India needs to be in Trump’s ‘A’ team

The fact that US president-elect Donald Trump did not invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his inaugural on January 20 has been noted as a significant signpost on his foreign-policy priorities. It prompted an unscheduled five-day trip to Washington by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to test the waters — a move reflecting the aspiration to return to the first circle of countries engaging Trump's attention. 

It is a work in progress. Jaishankar is now returning to Washington to represent India at the inaugural on January 20. Early birds catch worms. There is no question that New Delhi urgently needs to build bridges with Trump, whose imprimatur on global politics can be decisive, which will also overlap a transformative phase in the world order.

If India finds itself stranded like a beached whale, it is largely to be attributed to the clumsy manner in which a possible meeting between Trump and Modi in September was spurned after Trump personally announced it. The goof-up betrayed diffidence in a Trump victory. 

We ought to know a few things about Trump by now. First and foremost, he is a proud man who takes matters personally. After the famous rally on September 22, 2019, in Houston, which Trump hailed as a “profoundly historic event”, he had every reason to expect Indian support at a critical juncture when was locked in an existential electoral battle with an Indian-American opponent with heavy odds stacked against him.

Simply put, we now need to climb the greasy pole, which is not going to be easy — not only because India is not a ‘consequential’ relationship for Trump’s America First agenda, but also because the space is overcrowded with contenders, including India’s adversaries. When Trump lionised the UAE-based billionaire Hussain Sajwani before the world audience at the outset of his press conference on Thursday, he was making a big point. 

Second, Trump has no more elections to fight, and the self-made billionaire is now holding the most powerful job on the planet after securing a massive mandate. His soaring ambition was on display at the press conference in his estate of Palm Beach (which Trump now calls his ‘Winter White House’). Nothing will stop Trump on his track. The deferential way Moscow and Beijing handles Trump is self-evident. 

Trump has just shown the door to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a manipulator par excellence in international diplomacy, by simply posting on Truth Social, America's ‘Big Tent’ social media platform, a scathing attack on Israel by Jeffrey Sachs, the well-known US strategic thinker, economist and professor at Columbia. He has let it be known to the Arabs and Iranians that Netanyahu’s self-projection as his close friend and ally is the stuff of political grandstanding, nothing more.

New Delhi hopes to conduct real business with Trump’s underlings. The assumption here, born out of personal experiences of seasoned Indian diplomats, might hold good up to a point perhaps. But Trump’s bitter harvest during his first presidency when he was constantly undercut by his juniors — the likes of secretaries of state Mike Pompeo and Rex Tillerson, secretary of defence General Jim Mattis, or vice-president Mike Pence for that matter — conditions his reflexes. 

Trump is returning to the White House with a profound understanding of how DC works and, more importantly, how to get things done just the way he wants. His appointment of billionaire Steve Witkoff, an old-trusted friend and tough negotiator, is already showing results. Haaretz reported on January 13 that Witkoff has ‘forced’ Netanyahu to accept a Gaza plan that he had ‘repeatedly rejected’ previously — because Trump wants it to be announced before his inauguration!

Trump is known to be a generous man with a large heart who came up the hard way. So, his self-confidence as an expansive practitioner of ‘letting one hundred flowers bloom’ is visible. That said, like Mao Zedong, he is also the great helmsman today who will not tolerate other power centres or hesitate to exercise ideological control over the power calculus. He is Shelly’s Prometheus Unbound, there’s no reconciliation possible with Zeus.

Nothing illustrates his self-confidence better than the foreign-policy team he selected — Florida senator Marco Rubio, who opposes a Gaza ceasefire, as secretary of state; Elise Stefanik, who condemned the United Nations as a “cesspool of antisemitism” for its criticism of civilian deaths in Gaza, as his UN Representative; Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who believes “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian”, as his ambassador to Israel; Pete Hegseth as his defence secretary-nominee, who is another evangelical Christian whose tattoos of crusader-associated symbols have raised eyebrows in diplomatic circles! 

Yet, Trump abhors West Asian wars and will not allow one to erupt under his watch, especially over Iran, which Netanyahu has been plotting.

The bottom line is that Trump is intensely conscious of his presidential legacy. And this man with a cerebral mind who is used to making big decisions using facts and intelligence, rather than emotions, has enough in him to outshine all his post-Cold War predecessors. What comes to mind is Polonius’ famous aside about Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s play, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

(M K Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.