Trump turns a blind eye, Modi is learning a course on hard work on India’s position in the new world order | Mukul Kesavan

wHen Donald Trump won his second term and India’s ruling elite must be happy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s performance job search for King Donald, whether in office or out, raised a special chemistry between these two giants of power.

When Trump set out to reshape global trade and geopolitics through weapons tariffs, India Engage trade negotiations with the United States as soon as possible. Taking on negotiations in New Delhi will be difficult given its red line on agriculture and dairy. However, it is optimistic about deals commensurate with India’s economic weight and strategic value to the United States.

Instead, Trump slapped India at a 25% tax rate for the first time in April, which itself exceeded the interest rates imposed by most of the U.S. allies. Now there is Doubled to 50%as a punishment for India’s purchase, refine and export of Russian oil during the country’s war against Ukraine. This tariff rate will allow all non-competitive exports from India to the United States.

Modi is very proud Special relationship with Trump It looks ridiculous now. and It’s not just tariffs. India-Pakistan’s brief war after the Pahargam terrorist atrocities in April, Trump and his vice presidents JD Vance, Treats India and Bakistan were South Asian neighbors that had to order through U.S. intervention. Trump insists his phone threatens to force India and Pakistan Stop fighting It seems to be India and Pakistan as unruly troubles, which is a humiliating equivalent India has the responsibility to deny it. Since then Being suggested The real trigger for the 50% tariff is that India denies Trump, desperately needs to win the Nobel Peace Prize and be honored for building peace.

Trump made it clear that this was a punishment. He sees India as a “dead economy” while his chief trade adviser Peter Navarro accused India of making profits by buying discounted Russian oil. He even described the Ukrainian conflict as “Modi’s war.”

This shocking breakdown of the relationship has led to Modi’s decade-long effort to play a connected world politician. In retrospect, his photography battle with world leaders describes his photo OP’s vibrant embrace and excessive Bonniemi. But it is a mistake to think about this twist purely in the Indo-Us relationship purely on the strong side.

Geopolitical mooring equipment in major powers such as India is not easy to relax. Non-Aligned – India’s Cold War-era positioning was neither capitalism nor communist – due to its Nehruvian precedent, it was not a fashionable term in Modi’s India, but his foreign policy attempted to maintain India’s freedom of movement in a multipolar world. Now, unconjugation may fly under the banner of “strategic autonomy”, but its goals are not different. Until recently, India was unable to buy Russian oil under the default blessing of the Biden administration, improve Russian oil and re-export it to Europe, and was not until recently seen as an example of such a bound desire.

What changes is that over the past quarter century, the political class in India has begun to see the United States as its natural partner. It is the main destination for India’s exports and an ideal destination for its ruling elite children. Manmohan Singh, who signed the Indian nuclear deal, has leaned towards Washington since Modi’s predecessor. The four countries (Japan, Australia, the United States and India) are composed of four countries that aim to thwart China’s design in the Indo-Pacific region and are widely seen as a sign of this Western tilt.

This tilt leads to a strange imbalance in India’s foreign policy. India has firmly planted strategic autonomy in strategic autonomy, through unsolicited alliances and resonances that do not conform to substance, to be intimate and personal. India’s policymakers under Modi believe that India’s economy and its growth rate have lifted it to the top of the world’s top rankings.

The truth is that India is not wealthy enough that white or English-speaking people are enough to be a member of the charter of the Western or English-speaking world. Modi’s Mandarin forgets – outside the charming circles of the West – the United States has no allies, it has customers. Trump’s decision to further raise tariffs on India Remind us that the U.S. president often sees India as a help seeker or a nuisance or both.

Experts believe that Trump is a calves, and in economic and geopolitical terms, India-US relations are too important economically and on the planet to last. Trump is more likely to lead the curve, and he says loudly that other Western leaders are still limited by freedom practices.

Western mercy has always been based on Western hegemony. Once the climate crisis and China’s rise clearly show that Western supremacy has not been given the scope of the future. Once the promise of stable economic growth was promised, modern measures of secular progress became unfulfilled, and Western-centrists began to get rid of the world order they created in Pompeii. Gaza is the sum of this separation. Due process for the WTO, overseas aid, asylum seekers, international humanitarian law, the United Nations system (the entire post-war order established by the West and led by the United States) was abandoned as wealthy countries circled around the needy, unruly world.

This led to the near-consent of the far-right parties in the formulation of the agenda of Western countries. Trump-Trump propaganda has become inevitable. Nigel Farage, Jordan Bardella, Alice Weidel, Viktor Orbán have vibrant evidence that Trump’s nativism and protectionism are a reality for India and non-Western countries that both India and non-Western countries must compete with for the foreseeable future. (One of the revelations of Trump’s second term is that European leaders are willing to make themselves publicize the United States.)

Despite all the liberal hand that he led by Trump’s rude men, the European political class will follow. Trump’s tariffs are not whimsical, but omens. They are bricks on walls being built in the West to strengthen their compounds.

Modi, like the Indian Prime Minister, is also understanding that geography cannot transcend geography and inconsistency is not choice – this is necessary. India’s position in the world often demonstrates it with severe restrictions. It cannot be equal to the United States like China. Like the EU, we can’t kowtow to Trump like the EU, just like customers seeking protection. India will continue to walk the ropes, shaking in this way as it negotiates a hostile world under the gaze of its vulnerable people.