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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has good reasons to be looking forward to Donald Trump’s second term in office as US president. After decades of a nearly antagonistic relationship, US President Bill Clinton offered India in 2000 a new partnership and, thus, relieved the second Asian giant from a growing international isolation. Indeed, India having lost its long-time friendly partner in international affairs after the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union and having added actively some more isolation by acquiring illegally, i.e. against the rules of the NPT, the international treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Arms, its own capacity of producing nuclear weapons, somehow felt lost in international relations. Clinton’s most friendly and wise initiative allowed India, to join the economically thriving global community as a promising emerging country.

All successors of Clinton, up and until Joe Biden, have followed his initiative and have developed and deepened the relationship. India’s road to where it stands today in geopolitics, has been bumpy and the country’s governments have not stopped upholding controversial positions in Western eyes. Over the long term, however, the country’s trajectory has clearly moved closer to Western, especially US positions. The set of cooperative arrangements in many fields has been widened and make India a partner for the US of growing relevance. India may still be a recipient of Russian procurement goods, be keeping military arrangements alive and has become one of the most eager buyers of Russian oil, but Western partners like the US, France, Israel and others are essential for India’s development in high-tech industries including armament. At the same time, the lack of formal alliance obligations keeps India independent from Western expectations to join them in cases of conflict. This circumstance allows India also to abstain from complying with Western sanctions against Russia or Iran.

A future US President Trump most probably will be able to live with that set of conditions of Indian policies, even more that India represents an important asset in whatever strategies the US will choose to counter further Chinese expansion in the Indo-Pacific. After years of communicative hesitations, Modi has finally accepted to officially concede and stress that their engagement in the Quad, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is meant, also for India, to contain Chinese expansion in Asia. China remaining a traumatic adversary after more than seventy years, Modi’s association with the US is in his country’s best interest in the decade-old conflict along the territorial border in the Himalayas and more generally regarding the rivalry between the two Asian giants over their influence with the global South currently dominated by Chinese leadership.

The same obsession with China makes it improbable that Russian ties will prevail in the long run. Russia’s strategic weight has dramatically diminished: from a traditional supporter against China’s hostile policies its leader Putin has become heavily dependent on that Asian superpower himself for surviving in his ill-conceived policies of trying to realise imperialist dreams.

The one delicate dimension of possible Trump policies will be his inclination to trade protectionism. Import tariffs he is threatening global exporters with could be very damaging for India’s strategy to grow as an industrial hub for the world and as an export economy. But Modi, who was comfortable with Trump’s character and unpredictability during his first term in office, seems to be confident to remain in a fruitful relationship with a Trump 2.0 government. India’s economic plans and strategies will depend more and more on the association with Western networks and institutions anyway; an alternative association with China, Russia or any partner in the global South will not replace the West for long.

If the political and economic power equations, despite unruly moves of late, remain manageable overall, the most recent dramatic developments in the Middle East like the Israel-Palestinian conflict turning into a direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran, have the potential to generate essential changes to power equations in the region and beyond. Finally, the very recent break down of Assad’s regime in Syria will have consequences first for the Arab world and Iran and Russia, but soon also for all other stakeholders of the region. India, who has been cooperating with Israel in high-tech procurement projects for a long time and, at the same time, is living on important remittances from Indian labour force deployed to Arab Gulf states, will not be able to keep away from that central battleground of global competition for dominance and influence. The “Zeitenwende”, German word for turning point of historic dimension, often used since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, remains the key term for the current moment. Political unpredictability in all directions, of which expectations regarding a Trump 2.0 chapter to history are just one factor of many, becomes the hallmark of our time.

17^th December 2024 / Philippe Welti        

 

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