[Making a point — Modi with Putin & Xi in Tianjin]
Narendra Modi and Donald Trump are hewn from the same narcissistic-autocratic Alpha leader cloth. And their clash may be pictured as between two tough mountain goats in a hard head-butting bout, neither backing down, and each trying to push the other over the cliff.
Trump was being Trump when, his hopes of the Nobel Peace Prize dashed by Modi’s refusal to support the nonsense about the US President’s role in ending Op Sindoor, he raked the Indian PM over the coals. He obviously expected that imposing 50% tariffs on India would lead to a chastised Modi folding, a’la Zelensky, and suing for peace. And, having shown up the Indian leader as his vassal, he’d then respond by magnanimously announcing a reduction of tariffs to the 25% level to Modi’s great relief! That didn’t work. Next, he had Peter Navarro, his Trade representative whom fellow economists call “stupid” and worse, try and exert pressure on New Delhi by ramping up the rhetoric about Ukraine being “Modi’s war” and India a “laundromat” for Russia’s ill-gotten monies. That didn’t work either, leaving the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who had berated India for buying Russian oil, to tone down the invective by telling Fox News that “at the end of the day we will come together.” Nope, that isn’t happening!
Instead, the next thing that actually happened was India walked out of the Free Trade Agreement negotiations (as Navarro tells it), and Modi betook himself to Tianjin for the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement summit to talk things over with Putin and Xi Jinping. But not before first flying into Tokyo, there to sign a ramped up defence cooperation agreement with Japan, and publicly to support Japanese claims on the Senkaku Islands in the East Sea disputed with China — an “in your face” move that must have rocked Xi and his team back on their heels. Because they surely expected a cowed down Modi to be more malleable. So, for the first time in his tenure as prime minister — and for the first time, in fact, since whenever, that an Indian leader showed spunk and spine. That he did so before entering the lair of the dragon, is particulary commendable.
One so wishes Trump had mistreated Modi in this manner in his first term, just so the country was spared the ensuing spectacle of the leader of a proud country acting like a servile and obsequious nobody in the court of Trump. Still, now with Modi humiliated he reacted as he should have done all along — standing his ground, and telling Trump and Xi Jinping where to get off!
The most interesting thing to happen in Tianjin, incidentally, was outside the conference hall. Modi and Putin, it is said, spent a whole hour together inside the latter’s posh armoured vehicle, before reaching the summit site. Whatever they talked about, they seemed at the end of their closed interaction inside Putin’s car — no doubt swept clean of Chinese listening devices, and not anywhere outside where their conversation may have been picked up — to have a spring in their step as they walked in seperately to be greeted by Xi. Bet, it wasn’t just niceties they exchanged!
It is good to see the Indian PM with a chip on his shoulder for being treated shabbily, and publicly at that, by the US President. I had said in my 2018 book ‘Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition’ that Modi’s “creeper vine foreign policy” of wrapping itself around America, would NOT turn out well for India. It turned out even less well for Modi, personally, especially when he had invested so much political capital in building Trump up as his “good friend” and India’s relationship with America, as special — an enterprise hurrahed along by retired diplomats, generals, JNU academics, and lay media commentators. All these people, not surprisingly, beseeched Modi in op-eds in the wake of his breakup with Trump, to grin and bear the personal hurt, and for India to absorb the tariff pain, and generally to behave like a nation of Gungadins!
Shame! Shame!
What is galling is why the government never got its story right, off the gate, on the Russian oil at the centre of this brouhaha. At the Bratislava Forum early in the year, foreign minister S Jaishankar said that India was buying oil from Russia at discounted rates at Washington’s behest. More recently, petroleum minister Hardip Puri told BBC that India’s decision to buy Russian energy was for purely commercial reasons — it was available cheap. So, which is it, because it matters? Apparently, Jaishankar was being more candid. But he also revealed that New Delhi was happy doing first Biden’s and later Trump’s bidding, and buying oil just because at that time the international oil price stability served the interests of the US and European states who needed diesel and other refined oil products that they previously secured from Russia directly. In fact, so convoluted is the energy politics that the diesel produced by the Reliance refinery in Jamnagar from processed Russian crude actually makes up some 15% of the Ukrainian requirement of diesel! So, would India not be hurting Kyiv’s war effort by stopping Russian oil purchases?
