‘law fare’ to send him to jail before the 2024 presidential elections.   

The author is an international affairs columnist for Business India. He can be contacted at brijkk@gmail.com