Donald Trump's Biggest, Dumbest Personalist Foreign Policy Flop Yet
The Toddler in Chief pisses away three decades of patient U.S. diplomacy towards India.
It is no secret that the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World does not think much of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. His ideas are crap, his personnel is incompetent, and his leadership style is immature. This combination does not tend to produce foreign policies that advance the national interest.
Of course, by a lot of metrics the United States is still the most powerful country on Earth. A country with insurmountable capabilities can suffer from incompetent leadership and still stagger on without too much damage. One could argue that this describes Donald Trump’s first term reasonably well.
During his second term, however, the evidence is mounting that the lack of any guardrails, combined with the continued rise of China, have reduced Trump’s margin of error. And yet, he keeps screwing up.
This weekend the New York Times has provided all the evidentiary support for this observation. Let’s start with Mujib Mashal, Tyler Pager, and Anupreeta Das’ story of the acrimonious split between Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As it turns out the source for the split is galactically stupid:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was losing patience with President Trump.
Mr. Trump had been saying — repeatedly, publicly, exuberantly — that he had “solved” the military conflict between India and Pakistan, a dispute that dates back more than 75 years and is far deeper and more complicated than Mr. Trump was making it out to be.
During a phone call on June 17, Mr. Trump brought it up again, saying how proud he was of ending the military escalation. He mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor for which he had been openly campaigning. The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr. Modi should do the same.
The Indian leader bristled. He told Mr. Trump that U.S. involvement had nothing to do with the recent cease-fire. It had been settled directly between India and Pakistan.
Mr. Trump largely brushed off Mr. Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr. Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr. Trump’s first term….
Just weeks after the June phone call, and with trade talks dragging on, Mr. Trump startled India by announcing that imports from the country would be subjected to a tariff of 25 percent. And on Wednesday, he slapped India with an additional 25 percent tariff for buying Russian oil, adding up to a crushing 50 percent.
Mr. Modi, who once called Mr. Trump “a true friend,” was officially on the outs. After telling Mr. Modi that he would travel to India later this year for the Quad summit, Mr. Trump no longer has plans to visit in the fall, according to people familiar with the president’s schedule.
In India, Mr. Trump is now seen in some quarters as a source of national humiliation. Last week, a giant Trump effigy was paraded around a festival in the state of Maharashtra, with signs declaring him a backstabber. The blows from the United States have been so intense that one Indian official described them as “gundagardi”: straight-up bullying, or thuggery.
The two men have not spoken since the June 17 phone call.
By all means read the whole thing. As the story makes clear, the rift has as much to do with Narendra Modi’s particular political vulnerabilities as Trump’s immaturity. Still, this is what happens when two angry, populist leaders remove the foreign policy guardrails and have a falling out.
Needless to say, alienating the largest country in the Indo-Pacific interested in resisting regional Chinese hegemony is a significant strategic blunder1 — a point that Kapil Komireddi made in a New York Times op-ed this weekend:
For New Delhi, this is a defining moment. Should it submit to Mr. Trump in hopes that the United States will strengthen the partnership against China or pursue a pragmatic rapprochement with Beijing to safeguard trade, investment and long-term strategic stability in Asia? After all, how can India be certain that Washington will not abruptly weaponize their strategic partnership, just as it has weaponized trade?
Indian hedging against such risks may have already begun. This weekend Mr. Modi is making his first visit to China in seven years for a regional summit, where President Xi Jinping will personally welcome both him and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The Indian and Chinese armies clashed on their disputed border in 2020, and this visit is a potentially momentous opportunity to reset India-China relations, finesse lingering disputes over their border, trade and regional security, and — for China — to begin drawing India away from Washington’s orbit.
Ultimately, the United States may have the most to lose in this landscape. It’s unclear whether anyone in Washington ever really expected fiercely independent India to serve as a frontline ally in a future conflict with China. But India mattered because after decades in which Indians regarded America with deep suspicion, the United States was beginning to enjoy genuine good will in the world’s most populous country, a democracy that happens to border on China.
This extraordinary achievement now lies in tatters. Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump, colossal figures today, will inevitably fade away. India and the United States will be left with the task of emancipating themselves from the legacy of these two leaders.
If the United States is losing from this falling out, three guesses as to who is winning — but discerning readers will only need one. The New York Times’ David Pierson, Mujib Mashal, and Nataliya Vasilyeva report that China’s Xi Jinping is feeling pretty good this weekend — and for good reason.
Xi Jinping could hardly have scripted a more favorable moment. This weekend, the leaders of India and Russia joined him at a security summit in China — one leader pushed away by President Trump’s tariffs, the other brought out of isolation by his embrace.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, U.S. tariffs on Indian goods have raised doubts about leaning too heavily on Washington. For President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, his red-carpet treatment in Alaska by Mr. Trump blunted Western efforts to punish him for the invasion of Ukraine.
At the center is Mr. Xi, turning America’s alienation of India into an opportunity, and finding validation for his own long alignment with Mr. Putin.
The summit of more than 20 leaders, mostly from Central Asia, followed by a military parade in Beijing showcasing China’s newest missiles and warplanes, is not just pageantry. It shows how Mr. Xi is trying to turn history, diplomacy and military might into tools for reshaping a global order that has been dominated by the United States.
“The success of Xi’s foreign policy strategy is reflected in the parade of leaders traveling to China,” said Jonathan Czin, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who previously worked at the C.I.A. analyzing Chinese politics. “Indeed, Xi today probably feels more besieged by visiting heads of state than encircled by the United States and its allies and partners.”….
The convergence of Mr. Putin and Mr. Modi in China, as well as leaders from dozens of other emerging economies, including Turkey, Egypt, Malaysia and Pakistan, contrasts with the growing discord within the U.S. alliance with European and Asian countries.
So, to sum up: because Donald Trump wants to be showered with praise, he has reacted angrily to India’s leader refusing to completely bend the knee. The result has been a U.S. imposition of punitive tariffs that have galvanized Indian elites around a renewed burst of anti-Americanism and a rapprochement with China.
I have said it before and I will say it again: U.S. foreign policy is currently being managed by the dumbest motherfuckers alive.
It should be noted that not all U.S. analysts believed India was a reliable partner — but even if India would not agree to everything the U.S. wanted to do, policy coordination vis-a-vis China would pay benefits.
If there was a cabal within the Trump MAGA regime that was purposefully sabotaging the US to the benefit of Russia, China and the rest of the autocratic world, how would we tell the difference? Just because they're incompetent, self-centered and morally debased doesn't mean there isn't a morsel of satisfaction in burning the old world down. The puppet also doesn't always recognize the strings attached to their actions.
Dear Leader is "America Last," in every way.