President Trump has a shrewd grasp of geopolitical realities, a trait he shares with PM Modi. Both leaders know that Cold War 2.0 is as existential a combat as Cold War 1.0 was.
NEW DELHI: Across the globe and not just in India, it is hard to beat the innate deal-making capacities of the Gujarati. When he boarded the Prime Ministerial long haul aircraft for Paris and Washington, the expectation among the anti-Modi crowd was that the US leg would be fraught with trouble over tariffs and trade. Instead, the bilateral meeting with the President of the US went cordially and superbly, both Heads of Government committed to an India First and US First policy respectively. President Trump walked the extra mile to ensure that his guest felt comfortable in Washington DC, an example being the accommodation arranged for the PM in Blair House, the official Presidential Guest House. After their bilateral talks, Trump made the rare admission that in Modi, he had met his match in deal making. Senior members of the US administration such as Vice-President J.D. Vance and Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Both would have reported to the President their take on the expectations of PM Modi as well as the warm and cordial feelings Modi has had for Trump since 2017. Vice President Vance had met PM Modi in France, as one of the three co-chairs of the Paris Artificial Intelligence Summit, together with Modi and Macron.
It was a sign of the damage President Trump is causing to the interests of the European elite that has been evident in the attacks on Trump in the UK and EU media. To give an example, few are aware that the bulk of Ukrainian bond debt has been underwritten by British banks, all of which will disappear once Ukraine is forced to work out a status quo peace deal with Russia. Small wonder that every British government since 2022 has prevented such a peace deal. Currencies that are mostly traded in the City of London are witnessing the end of their free ride on the back of the US. Libor, which is London-centred, is giving way to SOLR (secured overnight lending rate), initiating the breaking the expensive and hitherto expansive hold of the City of London on such transactions. Not a coincidence that the false Steele dossier against Trump was compiled in the UK. Both the UK and the EU will suffer a loss of control over much of the rest of the world, albeit in a different way. Small wonder that Macron and Starmer fear Trump policies. While PM Modi was in France, Macron made the amazing statement that France and India should in effect treat the US on par with China. His accompanying PM Modi to the airport to see him off may have been partly motivated by the fear that while MoUs were signed, no actual agreement on sale of Rafale and Scorpene was. Australia understood which country mattered more to its interests by scrapping the submarine deal with France and switching to the US for supplies, this time of nuclear-powered submarines. Only nuclear submarines are a potent weapon of war against a major adversary and not conventional submersibles. And should the US give India Gen 5 naval aircraft as the Russians are offering with the SU 57, those would trump less potent or geopolitically significant competitors, especially if several parts are made in India and technology shared with a country where a formal mutual defence treaty does not seem very far away. Too many companies in India have nourished MSMEs in offshore locations than in India, something that PM Modi will be looking askance at to ensure through more jobs that in 2029, the BJP gets a Lok Sabha majority on its own, although existing allies will remain with honour.
It was a surprise to hear Rajya Sabha Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge claim that the visit of PM Modi to the US and his meeting with US President Donald Trump was of no consequence. This writer deeply respects Kharge. The AICC President needs to understand that a strong India-US relationship is the most indispensable of any of the bilateral ties that either country has with another, a fact not unnoticed by US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel. Not just them but Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice-President J.D. Vance have been clear-eyed in their understanding of China as the key security threat to the US, and the need for a pivot to the Indo-Pacific from the Atlantic. He made this amply clear in the Euro-centred Munich Security Conference. Hence the need for the US to work with India in containing the Chinese threat into a sub-kinetic mode, especially where Indo-Pacific democracies such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and Malaysia are concerned, as also countries such as Vietnam and Thailand. In the latter, PRC influence has increased substantially, to the detriment of a country with a glorious history and tradition. In both Malaysia and Indonesia, the patriotic stand taken by their leaders has led to efforts at weakening and destabilizing them by elements linked to the PRC. Efforts by anti-Trump US governments to destabilise countries such as India and Bangladesh, where it succeeded in forcing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to India, get dwarfed in comparison to similar activities carried out by agents linked to the Chinese state.
Trump 2.0 is very different from Trump 1.0, and with good reason. During Trump 1.0, agencies and departments of the administration worked to sabotage the directives of President Trump, the elected President of the US. The subterfuge within was so marked that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the US military, General Mark Milley, called up his counterpart in another country and assured him that he would disobey his Commander-in-Chief President Trump and sabotage his instructions. As a consequence of his US visit and the meeting with President Trump, he has scripted Win-Win outcomes for the US and India in the face of the existential presently sub kinetic conflict both countries are facing from the PRC.
The country Milley had contacted in 2016 was not the UK, Japan or Germany, allies of the US, but the known adversary of the US, the PRC and to his counterpart there. He was understandably delighted to get such a call. No surprise that the PLA subsequently doubled down on its hostile actions against the Philippines and India, to scarcely any blowback from the US with its conquest of the ASEAN Sea, mislabelled the South China Sea, and the takeover of much of the sea and air space belonging to Taiwan, preparatory to an attempt to take over the island country itself. The biggest error Xi Jinping made was to wrest a third term as General Secretary of the CCP. Now for the rest of his life, he needs to hold the same office to prevent his lengthening list of foes within the CCP top rung from sending him to prison or worse. President Trump has a shrewd grasp of geopolitical realities, a trait he shares with PM Modi. Both leaders know that Cold War 2.0 is as existential a combat as Cold War 1.0 was, which lasted until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Cold War 2.0 will end either in the subversion and degeneration of the major democracies or with the collapse of the PRC. In such an outcome, Trump and Modi are indispensable partners of each other.