Trump tantrums complicate India’s strategic challenges

There’s something about Donald Trump's outbursts against India, which even benchmarked by his own standards, feel more unhinged than usual.

- Barkha Dutt

Particularly revealing is the so-called threat of penalty against India for purchasing oil from Russia, as if India were a recalcitrant schoolkid and the American President our class monitor.

There is zero ideology at play here.

Until a few months ago, Trump called Viadimir Putin smart and a friend. He thought nothing of shouting, as cameras captured it all, at Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's President, inside the Oval Office. And let’s not forget that in his first election, his political opponents accused his campaign of being influenced by Russia. Trump has been dreaming of a rare earths deal with either Kyiv or Moscow.

So to hector India on relations with Russia is not just out of line; it's a display of staggering hypocrisy.

Trump's attacks on India — the uncouth language and sneering style—seem to be personally motivated, well beyond the stated aim of rebalancing US trade numbers. If one were to borrow from the language of therapy and gender studies, these are the irrational rants of a bruised male ego hell bent on gaslighting his partner with bullying tactics and fantastical claims.

What pushed Trump, never known for reasonableness, over the edge?

Trump's obsessive fixation on his administration’s role in Operation Sindoor is positively weird. Do you remember Bill Clinton talking like this when he read the riot act to then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the middle of the Kargil war of 1999? Or David Cameron, UK’s Prime minister during the 26/11 terror attacks making asong and dance of the fact that he and members of his government had been working the phone lines to leaders in both India and Pakistan.