Dismiss any lingering thoughts about the comity of nations, let alone the “rules-based order” humanity was supposedly working towards over the past three generations. Now we are told we are back in the jungle, and might do right, while much of “the West” is reverting to “blood and soil” exclusion. Gaza has been the most obvious tipping point – and painful proof of double standards – but even that massacre of innocents is just one more fallout of America coming apart. The rest of the world always knew the tipping point was on the way for US hegemony, and that time is now. The only question remaining is how to manage the transition.
One thing we do know is the Trumpists believe this is their last chance to shake down the world, and that is exactly what they have been doing, sometimes farcically (as with the threats to seize Greenland because Denmark “is not a good ally”) and often with mindless cruelly (like when Vance hectored Volodymyr Zelenskyy). Of course, and in keeping with human nature, many countries and leaders have chosen to bend the knee, paying fealty to the pretend Emperor. Particularly shocking from India’s point of view is how Pakistan manoeuvred itself into the grifter-in-chief’s good books, including by nominating Donald Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for his “pivotal leadership” in brokering ceasefire with India earlier this year. In a trice, 30 years of bilateral gains evaporated to nothing.
Tanvi Madan of the Washington-based Brookings Institution (she specialises in Indian foreign policy) says we are in “one of the most challenging moments for the relationship since 1998. Then, the Indian nuclear tests, subsequent US sanctions, and joint Sino-American criticism of India represented a nadir. Today, there are not just divergences on Pakistan, Russia, and trade, but also trickier personal, political, and strategic headwinds. These headwinds can be tackled—they have been before, including in the first Trump term—but it won’t be easy.”
Writing on the Brookings website earlier this week, she explained how the “current moment’s elements of friction were predictable—and were indeed anticipated—apart, perhaps, from the Pakistan factor re-emerging. But the challenge is that they have almost simultaneously broken in a bad direction for India-US ties.”
It is certainly true that structural factors contributed to the rapidly deteriorating India-US scenario, but they were again roiled by what Madan describes as “Trump’s personal pique vis-à-vis India.” She says the US president “seems miffed that New Delhi, in contrast to Islamabad, has contradicted his claims that he averted nuclear war between India and Pakistan using the threat of tariffs. And the president’s negative mood might have opened the door to India critics in the US government to press their cases against Indian tariffs, Russia ties, or immigration—and made supporters of the India-US ties less vocal.” It set off a negative feedback loop as “Trump targeting India, in turn, has further fuelled the scepticism of America that dominates among the Indian strategic elite outside government. More significantly, the souring public mood has narrowed Modi’s domestic political space to do more with the United States (this had already been adversely affected by accusations that he’d agreed to a ceasefire with Pakistan under US pressure).”
Make no mistake, there are very high stakes involved. Madan says: “This is neither a dispensable relationship, as some in India have argued, nor an altruistic one, as some in the United States have. Both sides have invested in what is a high-maintenance partnership for a pragmatic reason: each side has seen the other as useful to its own priorities. That has led to active cooperation and, at other times, holding fire against each other. Both could be reversed.” At this point, [mending fences] would need both sides to feel they have achieved something they can sell as a win. But it would also require recognizing what is not possible; for instance, India will not sit down with Pakistan at America’s behest, and Trump will not cease his verbal volleys. That would be expecting India not to be India and Trump not to be Trump—a fruitless endeavour.”
It is a good insight, underlined even more bluntly by the Goan-American scholar Ashley Tellis – he is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – in his recent analysis in Foreign Affairs. “India and the United States are not aligned on all issues. New Delhi does not want a world in which Washington is perpetually the sole superpower. Instead, it seeks a multipolar international system, in which India would rank as a genuine great power. It aims to restrain not just China—the near-term challenge—but also any country that would aspire to singular, hegemonic dominance, including the United States. India believes that multipolarity is the key to both global peace and its own rise. It obsessively guards its strategic autonomy, eschewing formal alliances and maintaining ties with Western adversaries such as Iran and Russia, even as it has grown closer to the United States. This behaviour is intended to help advance a multipolar international order. But it may not be effective or even realistic.”
Tellis says: “If past is prelude, India will become a great power by the middle of this century, but it will be the weakest of a quartet that includes China, the United States, and the European Union.” He warns that “a liberal United States might continue to support a liberal India because helping it would be inherently worthwhile (provided that the costs were not prohibitive and New Delhi’s success still served some American interests). But if either India or the United States remains illiberal, there will be no ideological reason for the latter to help the former. To be sure, a narrower US-Indian relationship centred on interests, not values, will not be a disaster for either country. But it would represent shrunken ambitions. The transformation of the bilateral ties between the two countries after the Cold War was once conceived as a way to help improve and uphold the liberal international order. Now, that relationship could be largely limited to trying to constrain a common competitor, China. And if so, neither India nor the United States nor the world at large will be the better for it.”
(Vivek Menezes is a writer and co-founder of the Goa Arts and Literature Festival)