THIS brings us to an existentialist question: Will God give up power after defeat? Is God a dictator? For his part, Trump has clarified in his usual simple and easy-to-understand sentences that he is not a dictator: “I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.” He does use a signature on his diktats that is as high as a column and stretches across the page. He likes his hair or wig. Narcissism perhaps, but not authoritarian.
He did ruminate after that dictator statement: “A lot of people are saying: ‘Maybe we like a dictator’.” Let us call that a stream of consciousness remark. That stream is never dry of course; he repeated that observation about many people liking dictators within 72 hours. God will have one good question for Trump. Why did the all-purpose peacemaker show absolutely no urgency about peace in Palestine? If he paid any serious attention to God’s Holy Land it was brief, until almost every Western ally of America had promised to recognise Palestine as an independent nation.
The Abrahamic faiths believe that the gates to Heaven lie through Jerusalem, which is one reason why the fortress city has bled for millennia. Men who read the Sermon on the Mount in church and speak of peace in mosque and temple, ravage the region of Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad till it sinks in knee-deep blood with the massacre of innocents in search of land. There is no word more bitter in human history than land. As the horror of Palestine soaks up more blood of innocent children, satire loses meaning.
India nightmare
One can see why Trump gets the hives at the mention of India. When country after country scurried to Washington to beg for lower tariffs by paying a flattery tax, fawned and promised a Trump Tower, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did the unthinkable. He challenged Trump’s tariffs as 21st-century imperialism. Instead of pleading, according to a German newspaper, Modi declined to take four calls from Trump. India must be turning into a nightmare for a man who seeks genuflection as the starting point of negotiations.
Indians responded with collective pride as Modi reminded them that the road to India’s independence and the end of European colonialism began with the call for Swadeshi. Buy Indian, Be Indian. In the 1920s Gandhi made a charkha the symbol of independence. On August 26 this year Modi flagged off Maruti Suzuki’s first electric vehicle, the e-Vitara, made in India for the world. Maruti Suzuki announced a further Rs 70,000 crore investment. India has moved to the frontlines of economic achievement through a century of struggle and achievement.
Russia excuse
In the contextual discourse Trump’s Russia excuse shrivelled under the glare of facts. China had bought more oil than India while Germany and some European countries had never stopped, so what was the basis of discrimination against India? As this logic collapsed, India’s credibility rose. Modi reasserted India’s strategic autonomy. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval went to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin before Putin left for Alaska.
India and China revived a relationship that had cooled. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi came to Delhi for discussions with Doval, prior to Modi’s visit to Beijing in the last week of August. China taunted Washington with studied indifference as Trump twirled the volume of attack up and down, saying at one point that if China did not supply rare earth magnets, it would be lashed with 200 per cent tariffs. He added: “If I played those cards, that would destroy China.” China announced a resumption of the sale of rare earths to India.
Modi made first visit to China in seven years for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit on August 31 and September 1. The spotlight was on Modi, Putin and Xi Jinping. A thought might have occurred to Washington: Could the three finesse the Trump initiative on Ukraine? President Volodymyr Zelensky owes nothing to Trump. He has been humiliated in the White House, and hears daily the gloat with which the administration proclaims that not a single American dollar is being spent on Ukraine.
Instead, America is profiteering from its arms sales to Ukraine, adding an extra 10 per cent on the price. Europe is paying up without a complaint because it is helpless now.
When Europe has recovered from the disastrous decade of Angela Merkel in Berlin, David Cameron in London, and forgotten pretenders in Paris who degraded its defence to pay for handouts to the electorate, Europe will treat America as an ally, not an overlord. But that is still five to seven years away.
Zelensky has sent Modi a message that he is depending on India. Words are chosen with care by the careful. Could India play a part in a freezewhere-you-are option, based on the formula devised for the Himalayan ceasefire line between 1988 and 1993? It was devised on the principle that the solution lies in non-resolution. A ceasefire line is not a border, leaving both sides content with their claims. But it can be the basis of a standstill agreement which ends hostilities, and permits resumption of bilateral relations in travel, trade and engagement.
The Trump turbulence has had a dynamic impact on blocs that had become dormant. Trump was expecting a meltdown. Instead, BRICS and SCO have been resurrected. Trump set out to Make America Great Again. By the end of his term America could have become as weak in international affairs as it was on the eve of World War I. In the 2020s and 2030s America will still have the strongest military in history but armies become bystanders without the multiplier advantage of careful political leadership. Trump has punctured the faith of European allies and ravaged the trust of friends.
Decisions disrupt, language hurts. India, China, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa, adding the strength of one another to their individual capacities, will not bow. Europe is making baby gurgles to buy time. Trump has ensured that the American umbrella will struggle for space with BRICS, SCO, and surely soon ASEAN, which prefers to wait, watch and then act in self-interest. Donald Trump wanted a new world order. He has got it. (
