News analysis
How Trump’s blunt-force diplomacy is pushing his rivals together
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(From left) Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin on Sept 1.
PHOTO: EPA
Luke Broadwater and David E. Sanger
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WASHINGTON - At the US Capitol in January, India’s Foreign Minister was seated in the front row for US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a sign of the deepening ties that a generation of American presidents have attempted to forge with the world’s most populous nation.
Now, just months later, Mr Trump is publicly lamenting that India has abandoned him for the embrace of China, Washington’s strategic rival.
“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China
“May they have a long and prosperous future together!” he wrote.
It was a rare acknowledgment that Mr Trump’s attempts at blunt-force diplomacy, not to mention punishing tariffs, were having some unintended consequences.
The uneasy partnership to create an alternative to the West’s global leadership that began with China and Russia, then expanded to North Korea and Iran, may now be about to incorporate – at least episodically – India, the world’s largest democracy.
It is too early to predict whether Mr Modi’s visit to China
During the Cold War, India led the nonaligned movement, and it is skilled at playing superpowers off against each other. This may be one of those moments.
Later on Sept 5, Mr Trump tried to downplay his rift with India.
“I’ll always be friends with Modi. He’s great,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I just don’t like what he’s doing at this particular moment. But India and the United States have a special relationship. There’s nothing to worry about. We just have moments on occasion.”
Syracuse University professor of economics Devashish Mitra said that Mr Trump’s oscillating statements about India underscore the country’s concerns about its relationship with the US.
“Right now, India feels that the US is not a very reliable partner,” Prof Mitra said. “They thought the US was an ally. If India is moving towards China, it’s a friendship of convenience.”
In his social media post, Mr Trump made no mention of his own role in alienating India. But while Russia and China have been growing closer for years, the shift in the relationship with India has been on Mr Trump’s watch – and in large part because of his own actions.
In open pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize, Mr Trump claimed that he had “solved” the military conflict between India and Pakistan, angering New Delhi, which denies he had anything to do with a recent ceasefire
It has long been of the utmost importance in Indian politics that outside countries play no role in the delicate relationship between New Delhi and Islamabad.
On top of that, Mr Trump imposed heavy tariffs on India
But China is a larger importer of Russian oil, and Mr Trump has not imposed a similar tariff on Beijing, presumably because it has so many ways of striking back.
“President Trump likes to back his allies into a corner and then use that leverage to extract concessions,” said professor Joshua T. White from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. “Even if he succeeds in doing so with Prime Minister Modi, it could leave lasting scars on a relationship that is undeniably consequential to the United States.”
Mr Trump learnt strong-arm negotiation tactics during his ascent in the New York real estate world, and he has successfully used them to take over the Republican Party.
And while many countries have rushed to sign trade deals, visit the White House and lavish praise and gifts upon Mr Trump, some of the White House’s attempts to pressure other countries appear to have backfired, sending would-be allies into the embrace of China.
The biggest evidence of how Mr Trump has pushed countries that have been fundamentally pro-American into China’s camp came at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting this week.
That is where Mr Modi held hands and laughed with Mr Putin and Mr Xi, and held a long conversation with the Russian leader
But he was hardly alone.
The leaders of Egypt, Turkey and Vietnam, all of which have been hit by the Trump tariffs, were also at the meeting.
Each has been a significant, if sometimes reluctant, partner of the US.
And Mr Trump has alienated Brazil, largely out of pique over the trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro, whom he views as a political ally.
Mr Trump has punished South Africa, another nation the US had grown closer with, after complaining that white South Africans were being discriminated against by a new land law.
At a moment when he is expelling immigrants who entered the US illegally, he has invited the white South Africans to come to the US.
Mr Trump’s post was a change in tone from earlier this week, when he sounded nonchalant about China’s military parade in Beijing
Even so, Mr Trump made clear he was paying close attention to the gathering of world leaders.
On the night of Sept 2, he sarcastically posted for Mr Xi to “give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America”.
It was one of the first times that the US President had acknowledged the alignment of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – one of the biggest geopolitical developments of recent years.
Until now, the administration had largely dismissed the alignment of these powers or spoke about vague desires to pull Russia away from China, perhaps exploiting their long-running rivalry.
If anything, Mr Putin and Mr Xi seem closer than ever; they spent the better part of three days together.
When Mr Trump met Mr Putin in Anchorage in August
Reshaping of power is underway
There is little question that the approach Mr Trump has taken over the past seven months in office has helped drive this aggregation of aggrieved states.
These forces were at work before he took office for his second term, but they are accelerating as nations and leaders look for alternatives to tying themselves to the American camp.
In that regard, the scenes that emerged from China this week are a warning that a reshaping of power is already under way, and the US needs a strategy to deal with it.
Former Biden officials Kurt M. Campbell and Jake Sullivan, writing in Foreign Affairs this week, warned that strained US-India relations could cede the innovation edge to China.
“The current trajectory risks a split that would be difficult to mend, to the great detriment of both countries,” they warned. “As Modi’s chummy appearance over the weekend with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin made clear, the United States could end up driving India directly into its adversaries’ arms.”
India’s history under British colonial rule also has contributed to an aversion to being bullied.
In response to Mr Trump’s tariffs, Mr Shashi Tharoor, a member of the Indian National Congress and chair of its Committee on External Affairs, said in a televised interview: “I know there’s very serious anger, because the Indian public – don’t forget, after 200 years of colonialism... we are not prepared to be dictated to by any foreign power.”
Professor of international politics Rajesh Rajagopalan from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi said India was not keen to form a partnership with China.
The two countries recently had a deadly skirmish over their shared border
“The US hasn’t really lost India,” Prof Rajagopalan said. “Trump is trying very hard, obviously, to push India away, because, obviously, the claims that he’s making are difficult for any Indian leadership to accept. But outside of that, I think India is very keen on having a close relationship with the United States. If he wants India, he can get it back.” NYTIMES
