Bottomline | Adrift Again

Pravin Sawhney

India’s external affairs ministry’s annual Raisina Dialogue, being held since 2016, is meant to project government’s foreign policy to accomplish Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s publicly articulated wish in 2015 for India to become a leading power. So, it was expected that the 10^th edition of the Dialogue held in Delhi from March 17 to 19 would reflect in the choice of speakers the new global realities set into motion by US President Donald Trump within hours of his inauguration on January 10. India with the coming of the Modi government in 2014 had embraced the US as its focal strategic partner and the Global North nations its natural partners to accomplish its foreign policy objectives.

Rubbishing the Biden administration’s world view and foreign policy, Trump shocked the world by downplaying the US alliances and announced strategic withdrawal from Europe. This effectively would end eighty years of US policy of total support and nurturing of Nato at the time when it was involved in proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Trump’s focus instead has shifted to deal making with the other two great powers—Russia and China—in a multipolar world to strengthen US’ national power which had dipped in recent decades.

Europe led by the European Union has clearly been the biggest loser in the US’ altered geopolitical chessboard where the Global North as an entity led by the US leadership would become meaningless. The 28-member EU out of the 44 European nations which pi