Trump’s Discomfort

President Donald Trump’s remarks over India apparently getting closer to China very significantly underscore the discomfort of the US over New Delhi and Moscow’s growing partnership with Beijing. Trump made his discomfort open after Xi Jinping welcomed more than 20 non-Western leaders—among them the Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit held in Tianjin last week. It is worth recalling that the US has long regarded India as a crucial balance to China. But, as the SCO meeting, and more particularly Modi’s bonhomie with Xi Jinping, came close on the heels of Trump increasing tariffs against India, prompting him to reveal his discomfort. This underscores a recurring concern in Washington that New Delhi’s delicate balancing of Western, Moscow and Chinese relations pokes holes in strategic alignment. It is also interesting to note that the proximity shared by Modi, Putin and Xi Jinping also highlighted Moscow’s pivot to Asia under sanctions, which in turn has complicated the US’s attempts to isolate Putin. While the SCO summit photo shoot served as a symbolic declaration of Xi Jinping as a dominant figure among the great powers beyond the Western bloc and cemented Beijing’s vision of global leadership, it is inevitable that Trump is upset. The US President had on Friday said that India and Russia would now be too “lost” to China after their leaders posed alongside Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, and this despite the group being intended to loosen Beijing’s grip on the nations lining its self-claimed corridor for its global infrastructure project. A section of global strategic analysts, however, has said that India’s balancing act is now under strain. According to this section, Trump’s censure will test India’s ability to maintain its policy of “strategic autonomy” by deepening both its energy and defence partnership with both Russia and the West. Simultaneously, it is significant to note that Moscow’s importance vis-à-vis Asia has been on the increase, and Russia’s visible courtship of China and outreach to India at the SCO has served to underscore Moscow’s deepening consolidation in a non-Western camp. On the flip side, the credibility of the US is on the verge of being jeopardized, especially because of the Trump administration’s erratic tone, which threatens to undermine Washington’s own message to its allies about the urgency of countering Beijing. Another section of analysts, on the other hand, has described Xi Jinping’s act as a kind of soft-power coup. Xi Jinping’s reception of Russian President Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been seen as a reinforcement of the Chinese narrative of leading a multipolar world order, in the process casting the US as subtly isolated before the Global South. This is, however, only the beginning of a new alignment, one which was triggered off by the over-enthusiastic and unpredictable US President.