To return to Tianjin, as if to cement the fracture in relations with the US, Modi in his formal speech at the summit, said: “India and Russia have a special and privileged partnership. In the most difficult and testing times, India and Russia have always stood by each other,” and added that India “eagerly” awaits Putin’s visit later in the year. With respect to China, Modi was straightforward. “Our cooperation is linked to the interests of 2.8 billion people of our two countries”, he asserted. “This will also pave the way for the welfare of all humanity. We are committed to advancing our relations based on mutual trust, respect, and sensitivity.” Not to be outdone in sentiment, Xi referred to the world “undergoing rapid transformations and international instability. China and India are the two major Eastern powers and the most populous countries in the world…We uphold”, he declared, “strong commitment: advancing the unity and revival of developing countries and promoting human progress are important strategies. As good friends and partners who support each other, integrating and uniting should be the right path for China and India.”
Under assault from Trump, it indicates a certain solidifying of the RIC (Russia-India-China) grouping, which effect will spill over in the economic realm into a strengthened BRICS, with Brazil, like India, smashed with 50% tariffs. Brazil has, remained defiant, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ensuring that his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, charged with treason, whom Trump tried to save by threatening tariffs, will be tried in court. Indeed, Lula is fortifying the military guard around Bolsonaro lest he try and escape, perhaps, with American (CIA) help.
What Trump has unwittingly achieved is solidarity of all the major non-NATO countries that together will be too much for a receding power like America or even the US+NATO to handle.
What Modi has to now ensure is that India does not lose the leverage it has gained with the US and China. He will have to resist the pleadings from the corporate world and the internal leanings of the MEA under Jaishankar, to reach an understanding with Trump. The US President finds himself up a creek and there’s no reason to rescue him by having the Indian governement climb down from its principled position.
There’s the deal for 113 GE 414 jet engines, for starters. Modi can drive a hard bargain by demanding that GE hand over source codes to India — a demand that should be made with the French firm, Dassault Avions, as well for the source codes for the ridiculously expensive 4.5 generation Rafale and Rafale-Marine aircraft, on the pain of rescinding the deals for them. It is the French, we must remember, who not too long ago admonished Thyssen-Krupp for promising to furnish India with the source codes for the HDW 214 diesel submarine with Air Independent Propulsion for the Indian navy’s Project 75i. (More on these deals, hopefully, in a future post.)
With regard to the US and China, moreover, India has to conduct its foreign policy nonlinearly — something China and America have always done expertly with India. Thus, because US healthcare depends on generic drugs produced cheaply by Indian pharma companies, their import is exempt from Trump’s tariffs. Jewelry, leather goods, etc are not exactly great things for India to export and the fact that they are tariffed, well, what the heck they may be routed into the US market via third countries. The consumer goods, let Indian manufacturers find alternate markets in Africa and Latin America for them by producing them more cheaply than China does. Hey, that’s the marketplace logic. Swim or sink! The Modi government has also instantly to diplomatically stop opening H1B type visa doors for would be Indian techie immigrants to the US, West European states, and Australia that they prefer to go to. There are cultural resistance movements in all these countries against Indians in their midst. It reflects on the country that so many want to escape it.
RIC and BRICS are fine by way of balancing the US economically and politically. But China too has to be balanced, but militarily and here BRIS (Brazil-Russia-India-South Africa) and Modified or Mod Quad (India-Japan-Australia and the US replaced by a group of Southeast Asian countries) should be diligently pursued, and loose and informal securitised dyads and triads of, say, India-Japan-Australia, India-Japan-South Korea, India-Indonesia-Philippines, India-Vietnam-Philippines, etc — as I argue in my next book that I am currently finishing, will provide precisely the overlapping military protection for regional and sub-regional countries without the impedimenta of formal alliances, etc.
Shouldn’t Modi, at least now, after seeing India getting kicked with tariffs, and the closing of H1B visa channel and restrictions on entry of Indian students — because both he and Jaishankar have been going round over the years preaching “labour mobility” to advanced countries who are not listening anymore, do what he has long promised but not delivered — “Reform, Perform, Transform”? Or, is it forever to remain just a slogan?
With digitisation successfully implemented, has the Prime Minister ever wondered why the government portals dealing especially with licenses are always not working? Because this is how the babus make money? And why are the babus still permitted discretionary power — a means of generating bribes? And why are there so many licenses to open and conduct business, any way? And why are so many paper documents needed in the digital age for bureaucratic oversight? Where, in fact, is the “ease of doing business” that the government keeps boasting about?
