Given the power of the US Presidency over that country and thereby the world, the inexplicable actions of President Trump have brought in a maelstrom of uncertainty concerning relations with the largest economy in the world. Among his steps was a clampdown on several of the freedoms US citizens had earlier taken for granted.
When Albert Einstein sailed from a Nazifying Germany to Britain, he pointed out that innovation and accretion to knowledge can only take place in a society where ceaseless enquiry and tolerance towards multiple views manifest. A society controlled from the top and sought to be made monochromatic in thought would witness the perishing of the dynamic essential for long-term progress.
And so it proved for Germany, a country known for its scholarship, which was brought to the brink of irreversible ruin by Adolf Hitler and the millions who fell under his spell. In Britain, Prime Minister Winston Churchill trusted mavericks such as he himself was, and hence ensured that the loner Alan Turing was protected from superiors unable to sense his genius, and put him in charge of breaking the Enigma code.
This was the machine that protected secret German transmissions concerning military operations from being deciphered by the countries opposed to him. In the stasis commonplace among dictatorships where little gets done without sanction from the top, no effort was made throughout World War II to change the code in the Enigma machine. In 1941, Turing and colleagues working under his direction succeeded in breaking the code, and German war secrets began flowing to the enemy.
Rather than the “unbreakable” Enigma code being broken, Hitler blamed many of his generals and those in the general population who were caught murmuring against his dictatorship. They were blamed for the leakage of secrets and executed in 1944, without once considering the prospect that the Enigma code machine had been compromised by the British. A man of limited intellect and unlimited capacity for selfglorification, Hitler proved to be a curse not just to the rest of the world but to Germany as well. As for Einstein, he later sailed from Britain to the US, never to return to Europe.
A letter by him to the far-seeing President Franklin Roosevelt warning that Hitler may access an atomic bomb ensured that the Manhattan Project was launched, which culminated in the creation of the atomic bomb in 1945, after the war with Germany had ended but that with Japan was going on.
Such a missive would never have reached the top under a bureaucratic system Kafkaesque in its rigidity, which is what authoritarian states are. Hiroshima and Nagasaki paid the price for the unwillingness of the Japanese military to recognize the futility of carrying on the war after Germany had capitulated.
Fortunately, there is a universe of difference between Germany from the 1930s until the end of the war in 1945 and the US. The checks and balances within the most powerful democracy in the world will prevail over a leader who seeks to change history by rewriting or expunging it, and who seeks to alter the behaviour of friendly countries to suit what he regards as the US interest. Such a friend is India.
From 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has understood the importance of US-India ties and worked towards reinforcing them. India has now become the target of barbs directed from President Trump, for refusing to grovel before the US President in the manner than some in other countries have. Within the US, obsequious elements in the US media notwithstanding, blowback against President Trump is gaining momentum.
Those close to him would be wise to get an undated Presidential pardon of himself and those close to him drafted and kept ready in case of need. The present writer, who has been a well-wisher of Trump since 2015, is among those who would welcome a course correction by President Trump, a sentiment shared by others who used to admire a man who showed determination and courage in his fightback against the persecution he confronted during the Biden years.
They want the Real Donald Trump to come back from what he is turning out to be these days. Should that not take place, shifts in public attitude will ensure that those who follow his dictates without question shrink in number. There is a Latin proverb, of the Tertius Gaudens, or the golden third party, which benefits from a spat between the other two in a triangular situation. In what has turned out to be a downswing in aspects of India-US relations, the beneficiary is China.
Which is why it is ironic that Peter Navarro, who has been clear about the threat posed by the PRC to the US for decades, has publicly joined the bandwagon against India, implying that it is an unreliable ally. The fact is that it is the US under the Presidency of Donald Trump that is proving to be an unreliable ally, not just of India but several other partner countries of the US as well. Given the realities of present-day geopolitics, India-US ties will survive the Trump storm and once again thrive.
The new US Ambassador to India is welcome, and needs to avoid being an echo chamber for President Trump, but a conveyor of the mood towards the US not just within top policymakers but within the populace as well, thanks to recent tariff and other threats. Among those in the US with the courage to convey truth to power is Steve Bannon, who recently warned that both the World Wars in the previous century originated in security guarantees, and warned that so could the next.
This was in the context of reports that President Trump was leaning towards providing an Article 5 security guarantee to Ukraine. Under Article 5, any guarantor is automatically bound to declare war on any country identified by the country to whom the guarantee is given. Given the circumstances enveloping the Russia-Ukraine conflict, such a guarantee could mean a US-Russia war for the first time ever, a disaster not just for both countries but for the rest of the world as well. India is acting correctly by facing the storm unleashed on its trade by moving towards greater self-reliance.
At the same time, despite public warnings from President Trump, key US software and other technology companies will continue to operate in India, given that the country has an abundance of skills within its population and an abundance of opportunity in its expanding market. Signing an FTA with India makes sense for the US, rather than avoiding one through demands impossible for a democratically elected government to fulfil.
A truism that Peter Navarro, with the clarity of vision he has long exhibited, will come to understand. There are many in the White House orbit who understand the consequences of adopting for long the policy courses being promoted for now by the US President. The sooner they succeed in convincing President Trump about the need for a course correction, the better not just for the countries that are presently his target, but even more for the US itself.
