So the great orange phoenix, Donald Trump, announces he will grace India with his presence. The man who once called India a ‘tariff king’ now offers a handshake to Narendra Modi. We are told this signals a thaw.
I say: let us not mistake a diplomatic thaw for a genuine shift in the tectonic plates of power. This is theatre, my friends. The same sort of stage-managed rapprochement that has characterised great power politics since Metternich.
Remember the Victorian era: the British Empire would send a gunboat one day and a trade delegation the next. Trump’s visit is the modern equivalent. A photo op at the Taj Mahal, a joint press conference full of platitudes, and then back to the familiar rhythms of tariff wars and rhetorical sword-rattling.
The Indo-US relationship has always been a dance of convenience. India needs American technology to counter China; America needs India as a democratic counterweight. Neither party is naive.
Modi knows Trump’s unpredictability; Trump knows Modi’s nationalist fervour. So this ‘thaw’ is merely a temporary alignment of interests. If we look at historical cycles, from the Congress of Vienna to the Cold War, such moments often precede a renewed phase of competition.
The real question is whether this visit will produce tangible outcomes: a trade deal, a defence pact, or merely another chapter in the long, tedious novel of great power posturing. I suspect the latter. The intellectual decadence of our era manifests in our obsession with symbols over substance.
When Trump lands in New Delhi, the media will swoon. They will speak of a ‘new era’. But I will be watching the fine print.
And I will be reminded of Gibbon’s observation that history is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. So let us not celebrate too soon. The thaw may be real, but so is the chill that follows.