And what happened, PMji, to getting the government out of the business of business? Why not, in this respect, start by privatising the defence public sector units? You corporatised them, good. Now let them go to the market for capitalisation, sell shares, as L&T, Mahindra Godrej Aerospace, et al, do, and have them compete for military contracts instead of, as happens now, the Department of Defence Production in the Defence Ministry, in sweet heart manner, channeling contracts to the hopeless and resources- wasting HAL, Mazgaon Dockyard, etc.
Please, Modiji, pay attention to these aspects of administration. Artificial Intelligence can remove the need for most of these armies of peons, clerks, section officers clogging up the system. Let AI take over these roles, allowing you to drastically prune the central government — which would lead, in its train, to the shrinking of state and local governments.
But efficient and effective AI requires that the mountains of laws, rules, regulations, to simply be discarded whole — these are the remnants of the British Raj. Time they were given the heave ho. And with the government bringing in Constitutional Amendments left and right, why not do the country and its people the ultimate service of removing Article 311 in the Constitution that provides lifetime security of employment to government employees, chaprassi on up, as a means of sprucing up the government?When public servants know that their continued employment depends on their effectiveness and efficiency in office, they will perform and, voila!, the Indian society will be transformed!! No Indian Prime Minister then would have to go on bended knees to foreign leaders to offtake employable youth to avoid an explosive social powder keg from developing at home.
These reforms and such steps are what will push India into the great power category by 2047. Looking to the US, China or anyone else for help and assistance which, in any case, will be unavailable, is not going to get India there.
Security Wise 
Very sensible prescriptions from Prof Karnad, who it seems has adapted to the rapidly-changing geopolitical situation and especially in view of his intransigent posture towards China in the past. To address the point about India not having shown adequate gumption during previous PMs: (1) Mrs Gandhi did stand up to extreme US coercion in 1971; (2) Dr Manmohan Singh also showed exemplary courage in the Devyani Khobragade incident. Apparently, this article was published before Navarro’s cretinish cheap shot at Brahmins. As is now being widely discussed, Trump and company are indeed succeeding in helping make MAGA a forthcoming reality: MAGA = Make Asia Great Again.
“…has adapted to the rapidly-changing geopolitical situation and especially in view of his intransigent posture towards China in the past.”
Never not acknowledged China’s singular rise and position in the world. Did you miss my presciption for militarily balancing China?
@Proforessor Karnad:
A apropos… “Never not acknowledged China’s singular rise and position in the world”..
– Absolutely! And thanks for meticulous reading of readers responses.
Not sure from where your “intransient posture” and “China’s singular rise” can be concluded as per the reading of the post
Where is this from: “Not sure from where your “intransient posture” and “China’s singular rise” can be concluded as per the reading of the post”?
Bharat: Feel, India needs to do a Meiji revolution redux and Trump’s showing of cards is like Commodore Perry’s arrival – Japan was naked and helpless. A detente with the ever wily CPC is surely not the answer. Use Trump and the west to invest and reform and create the IOR security architecture.
Yes, but where’s the leadership for it?
Trump is insane but the main question is would India be at this juncture and mess and mess it is, with any of the former Prime Ministers at the helm of India? Modi, beleived he can charm any head of state including those of US, China and all the countries. His loud mouth from days as the Chief Minister till now and all the foreign trips to “upstage” the world leaders with the help of his controlled Television has given him in to the intelligence agencies of friends and foes as a person to be manipulated by stoking his ego. Enter Trump with Himalayan ego and the rest is what we see. His ego also wants him to establish himself as the founder of modern India and not Nehru whom he has maligned like with the lies is also being watched by the friends and foes beyond India’s borders.
And with China sitting on the Indian land which Nehru refused to yield, Modi has sold out India. Read Graham Allison and many other China experts in US, they all say with one voice, China is a hard core follower of Sun Tzu statecraft which emphasizes on deception in diplomacy, One drives hard bargain in diplomacy and then keep the word but not China. In 1954 and then again 1957 Zhou Enlai assured Nehru everything south of Tibet which included Arunachal Pradesh, back then known as NEFA was a settled border including Ladakh, then in 1959 threw a bomb saying the entire border was up for negotiations. In 1960 China offered to go back but China would go back on Indian territory retaining a large chunk and India had to go back on its own territory.
China does not call itself Middle Kingdom for nothing, for them this means between earth and sky there is only one thing in the middle and that is China. Forget who, but a well known US expert on China said for China all the countries in the neighborhood have to be subservient to her.
