Donald Trump’s remarkable election victory in the United States (US) and his imminent return to the White House in January 2025 are monumental developments not only for American domestic politics but also for global power relations. While the outcome of every American election is globally consequential, Trump’s second coming will be more crucial and impactful around the planet because of its timing and nature.
With the post-Cold War era of relative stability under a supposedly benign liberal US leadership having definitively ended, the stakes are higher today. As the world hurtles back into an age of intensifying competition and confrontation among major powers, the policies that Trump 2.0 adopts toward America’s peer rival China, lesser adversaries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and allies and strategic partners in Europe and Asia, including India, will matter greatly.
To its credit, the first Trump administration did read the tea leaves correctly and tried to conceptually reorient American foreign policy away from the US’s decades-long prioritisation of jihadist terrorism and non-State actor extremism as its primary threats. Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy named “the revisionist powers of China and Russia” as the main challengers to US dominance, ahead of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS).
It was during Trump 1.0 that Quad group of allies and partners, including Australia, Japan, and India, were revived from deep slumber to counterbalance China and keep a check on its territorial expansionism and aggression. The very term Indo-Pacific, which accords India a central role in shaping the pan-regional order, permanently replaced Asia-Pacific and got mainstreamed in the US government’s lingo and policies during Trump 1.0.
Yet, in practice, Trump 1.0 did not deliver what was necessary to curb China’s menace. Guided by his famously unorthodox isolationist instinct to minimise costly foreign commitments for protecting and shoring up allies and partners, Trump deliberately undermined America’s strategic credibility during his first term. By unleashing protectionist trade wars against not just China but all of the US’s European and Asian allies and strategic partners, Trump 1.0 weakened America’s cachet for strategic generosity and strategic reassurance. The mean and transactional side of Trump, which the Washington establishment and bureaucracy desperately tried to rein in, hurt confidence in the US and pushed many countries toward accommodating or succumbing to the demands of aggressive nations.
For example, the “bandwagoning” of the Philippines to China began under Trump’s watch, Nor was the question of whether the US would really fight to save Taiwan if China invaded clearly answered. His itch for striking showpiece deals with China, Russia, and other powers aiming to revise existing regional orders, and his conflating of allies and partners with opponents, left the US unprepared for the new era of conventional inter-State rivalry and warfare. Even though the Joe Biden administration attempted to reverse this atrophy from 2020, it fell flat. The strategic doubts about American leadership that Trump sowed in the minds of allies and partners persisted and will resurface strongly in his upcoming second term.
The landscape of geopolitics has changed unrecognisably, but Trump the politician and rebel has not wavered from his decades-long core beliefs, assumptions, and tactics. His innate economic nationalist tendencies to get tough on allies and partners, especially in trade and foreign investment, is unlikely to mellow in his second term. With nothing left to lose and a legacy of radical populism to permanently entrench in US policymaking, Trump could be more unpredictable and intransigent in his second term.
For India, Trump 2.0 calls for cool and rational reflection, recalibration, and readjustment based on a thorough assessment of what he and his brand of radical politics represent. Preserving and consolidating the US-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership, irrespective of who reigns in the White House, has been a byword of Indian foreign policy for the past several years. It is and will remain an absolute imperative due to the sharpening China threat that India faces to its security and its rise.
Given Trump’s obsession with trade deficits and his frequent verbal attacks on India as a “very big abuser” of tariffs, New Delhi may be better off seeking a classic Trump-style bilateral deal with Washington early in his second term. An initial perception that India is acting fair to US workers and companies will save a lot of bad blood and recriminations and ensure that two-way trade and investment flows remain robust.
On the geopolitical side, India must seize the opportunity of Trump’s condemnation of “barbaric violence” against minorities in Bangladesh and his vow to bolster “our great partnership with India and my good friend, Prime Minister Modi”. Lack of geopolitical coordination between the US and India on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh has been a sore point during the Biden presidency, and it will be an achievement if gaps are reduced under the umbrella of a renewed Trump-Modi personal bromance.
Even if Trump once again fails to execute a grand multilateral coalition-building strategy, India can harness his second term by aligning with the US on matters where bilateral interests intersect. The icing on the cake from a domestic Indian politics standpoint is that Trump and the Republicans are not prone to hypocritical criticism of alleged backsliding in human rights and liberal values. Still, despite the ideological congruence between the Indian Right and Trump, managing him and his unscripted ways will be a test for Indian diplomacy in the next four years.
Sreeram Chaulia is the author of the recently published book, Friends: India’s Closest Strategic Partners.The views expressed are personal
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