Opinion In Trump’s world

Since the end of the Cold War, the intensity and scale of India’s engagement with the United States has grown rapidly. This expanding interaction was based on a set of presumptions about America’s unparalleled national power and its dominant role in international affairs. President-elect Donald Trump surprised his better known Republican rivals and the formidable Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, by questioning the sustainability of some of the policies that have had strong bipartisan support in Washington but have deeply alienated the working people in America. If this unabashed contestation of the Washington consensus was the basic source of Trump’s triumph, Delhi must recognise the possibility of real changes in the way America deals with the rest of the world.

It would not be unreasonable to assume that protectionist sentiment would grow in the US under Trump. For the last quarter of a century, political Delhi had the luxury of crying wolf against US-led globalisation even as India emerged as one of its major beneficiaries. As losers from globalisation within America compel Washington to rethink its economic openness to the outside world, the old formulas are not going to work for Delhi. As the mood darkens within the US against outsourcing of industry and insourcing of labour, skilled and unskilled, claiming a special entitlement for American visas and accusing America of protectionism are not going to do the trick for India. Delhi needs a very different strategy for enduring economic partnership with America that is in tune with the changing American domestic political dynamic and the logic of the fourth industrial revolution.

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As in the economic domain, so in the field of foreign policy, the fear of American power has driven Indian diplomacy. Despite the expanding bilateral partnership with America, a hedging strategy has seen India lapse into a nostalgia for non-alignment. But what happens to Delhi’s quest for a multipolar world if Trump’s America is no longer interested in acting the world’s beat cop? Even limited American retrenchment from the Eurasian landmass is likely to dramatically alter the equations among the regional powers. In this context, Delhi must stop obsessing with a question that has sucked all intellectual energy in India over the last few years: How close should we get to America? Instead, it must seek stronger partnerships with other Asian powers to secure a durable balance of power in the region. Stronger bonds with Japan, which is deeply concerned about Trump’s disdain for Asian alliances, presents itself at the top of that list. PM Narendra Modi, in Tokyo today, has the opportunity to begin a conversation with Shinzo Abe on the construction of a new Asian geopolitics amid the new American uncertainties under Trump.