The Author is former Chief of Staff of a frontline Corps in the North East and a former helicopter pilot. He earlier headed the China & neighbourhood desk at the Defence Intelligence Agency. He retired in July 2020 and held the appointment of Addl DG Information Systems at Army HQ.

The MAGA war-cry, 'Make America Great Again', resonating through the heartland of America in the electoral campaigns with baseball caps and billboards, through the past decade or so, says it all. It is an admission, figuratively and literally, that America has lost it.

Trump's Diplomatic Style

Six months of constantly shifting policy pronunciations by President Trump, be it on the Ukraine war, or America's relations with NATO allies or lately, the tariff wars, the world has been left gasping for breath. Close allies have been humiliated in televised White House formal meetings. Then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau got the sobriquet of 'Governor of America's 51st state', a humiliation that has largely shaped the frosty and openly confrontational relationship under the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

On August 6, 2025, Trump announced an additional 25 per cent tariff on India for continuing to buy Russian crude and hence accused of financing Russia's war-chest.

Trudeau was not alone. When Donald Trump forced his guest, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, to watch excruciating footage of hate speech and fake evidence of burial grounds of white farmers, he proved that no visitor to the White House is safe from the sort of ritualised humiliation infamously meted out to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in February 2025. Zelenskyy was not only humiliated after he refused to sign on the dotted line, seeking to mortgage his country's rich mineral resources and agricultural farms to America's corporates in perpetuity, he was escorted out without lunch. Leaders of other nations will have to think hard about whether it is worth seeking a once-coveted meeting in the Oval Office if the chances are that they are being set up for an ambush.

Trump is a former reality TV star. The other parallel to this kind of soap opera leadership is Zelenskyy, who was once a popular TV actor and comedian. Zelenskyy has paid more attention to his attire than worry about his country's future, shedding formal suits for combat tees in his televised appearances to look like a formidable leader at war. Ukraine under Zelenskyy's leadership is a devastated landmass, millions have fled abroad; its urban landscape is slowly turning into ghost cities, what Kabul or Baghdad or Tripoli looked like after US bombings or how Gaza looks now; mangled masses of concrete.

India in the Crosshairs of Tariff Politics

On August 6, 2025, Trump announced an additional 25 per cent tariff on India for continuing to buy Russian crude and hence accused of financing Russia's war-chest. There is no doubt that the combined effect of two back-to-back 25 per cent tariffs imposed by Trump has left India facing one of its most serious trade shocks in recent years. Together, the tariffs take the total US import duty on Indian goods to 50 per cent, a rate unmatched for any other key US trading partner except Brazil. How is India going to face this challenge?

There is no doubt that the combined effect of two back-to-back 25 per cent tariffs imposed by Trump has left India facing one of its most serious trade shocks in recent years.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva has slammed Trump's 50 percent tariffs on Latin America's largest economy

Well, let's look at how Brazil is facing this challenge. Brazilian President Lula da Silva has slammed Trump's 50 percent tariffs on Latin America's largest economy as "unacceptable blackmail." Former Brazilian President and Trump friend, Jair Bolsonaro is facing trial over accusations he plotted a coup after his narrow 2022 election loss to Lula. If found guilty, he could face up to 40 years in prison. So the real reasons for the 50 per cent tariffs are more personal than for advancing American interests.

There are many parallels here with India. Trump is piqued that India countered his fallacious and boastful claims that he negotiated a ceasefire between two warring nuclear power, saving the world from a catastrophe. Prime Minister Modi, his Foreign Minister as well as the Chief of Defence Staff have all reiterated in umpteen forums since May 10, 2025 that the pause in Op Sindoor was agreed to on the request from the Pakistani DGMO that afternoon to his Indian counterpart. That has queered the pitch for Trump's self-made claims to a Nobel Peace prize.

Strategic Undercurrents and Global Shifts

Rogue radical Pakistani Army Chief, Asim Munir on the other hand, has so very solicitously crawled and endorsed Trump for the Nobel award before a much hyped lunch meeting in the White House. That the Army Chief of Pakistan, fountainhead of global terror, should be wining and dining with the self-proclaimed leader of the free world isn't very surprising. Trump is America without makeup, unlike the carefully choreographed Barrack Obama with measured gait, scripted speeches and a hallowed gravitas masking sinister American traits that Trump openly flaunts. That makes it that much easier for rest of the world to notice, without confusion.

So, the tariffs are not about Russian oil which the EU continues to buy (and gas too), or our trade relations with Russia since there has been a 23 per cent up-stake in US-Russia trade volumes for January-May 2025, year-on-year. Riled by extensive damage caused to the American built (and perhaps American operated) nuclear command post in Nur Khan airbase near Rawalpindi and nuclear storage facilities embedded deep in Kirana Hills and Sargodha which exposed the vulnerabilities and limitations of America's military might, Trump has hit back with the only weapon he thinks still works. That such a challenge could actually emanate from India, a country the US thought it had under its thumb as part of the Quad has been difficult to digest.

The real reasons for the 50 per cent tariffs are more personal than for advancing American interests.

India must take the bull (the Bully) by its horns. Many nationalist leaders who cared about their country and tried to face up to American bullying in the past have been neutered through coups, assassinations, sponsored revolutions and open wars. Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (1953), Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz (1954), the Republic of the Congo (now DRC) Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba (1961), Chile President Salvador Allende (1973) apart from dictators but nationalists like Saddam Hussein (2204) and Muamar Gaddafi (2011) are just a few names in a long list.

But the geopolitical landscape is vastly altered today. BRICS is the new challenger with ten members, ten partner countries and about 40 more lining up including America's southern neighbour Mexico. BRICS is not an ideological block, whether in terms of capitalism vs socialism or democracy vs dictatorship. It is not a monolith; but what they are united about is the determination to come out of the near-permanent state of their underdevelopment primarily caused by a neo-colonial global financial, trade and Mafioso-style 'Rule Based International Order' designed and dominated by the US since WW II. That makes it easier for the 180 odd countries of the world to make their choices when faced with a situation of "either you are with us or against us".