Trump's Big Policy Rejig Poses an Unavoidable Challenge for India

New Delhi will have to re-examine its equations as the US resets its engagement with the world

- Harsh V. Pant

It has only been about a month since Donald Trump took over as US president, but the scale of changes he is bent on ushering in has cast a shadow across the world. There seems to be no geography that is not impacted by his initial steps. In an already volatile strategic landscape, these have added significant unpredictability. Trump seems to have no interest in continuing with the old traditions of American foreign policy and is redrawing the contours of US engagement with the rest of the world in some fundamental ways.

There has been much discussion about the centre-of-gravity of global politics shifting from the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. Washington has been responding to this imperative for a while now. But Trump has made it clear that Europe won't be getting the sort of attention it used to from the US anymore. The Russia-Ukraine war emboldened Europe into thinking that its value in the US strategic framework will get resuscitated. But Trump is having none of it. He is not only demanding that Europe fend for its own security, but in seeking a rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he is also raising the stakes for Europe.