How can a strategy take a drastic shift without a plan. The recent shift in America’s behaviour towards India may not be just limited to Trump’s personal behaviour but would actually come from the evolving American Grand Strategy characterised by a shift from Indo-Pacific focus to Eurasian pivot.
I started to think seriously about it after attending the 5th World Congress on Taiwan Studies at Taipei’s Academia Sinica in May this year in which in one panel discussion the analysts talked about the shift in Trump’s Indo-Pacific to Eurasia strategy. It alarmed me because this shift meant a change in US’ administration India focus. It also made me think about why this should be discussed by Taiwanese analysts and how it serves the purpose of Taiwan.
The months that followed the Taipei conference are now actually witnessing this shift forcing me to reflect on the imperatives behind the American grand strategy; how it’s shifting the India-China, India-Japan, India-US and also India-Taiwan ties. What does it mean for India’s economic rise and for the world at large?
These obviously are too many questions–to begin with I’ll try to address a few here and others will be discussed in the upcoming write-ups.
US’ Indian Pivot: Shift from Positive Focus to Negative Focus
The American administration’s Asia-Pacific Policy was renamed as the Indo-Pacific Policy by the Trump administration in 2017 and it came along with a major positive focus on India and a rejuvenated QUAD–done with a shared concern about China’s rise. There was specific attention to focussing on partnership with democratic allies including Australia and Japan, all in the best interest of QUAD.
The recent shift is again pivoted on India but unlike last time it’s framed negatively–from uplifting the “Rise India” and “India as a strategic partner” narrative it has transformed or rather denigrated into “India is Russia’s laundromat” and “India is feeding Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
The context is obviously clear–there’s a shift in the American Grand Strategy and it is about American interests shifting from the Indo-Pacific to Eurasia with Russia-Ukraine war at the backdrop. And in this scheme of things, China is more like a frenemy than an enemy–there are too many American economic interests complexly interwoven with China.
Like in any frenemy equation there’s constant friendly engagement but also an aggression that Trump’s trade and tariff policies and negotiations have boldly defined. As Trump’s former political ally and world’s richest industrialist, Elon Musk wrote in a message on Twitter on Dec. 25, 2023: “Economic Strength is the Foundation of War.”
Trump has built that foundation and also kept his adversary engaged for trade benefits (seemingly in US interest while winning a narrative war) and that’s what is also reinforced by his targeting of India. If there was any other country in the geopolitical and economic position as India is today–a rising economy, expected to rise in position next only to the US and China by 2030–Trump would target it the same way. That comes not only from the perspective of “America First” but also from the angle of “America being the sole, supreme power of the world.”
Incidentally this becomes a shield for Taiwan because an America and China that’s engaging and trading (albeit with the loud noise of a tightly contested trade match) keeps the Indo-Pacific more militarily disengaged. This ensures Taiwan’s status-quo and safety more than a strengthening QUAD that is defined to counter the Chinese aggression while constantly building a warring posture.
It also highlights one more aspect and that’s the Chinese footprint in Eurasia since 2017– when America started to increase its focus on the Indo-Pacific–has likely gone out of the US’ hand. China’s economic footprint in the Eurasian financial market continues to increase. More importantly in 2022 in the Winter Olympics, the governments of China and Russia issued a joint statement announcing a “no limits partnership.” Their joint statement said that China and Russia relationship “has no limits, [and] there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
This posture majorly highlighted a fight against US-shaped and US-led global order–which haunted Trump in a way that has never concerned any US administration before.
Is India a Scapegoat?
After Trump doubled the India tariff to 50 percent including 25 percent for additional levy as penalty for purchasing Russian oil, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on August 19 that the punitive measures are to deter Russia from pursuing the Ukraine conflict. Thus a question obviously arises–Is India a scapegoat?
Indian Foreign Minister, S. Jaishankar has repeatedly highlighted how India is not the only country purchasing Russia oil and how the imports were both in national and global interests. India-US trade deal which was expected to be worth $500 billion of investments by 2030 had no breakthrough despite many rounds of talks. So obviously the question is why is the US targeting India and what’s India’s posture in its negotiations with the US?
While this attack on India could actually be complex and multi-pronged, it’s very clear from the Trump administration’s stand that it wants to define India’s rise and that probably also comes from the American introspection on how its policies created the giant that China has become today. Would the US want to unconditionally support the rise of another giant, more so when it wouldn’t be able to later strategically oppose its ideology like it can today counter the Chinese Communist Party? How will the US domestically counter the rise of a democratic India?
Thus what the US administration showcases today is the American grand strategy–there’s a shift in global order–there are multiple players and multiple issues that the US aims at attending by targeting India. So India is immensely important for the US–infact its core to the US grand strategy but in ways it wasn’t earlier defined.
India should take a recourse–infact in its march towards the mid-century it’ll have to face similar situations multiple times and will be required to rethink again and again. There are no unconditional friendships or perfectly converging or absolutely diverging relations in geopolitics–it all about engagement. It needs to be seen how India perceives it and how the shifting global order redefines the Indian grand strategy.
(The Author is a MOFA 2025 Taiwan fellow and a visiting scholar at the College of Law and Politics at NCHU Taichung. This is first in a series on “Mid-2025 and a Global-Shift”)
