Whether one is reading in the print media or listening to a news broadcast, the most confirmed optimist may slip into dismay. After centuries of going against our natural habitat, Mother Nature is hitting back through weather changes that convert temperate zones into cauldrons of heat and regions of moderate to no rainfall into areas where the rain comes mercilessly and sweeps away homes and destroys livelihoods.
Almost every world leader appears to be chasing the Nobel Peace Prize, despite several of its recipients having been culpable in decisions that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Overall figures of economic growth mask growing gaps between the rich and the poor. Those in the middle class are more likely to drift downwards into the ranks of the poor than to graduate to the status and privileges of being rich. To those who are struggling to escape the growing clutches of pennilessness, the privilege of voting every few years for one candidate seems peripheral in the achievement of needs.
There was never any “free trade”, for every Free Trade Agreement (FTA) contains barriers to trade that are far from free even where such barriers have been removed, as tariffs remain even if lowered. After decades of indifference, a fightback is gaining pace at the way in which China has been hollowing out industries and services across the world. Success thus far in such an effort is often resulting in a more aggressive posture towards retaining or winning claims that have no historical or other justification. A “rules based international order” is a euphemism for a world where the strong set the rules and the weak are expected to meekly follow. In the past, the West led by the US set the rules for others to follow.
Now China is setting the rules that it expects other countries to follow, some of which are beginning to. As for India and the US, arguably the most important relationship for both countries where international security based on equity and not domination by any single country, the relationship is passing through stormy times. Prime Minister Modi has delegated large chunks of the “US account”, i.e. relations with the US, with his hand-picked group of officials and ex-officials, overall a very able and capable group. Such delegation of authority by the leader of a government is necessary in a world growing more complex by the day. However, President Donald J. Trump appears to be handling the “India account” by himself, as indeed seems to be the case with several other countries, such as Brazil, or blocs such as the EU. He chose a very capable Secretary of State in Marco Rubio, but in several matters relating to foreign policy, Secretary Rubio appears to be acting less as the key adviser on foreign policy to the US President than as an echo chamber repeating the President’s lines and justifying his policy courses.
President Trump appears to believe that he is the foremost domain specialist across a wide swath of domains critical to US interests. By ignoring (where his often zigzag policy courses are concerned) the very able Cabinet he assembled after his swearing in as President of the US on January 20, 2025, President Trump is doing a disfavour not just to himself but to the country he leads. By so doing, he has provided a lifeline to an individual fixated on the objective of reducing the international status of the US to a position inferior to China, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping. Witnessing the policy gyrations of his adversary Donald Trump, Xi and his diminishing number of confidants will be heaving a collective sigh of relief. All that they need to do is to leave President Trump to his own devices and to follow the policy course he has set for himself.
President Trump will do the rest of the work for China. There does not appear to be an end in sight to the manner in which President Trump is imposing the policies favoured by him since the 1980s on not just the US but the rest of the world. At what level does the level of approval of US voters need to fall to serve as a reality check for the 45th and 47th President of the US? Even at present, arguably he has the lowest approval rating amongst US voters of any President of the US from the time such metrics were collected. That seems to be insufficient in making the US President rely less on his own basic instincts and more on the very able Cabinet he assembled on being sworn in.
The first signs that his loyalists in the Republican Party have begun souring on President Trump has been visible in the manner in which the Epstein matter has remained on the surface of US politics rather than be buried away from the public eye as it was for long where US administrations were concerned. Despite the delaying tactics of Speaker Mike Johnson, who appears willing to have his political trajectory flame out rather than go against the wishes of the President, legislative edict to unlock the Epstein files appears to be only months if not weeks away.
This columnist has been favourable to President Trump from 2015 onwards, as the distinguished members of the United Services Institution of India can testify. He predicted to them at an open meeting that Trump would be the next President of the US even before he had declared his candidacy. For the sake of himself, the sooner President Trump “smells the coffee” and emerges back into the world of the 2020s where his policy decisions are concerned, the better for him, the country and to the democracies which much prefer the US to China as Numero Uno in the world order.
