Donald Trump Has Burst Narendra Modi’s Foreign Policy Bubble
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, tried to divert attention from domestic problems by promoting the image of India as a rising power with a strong leader. But Modi’s failure to stand up to Trump’s destructive agenda has exposed this as hollow posturing.
A demand for recognition of India’s sovereignty and economic might seems much less convincing at a time when the Trump administration has run roughshod over India’s foreign policy orientation. (Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Scholars have touted our age as the “Asian century,” with the emergence of two Asian giants in the world economic order, China and India. Over the last three decades, they have been classified as the world’s two fastest-growing economies. By 2007, their joint contribution to global economic growth was already close to that of the United States.
In 2024, Asia accounted for nearly 60 percent of global growth, and China surpassed the United States in its contribution to global manufacturing output — nearly 28 percent of the total, compared with the US share of 17.3 percent. Meanwhile, India ranked in fifth place for manufacturing after Japan and Germany, albeit trailing far behind its Asian neighbor with less than 3 percent of world output.
There is an ongoing reconfiguration of the US-dominated world order in the shadow of military conflicts, economic recessions, and most recently trade wars. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has been combined with attacks on Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, and most recently Qatar. India and Pakistan also fought a limited war in May of this year.
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