Trump pushing Delhi towards Beijing, says ex-NSA Sullivan

Sullivan, a top aide in ex-President Joe Biden’s administration, told Tim Miller in The Bulwark Podcast: “When I go to these places now and I talk to leaders, they are talking about derisking from the US. They now see the US as the big disruptor, the country that can’t be counted on.” While China is looking like a responsible player at a global stage, “the US brand is in the toilet”, he said.

“We were working to try to build a deeper, sustainable relationship with India, and the China challenge loomed large in that. President Trump executed a massive trade offensive against them, and the Indians are saying, ‘I guess, maybe we have to go show up in Beijing and sit with the Chinese because we’ve got a hedge against America’,” he said.

Two days ago, the Democrats on the United States House Foreign Affairs Committee had criticised President Trump for “singling out India with tariffs, and sabotaging the US-India relationship”. They too had flagged how China, one of the largest importers of Russian oil, was not facing a similar penalty, and said that “it was not about Ukraine at all”.

Meanwhile, responding to President Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro describing the Russia-Ukraine war as “Modi’s war”, the American Jewish Committee, a global advocacy organisation, expressed concern over the comments and called for a reset in India-US ties.

“AJC is mystified, and deeply troubled, by the chorus of attacks on India by US officials — the latest being a White House advisor’s scurrilous charge that Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine is ‘Modi’s war’,” it said on X. “We regret energy-hungry India’s reliance on Russian oil — but India isn’t responsible for Putin’s war crimes, is a sister democracy and an increasingly important strategic partner of the US, and has a crucial role to play in Great Power competition. It’s time to reset this vital relationship,” it said.