Trumps America First Bullying Is
The U.S.-India strategic partnership, cobbled together over the past two decades and hailed as one of the success stories of post-Cold War diplomacy, is unraveling. Every American president since the Cold War’s end, including Donald Trump in his first administration, has worked hard to build what everyone hoped would be an enduring relationship. The author of its undoing, though, is none other than Donald Trump. The master deal maker, in another of his ‘whim and spite’ transactional decision-making exercises, managed to alienate India to the point where it is moving closer to its traditional enemy, China, and cozying up to Russia, as a clear slap in the face to the United States.
The self-anointed ‘master of the deal’ began rubbing India the wrong way early in his second administration with his ‘America First’ tariff policies, often using them as cudgels in an attempt to extort foreign policy concessions. He put a 25 percent tariff on Indian imports earlier this year, citing India’s purchase of Russian crude oil, and trying to coerce them into ending such purchases. A proud nation that values its sovereignty, India ignored the threat, so on August 27, Trump doubled the tariff rate to 50 percent. Trump had already upset Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi by claiming that he (Trump) played a key role in stopping the fighting between India and Pakistan in May. Modi insisted that the four-day fight was ended through direct military-to-military contact between the two countries, and that Trump played no role. This didn’t stop Trump from publicly bragging, “I got it stopped.”
This tendency to brag and to make himself the center of everything has backfired big time in this instance. Aside from whatever his other motives for tariffs might have been, he wanted to prevent India’s purchase of Russian crude. It didn’t work. Furthermore, another of his goals is to reduce China’s influence throughout the world. Well, guess what, his aforementioned actions have also pushed India closer to her traditional enemy, China. If this isn’t a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face, I don’t know what is.
When I was a young army officer in the 1960s and 1970s, I was taught to always consider the unintended consequences of my actions and decisions. Trump, who was sent to a military high school when he was a teenager, apparently slept through that class—if it was even taught. What he seems to have gotten from that experience was a five-year lesson in bullying. What he didn’t learn, though, is that when others get tired of being bullied, they tend to gang up and fight back.
Charles A. Ray spent 20 years in the U.S. Army with two tours in Vietnam. He retired as a senior US diplomat, serving 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with assignments as ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe, and was the first American consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He also served in senior positions with the Department of Defense and is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 290 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.