US President Donald Trump is bent on wrecking the global system, just as he is wrecking the US political system. He has become all powerful internally and he wants to be all powerful externally, too. Internally, the constitutional checks and balances system is not working; externally, his depredations remain unchecked.
Despite the rise of China and the revival of Russia as a power, the US is once again becoming unilateralist on the global stage under Trump. He has arbitrarily imposed tariffs on all countries in flagrant violation of WTO rules. He is using tariffs as a weapon to extract not only trade and investment concessions from others but also political ones. This is the case with India, on which he has imposed an additional 25% penalty tariffs for buying Russian discounted oil.
Trump is rejecting multilateralism. Sure, his predecessors also did that, but he is doing it more scornfully. Earlier, he had walked out of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the WHO, UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Commission, among other bodies. He has now decided to quit 66 international organisations, including many UN-related ones, the important ones being related to climate change such as the UNFCCC and the IPCC, as well as trade and economic development-related ones such as UNCTAD and the ECOSOC.
Trump disparages renewable energy. He dismisses as a hoax the very idea of climate change, disregarding totally the serious concerns of the international community about the phenomenon. This also reflects US unilateralism on a very sensitive issue. Behind this are the interests of the US oil industry, which are strong backers of Trump and the Republican Party. This explains Trump's enthusiastic reference to the slogan "Drill baby Drill" in his inaugural address in January 2024, pressure on Europe (and India, too) to buy American LNG, sanctions on the Russian oil industry, and, more dramatically, his most recent adventure of attacking Venezuela and abducting President Nicolas Maduro with the expressed intention of taking control of Venezuelan oil reserves, which are the world's biggest.
Trump wants to become the dominant oil power in the world. He has made the legally bizarre claim that America owns Venezuelan oil because the infrastructure was developed by American companies in the first instance. Venezuelan oil, according to him, will be shipped to and marketed internationally by the US. The proceeds will be spent as decided by Trump himself, with Venezuela spending what is allocated to it to buy only American products.
The aggression against Venezuela is the 'Trump Corollary' to the US' revived Monroe Doctrine spelt out in the National Security Strategy 2025. The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has questioned why Venezuela should sell its oil to China - which bought 50% of the country's oil last year - Russia and Iran, forgetting that the United States used to be the main buyer of Venezuelan oil but following sanctions, China became the main destination in the last decade. (Venezuela owes about $10 billion to China after the latter became the largest lender under late President Hugo Chavez).
Trump's unilateralism was also dramatically reflected in his recent interview with The New York Times, where, in the background of his attack on Venezuela violating international law, he said most presumptuously ,"I don't need international law." When asked if there were any limits on his powers on the world stage, he said, "My own morality. My own mind." That means a business morality and an inconsistent mind. As part of his power play, he intends to let the New Start Treaty expire, closing the chapter on US-Russia agreements to end the arms race. With his announcement of an Iron Dome for the entire US and a $1.5 trillion defence budget for 2027, a new arms race and strategic instability could well be the result.
That Trump, with his aggression against Venezuela and the kidnapping of its President - as well as his determination to acquire Greenland by force if necessary - should still feel entitled to the Nobel Peace Prize and accuse Norway for making a big mistake in not awarding it to him, shows how totally unconcerned he is about how others judge him. He says he will accept Venezuelan Opposition Leader Maria Machado's bizarre offer to hand over to him her Peace Prize for 2025. The Norwegian Nobel Institute has ruled this out as the prize cannot be transferred to others, though the prize money can. Trump again asserted that he had solved eight conflicts (including repeating his claim to have stopped the India-Pakistan conflict) and should therefore be eligible theoretically for eight Nobel Peace Prizes! It continues to rankle him that Obama obtained the Nobel Peace Prize undeservedly.
Trump continues to talk down at Modi and India patronisingly, and even offensively, quite unmindful of the damage he is doing to India-US ties. He has made the absurd claim that knowing that he was unhappy, Modi tried to (console him) "make him happy" by stopping the purchase of Russian oil and asked "Sir, may I see you", as if a deferential subordinate was wanting to see his boss. The MEA spokesperson has countered this by clarifying that both leaders address each other with mutual respect as per diplomatic norms.
The arch-warmonger, Senator Lindsey Graham, standing alongside Trump in Air Force One, congratulated him for green lighting the new Russia Sanctions Bill that would impose 500% tariffs on those countries that buy Russian oil such as Brazil, India and China, and elicited the remark from the US President that it was easy to impose tariffs on India. This casual way of dealing wiith what has become a very sensitive issue between the two countries shows how unbothered he is about the reaction in India and also implies a readiness to increase tariffs on India if required.
The Russia Sanctions Bill has the support of a sufficient number of Senate and House members and is likely to be passed. The Bill also seeks the imposition of CAATSA sanctions on Russia and those countries that do defence and other deals with Russia. Significantly, it targets Uranium trade with Russia, even though the US itself buys Russian Uranium. The thought behind this is to obstruct Russia's cooperation with other countries to build nuclear power plants. This could theoretically affect the Kudunkulam project in India. There is a provision for granting exemptions under the legislation at the discretion of the President, but this becomes a bargaining tool and a pressure point on countries to accede to some other US demands.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick , who has been quiet on India for some time, has stirred a controversy again by suggesting that the trade deal had been negotiated at his level with India but Modi lost the opportunity to seal it by his reluctance to telephone Trump. Also, according to him, the deal with India, which was to be concluded after the US-UK deal, lost its slot amidst the agreements lined up by the US with others, and that when India was ready to sign, he told the Indian side that the train had already left the station. This suggests that there is no inclination on the US side to conclude the trade deal for the present (the MEA spokesperson has called Lutnick's statement inaccurate, recalling that in 2025, Modi and Trump had spoken eight times on the phone).
This kind of a non-serious, and indeed, cavalier way of addressing an issue of considerable importance in maintaining the positive dynamics of India-US ties created by Modi's February 2025 visit to the US reveals to what degree Trump's approach to India is guided by his ego-mania. Modi was right in avoiding a telephone conversation with Trump without the finalisation of a trade deal in order to avoid giving the latter the opportunity to put direct pressure on him to extract still more concessions from India, as he has done with other world leaders. Trump has in cases even gone to the extent of announcing a trade deal that went beyond what was agreed upon, all to look like a victor.
India-US relations have entered a difficult phase under Trump. But that is also the case with other US allies. No US president after the Second World War has shaken up the global system as much as Trump has done in only a year of his presidency. There are three more to go.
(Kanwal Sibal was Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia, and Deputy Chief Of Mission in Washington.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
