Modi-Trump talks: When the elder statesman meets the great disruptor

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a frequent visitor to the United States. But his visit this week is comparable in significance to his first trip back as PM in 2014.

- Prashant Jha

WASHINGTON:

After being denied a visa for years, Modi established himself as a political rockstar with the Madison Square Garden show in New York, built a strong working relationship with Barack Obama in Washington DC, and sent a clear geopolitical signal about his commitment to the strategic partnership. And that set the stage for the last decade of the deepening ties across three US administrations.

This time, Modi is returning to America as an elder statesman. Few leaders in the western democratic world have been in power as long as Modi and no one has comparable political experience. In a world of expansionists, despite the criticism that he may face from the opposition domestically, Modi remains a symbol of responsible international leadership.

This gives Modi stature, as reflected in the early invitation to White House. It makes him a key interlocutor on China, the Global South, the maritime domain in Indo-Pacific, West Asia, technology and supply chain diversification. And it gives him room to navigate the greatest democratically sanctioned political disruption of this century underway in the US.

For that is what President Donald Trump is attempting in his second term. From the remaking of the American State to bringing back the old construct of US dominance of western hemisphere, from a climate-insensitive energy policy to understanding global trade only through the lens of America's trade deficits, from emerging as a spokesperson for White people in societies such as South Africa to proposing outlandish solutions to crises such as the one in Gaza to dismantling the entire American global development assistance programme, Trump is remaking his country and the world.