There were high hopes late last year that “Trump Will Repair The Damage That Biden Dealt To Indo-US Ties” due to the high-level Indophilic officials that he planned to surround himself with, yet despite a decent meeting with Modi in February, the US is once again trying to subordinate India. The first troubling sign came after Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries, which was followed by him threatening to rescind or modify India’s sanctions waiver for Iran’s Chabahar Port.
Several months later in early May, Trump then repeatedly claimed to have mediated an end to the latest Indo-Pak conflict, which was contradicted by official sources in Delhi. These analyses here and here attempt to shed light on the method behind the madness of him unexpectedly damaging bilateral ties in this way. In brief, it was posited that he envisages reshaping South Asia in a way that hamstrings India’s rapid rise as a Great Power, all as punishment for not subordinating itself as the US’ junior partner.
About that speculative goal, it was almost explicitly confirmed last week by Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick during his remarks at the eighth US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, where he slammed India for continuing to purchase Russian military equipment and remaining a BRICS member. Regarding the first, the S-400s and jointly produced BrahMos supersonic missiles greatly helped India during the latest conflict, while BRICS membership helps accelerate financial multipolarity processes.
Nevertheless, the documented trend is that India is developing more equipment indigenously while rebalancing more Russian military imports with Western ones, all while officially denying any hostile de-dollarization intentions but also still defending the need to rebalance its foreign currency reserves. Regardless of however one might feel about these policies, they’re India’s sovereign right to practice, and neither of them objectively goes against the US’ interests.
In fact, the argument can be made that they actually bolster the aforesaid, but only if perceived from a vantagepoint different from Trump 2.0’s presently regrettable one. A strong and prosperous India serves as a partial counterweight to China, but this requires obtaining the best defense equipment possible and not being subjected to any financial weaponization, ergo the importance of Russian arms and diversifying its foreign currency reserves. Trump 2.0 sees things differently.
While paying lip service about the need for a strong and prosperous India, it also doesn’t want India to be too strong or prosperous as this could accelerate the global systemic transition to multipolarity in ways that speed up the US’ decline as the unipolar hegemon, hence the need to control its rise. To that end, the previously mentioned methods have been employed alongside a reportedly new investigation into Indian tycoon Gautam Adani, whose conglomerate’s activities are crucial to India’s continued rise.
All this being the case, if there isn’t soon a course correction and India remains defiant by refusing to subordinate itself to the US, then the newfound trouble in their ties might catalyze larger trends. For instance, continued trouble in Indo-US ties could lead to improved Indo-Sino ties if Trump’s “total reset” with China falls flat in parallel, while ties with Russia might become more important than ever. Ultimately, South Asia might indeed be reshaped, just not in the way that Trump 2.0 currently envisages.
