Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, summarizing a key belief of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy thinking, said in an interview that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power… that was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet.”
Why would a Trumpian foreign policy, one that purports to put America first, seek multipolarity rather than unipolarity? In short, because a multipolar world is a more transactional world, one that holds nation-states to account less because national power trumps rules. In the Trumpist view, this transactional mentality would make it easier to strike deals that favor the United States
In other words, a Trumpian foreign policy would be a return to the great power competition and balance of power that prevailed between states in the 19th century. It’s a world where, to quote the Greek historian Thucydides, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” There is also a precedent for this sort of thinking in Indian political thought in the form of a theory of matsyanyaya, the view that in an anarchic world, the large fish eats the smaller fish.
It is not a world where national sovereignty and settled borders would be considered unchangeable. Trump has already spoken of acquiring Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gaza. In short, it would mean the end of the post-World War II global order spearheaded by the United States, an order characterized by peace, the promotion of democracy, and sacrosanct borders.
At the heart of this new world order is the question of whether human nature and the nature of states — the desire for power and conquests, for security and glory, the product of thousands of years of evolution and strategic thinking — could really be altered forever in a generation through institutions and norms. The behavior and beliefs of the leaders of “revisionist” powers such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea havelong suggested otherwise, so it should not be surprising that the world’s dominant economic, cultural, and military power, the United States, would also seek to leverage its strengths to boost its perceived status and security. And it is not just the U.S.; other countries such as Turkiye and Saudi Arabia also seem to be ready to expand their regional power and perhaps rejig the order of things in their localities.
Where does India fit into this revised world order, and could it find ways to thrive in it?
India has traditionally been a supporter of multilateral global institutions and the rules-based international system that has traditionally been promoted by U.S. foreign policy. Even though India has had several governments, including the present one, that have pursued foreign policy with a realist streak, and have emphasized strategic autonomy and non-alignment, India has not sought to overthrow the fundamental pillars of the post-1945 liberal world order, but strengthen its position within the system. Yet the dissolution of this order is not necessarily a bad thing for India.
India can also thrive in a new world order based on great power competition and the balance of power, as well as a world of tariffs and protectionism, with the latter policies not being new to India at all.
In fact, India can find ways to use the new order to its advantage, namely by carving out a sphere of influence in South Asia and by dominating the Indian Ocean, moves that could be advantageous economically and militarily. This sort of vision needs to be backed up by real power: witness how many countries throughout the world defer to China for fear of losing out on trade and investments. It would amount to the enforcement of an Indian Monroe Doctrine — the American version of dominating its own backyard — or an Indian version of the Chinese idea of tianxia (all under heaven), the view that placed the Chinese emperor and state at the center of the world and as the fount of sovereignty, surrounded by states deferring to and paying tribute to this central entity.
Indian political thought has a not too dissimilar concept, the mandala theory of the Arthashastra that posits a central pole radiating power outwards and seeking to dominate the polities nearest to it, which are to be regarded as enemies. The ruler of the central state should seek to radiate power outward from their polity, dominating an ever greater part of the world. India has certainly followed elements of the mandala theory in its modern foreign policy practice, cultivating, for example, the neighbors of its neighbors, such as Japan.
In a dog-eats-dog world — or in Indian parlance, a fish-eats-fish world — India is fortunate in one very important way: its size. It is the world’s most populous country, occupies a geographically well-defined subcontinent at the heart of Asia, has an independent foreign policy and is considered the world’s fourth strongest military power, and it will soon be the world’s third largest economy. In short, a country like India can thrive in a multipolar, post-rules-based order world, because it does not have to worry about its existence and sovereignty in a way that a small country like Estonia would. Nor is it a city-state dependent on trade, like Singapore. Like the United States and China, India is strong enough to not have to worry about its very existence; secure in that knowledge, it can project its power regionally.
It is imperative for any great power — and make no mistake, India is too large to fall into any other power’s camp or play second fiddle to other countries — to secure its own backyard. The old playbook required all countries to treat all other countries — no matter how small or weak — as equal sovereign powers, but that is hardly the attitude shown by China, Russia, or a Trumpian foreign policy. In the context of India, take for example Nepal, which is comparatively small and counts India as its largest trade partner. In 2020, Nepal issued a map showing the Kalapani territory disputed with India as a part of Nepal. One could hardly imagine Nepal doing a similar thing if it had disputed territory with China.
Likewise, tensions have recently increased between India and Bangladesh, whose former pro-India prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, fled the country after protests last year. In both cases, India has had to deal with unrest on its periphery, often ceding its influence in these countries to China. While some analyses have argued that India ought to have dealt with Bangladesh on the basis of values, and supporting democracy, instead of propping up an increasingly autocratic government, or engaging with all political parties, at the end of the day, India did not use its economic and military strength to throw its weight around — as China often does — and make it clear that it would not tolerate disrespect for its regional security interests.
In a world where territorial borders were not so sacrosanct and shifting borders were accepted, it would be a lot easier to resolve territorial disputes such as Kalapani (or Kashmir) because losing or gaining some land would not be an existential problem for a country, and there would be no incentive to hold on to and dispute every single inch of land, a problem that had led to decades-long tensions between states.
India would not be disadvantaged by the new world order; on the contrary, despite its previous support for the post-World War II order championed by the United States, it would do well in a Trumpian world. But most importantly, it could use such a world order to shore up its own security interests and influence in its region.