The narrative in some circles in India that we misjudged Trump, believed wrongly that we could manage him in his second term as we did in his first term, that our over-reliance on the US is limiting our margin of manoeuvre, that we are succumbing to US pressure and not standing up to it, and that the limitations of our policy of multi-alignment and exercising strategic autonomy have been exposed, and so on.
By these yardsticks, almost all countries can be accused of failures on the foreign policy front in dealing with Trump in his second avatar as president. This is true even of US allies whose historically close ties and interdependence on many fronts have not shielded them from the vagaries and exactions of Trump’s policies.
In fact, Trump has treated Europe brutally, compared to which India has been treated much less harshly.
Trump has questioned the utility of NATO, although it has been the bedrock of security in Europe. In India, there are concerns that Trump is no longer as committed to Quad as he was in his first term and in the early weeks of his second term, but Quad is not central to India’s security as NATO is to European security.
India is to host the next Quad summit, but there is no certainty about when it can take place. The incoming US ambassador Sergio Gor has prepared the ground for an indefinite delay by remarking publicly that Trump could visit India in “a year or two”. If this signals is a shift in US thinking on the importance and strategic utility of Quad, and this is to be construed as a foreign policy set back for India in the Indo-Pacific region, it would be instructive to see how much Trump has upset, to Europe’s great dismay, the security architecture in Europe in whose establishment the US has played the principal role.
If there is concern in India about what the muted US interest in Quad may mean in the context of countering the maritime threat from China, the concern in Europe about Trump’s disdain for NATO as a shield against a Russian threat has to be far greater, particularly when Europe sees a successful Russian military intervention in Ukraine as a threat to Europe itself. Europe has participated in a proxy war against Russia led by the US and largely sacrificed its lucrative trade and energy links with Moscow in making common cause with the Americans. And now they see Trump going over Europe’s head to negotiate directly with President Putin, a possible solution to the Ukraine conflict. Europe, humiliated by Trump, has desperately tried to put the spokes in the wheel of his efforts at peace, wobbly as they are. Europe has lionised President Zelensky while Trump has derided him.
Trump’s overtures to China are not a parallel as far as India’s security is concerned. Unlike the Europeans who have broken all dialogue with Russia, we have, despite Doklam and Galwan and other provocations by China, not broken our dialogue with China, with some easing of tensions resulting from this approach. The point is that the vagaries of Trump’s foreign policies have not had the same impact on the strategic content of our foreign policy as in the case of the Europeans.
Europe’s colossal failure in handling Trump far exceeds India’s failure in dealing with the US president. Europe’s over-reliance on the US for security has proved much more costly compared to the investment we have made in our security relationship with the US bilaterally and within the ambit of the Quad.
Some European countries, notably France, do talk of strategic autonomy for Europe, but there is no consensus within Europe on this strategic ambition because maintaining such autonomy within an alliance system is inherently a contradiction. India has maintained its strategic autonomy despite the Trump challenge. Putin’s visit to India for the India-Russia summit, Modi’s participation in the SCO summit in China, India chairing the BRICS in 2026 and hosting the BRICS summit, and, despite the trade deal imbroglio where we have not yielded on our fundamental interests, pursuing other aspects of our ties with the US, are all instances of exercising our strategic autonomy. Yes, the Trump challenge is there, but that has not steered us off course in our foreign policy.
The contrast between the dilemmas that Trump has created for Europe’s foreign policy and that for India’s is Trump’s bid to acquire sovereignty over Greenland, a European territory, by force if necessary. Trump’s flirtation with Pakistan, giving Pakistan a security role in the region through the Saudi-Pakistan defence pact, his targeting of Iran, and re-sanctioning the Chabahar port, have created problems for us, no doubt, but without shaking the foundations of our strategic posture. Europe, on the other hand, is facing a challenge to its basic strategic assumptions. It is caught between a rock and a hard place. Europe has castigated Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine as violating the cardinal principle that borders cannot be changed and territory belonging to another country acquired by force. It is now facing a territorial threat from the US. A NATO country is threatening to change the borders of another NATO country. What this would mean for the future of NATO as an organisation, not to mention the divisions that would be triggered within the EU itself, can be imagined.
Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on India, the highest on any country (along with Brazil). But then, Trump has imposed one-sided tariffs on all countries, including his allies, besides extracting commitments from some countries to invest $ 350 billion to 1 trillion in the US, besides purchasing, as in the case of the EU, $ 750 billion of US LNG during Trump’s presidential term. While India has stood its ground on essentials, the EU has buckled under US pressure, despite its capacity to retaliate.
That Trump can reopen agreements as he wills and impose fresh tariffs on top of an agreed figure as a punishment for resisting his demands on non-trade issues is demonstrated by his decision to impose 10% additional tariffs on those European countries that have opposed his claim on Greenland, with the figure increasing to 25% on June 1, 2026, if the opposition continues. Trump is totally ignoring the fact that the EU has a customs union, and selecting some member countries for higher tariffs is unviable in practice.
India has invited the European Union as the Chief Guest for R-Day 2026, represented by Van Der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council. It is expected that the India-EU FTA will be signed on January 27. This will happen under the shadow of a developing EU-US rift. It is with an embattled Europe that we will be signing the agreement. A major breakthrough in our ties with the EU will occur when the political, economic, and security outlook for Europe becomes fluid. Europe will need to reorient itself, whatever the outcome of this tussle with the US.
With the Trump challenge India faces, the importance of Europe as a partner has increased. Likewise, for Europe, especially in the light of the latest developments in transatlantic ties, India’s value as a partner too has risen. India’s foreign policy is adequately weathering the Trump storm.
