With its dream of reaching greatness by hanging on to the coattails of the United States going bust, India needs to radically rethink its foreign policy. Rather than the ongoing tentative recalibration, it needs to be redesigned from the ground up. Although Indian political leaders value loyalty to a fault, this cannot be done by the same actors who were till recently bending over backwards to please Washington. The shock of the punitive tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump has led to Indian ministers and officials making a beeline to Moscow and Beijing. This 180-degree flip is being presented as strategic agility.
However, both Moscow and Beijing will not fail to see the outreach as damage control although they will welcome it as a step towards a broader multipolar realignment. An India that is spurned by the US fits into their play on the larger global chessboard. Indeed, Moscow has even suggested revival of the trilateral Russia-India-China (RIC) dialogue, a potential building block of a non-Western alliance.
India, which because of its democracy, pluralism and rule-of-law had far greater credibility than the authoritarian regimes amongst the nations of the Global South, is now forced to make common cause with them. India may claim that it is doubling down on its “special and privileged strategic partnership” with Russia, but its foreign policy establishment still has one leg firmly in the American camp. India’s love-fest with the US, especially with Mr Trump, was also facilitated by the same actors….
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After the truth-shower 