India at 79 and the tragedy of great power politics

India, aspiring for its own place under the sun in the international system would have to navigate the messy world of great power threat perceptions, responses and counter-responses.

- MONISH TOURANGBAM

Great power relations are in a tailspin and the competition-cooperation balance is in a quandary. Stable multipolarity at this juncture seems distant, and the crisis for multilateralism is a daunting reality. The threat from China's aggression and transgression has relegated to the background, with the sound and fury of Trump's economic and security policies quite literally shaking and stirring international relations, in ways not seen hitherto. It has merely been eight months since Trump entered the White House for his second term as the US President, but the avalanche of executive orders and policies that he has unilaterally pushed ahead, has every country on their toes and fastening their belts.

While Trump's foreign policy and national security team harped on how important the Indo-Pacific region is in US grand strategy and how significant regional partners are in "re-establishing deterrence" vis-a-vis China, Trump's tariff salvos are making allies and partners question America's resolve to put its skin in the game, and help them hedge against China's coercive practices.

With President Trump giving scant executive attention to the strategic exigencies, and consumed by winning short-term tariff battles, a region once central to US grand strategy, now seems a glaring blind spot. Speaking of the Indo-Pacific region, a country that through successive US presidencies in the last two decades has built a defining and multi-pronged partnership, is on the wrong side of Trump's shenanigans and mercurial tendencies. In the midst of bureaucratic negotiations over a mine trade deal, acerbic comments from President Trump calling India "a dead economy" and big "tariff abuser" have touched raw nerves, and exacerbated calls for protecting India's autonomy in the face of a bullying United States.