Mr. Modi, count your fingers after shaking hands with any Chinese leader. April 2020 intrusions were in response to reckless statements such as POK and Aksai Chin will be ours, there is a lot to be written here including for Jai Shankar who does nothing else but trying to enhance image of his boss. While abusing Nehru he has stolen Nehru’s speech delivered in 1949 at the UN General Assembly.
First thing Modi govt needs to do is take Jaishankar(US agent) out of foreign ministry
Deform, Reform, Perform, Transform
otherwise distribute free Chloroform
Looks like Jaishankar is slowly being sidelined.Hope govt works with urgency and killer instinct to get things done make states compete like they do in IPL and reward states more investment if it performs it creates competition and makes it a matter of pride to be lagging behind.
Nice suggestions all, but I doubt if he has the zeal and bandwith to implement these having wasted two successive mandates on frivolities.
Dear Sir, agree with your analysis. Finally our government is realizing US strategic partner is nothing but US vassal state. Time to get rid of US defense equipments ,work towards BRICS currency and have only transactional relationship with US.
You are telling RIC and BRICS is good to balance US politically and economically. But how to balance them militarily. We cannot rule out the possibility of US military intervention directly as proxies like Pakistan failed miserably. Without any NATO like alliance how India can take on US militarily if they try to send nuclear submarines,B2 bombers,aircraft carriers one day.
Indeed, Pakistan has long been a phantom member of NATO. Nato is now full magog with FInland and Sweden. NATO is magog because of Hun, Lapp, Finn and American Indian Heritage. That is why NATO supports Chechens, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Uyghurs. The Shanghai Pact is the ancient civilizations suppressed by the magog millennium seeking to revive their patrimony.
@BharatKarnad
a little but summary of your 2008 work india’s nuclear policy
Core Arguments
1. Critique of “No First Use” (NFU):professor believes India’s adherence to NFU weakens deterrence against nuclear-armed adversaries like China and Pakistan.He suggests India should keep its doctrine deliberately ambiguous, like israel.
2. Credible Minimum Deterrence vs. Maximum Effectiveness:While India officially maintains a “credible minimum deterrence” posture, Karnad argues that this has been interpreted too narrowly, leading to underdevelopment of thermonuclear capabilities and delivery systems.He advocates for a more robust and expansive arsenal that could credibly threaten adversaries’ strategic centers
.3. Thermonuclear Debate:Karnad is highly critical of India’s 1998 Pokhran-II thermonuclear test, which many scientists (including him) argue was a partial failure.He insists India needs further full-scale thermonuclear testing to ensure the reliability of its strategic deterrent, even if it means defying international pressure.
4. Against Excessive Restraint:He repeatedly stresses that India’s nuclear policy is shackled by “moralism” and the fear of international backlash.In his view, great powers—from the US to China—rose by demonstrating willingness to test, expand, and project their nuclear strength without apology
.5. Operational Concerns:Karnad raises doubts about the survivability and readiness of India’s nuclear triad.He particularly emphasizes the need for a stronger ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) fleet and MIRVed missiles to ensure second-strike capability.
Strengths of Karnad’s Perspective
Hard-Nosed Realism: He brings a realist lens, countering the often idealistic and diplomatic framing of India’s nuclear policy.
Challenging Orthodoxy: His critique forces policymakers and scholars to confront whether India’s deterrent is genuinely credible or symbolic.
Strategic Autonomy: He highlights the risks of India becoming dependent on US or Western security guarantees rather than building independent nuclear strength.
Limitations / CriticismsEscalatory Risks:
His prescriptions—such as abandoning NFU or resuming nuclear testing—could trigger arms races, sanctions, and instability.
Neglect of Political Realities: He sometimes underestimates domestic political, economic, and diplomatic costs of a more aggressive nuclear policy.
Overemphasis on Hard Power: Critics argue he downplays the role of diplomacy, alliances, and economic strength in ensuring security?
would you like to correct me at any point?
That book was published in 2008.Things have changed since then. But we do need testing to have proven hi-yield fusion weapons. All that has happened to-date only reinforces my hard power angle
@BharatKarnad
in any possibility on this earth i mean even the slightest
do you see modi ordering for more renewed testing untill we perfect our hydrogen bomb devices
or we should rather hope this from the next future prime minister
Who knows? We can only hope.
@BharatKarnad
as always a splendid artice
But professor karnad a little bit offtopic
recently on 3 September chinese rocket forces unveiled there newest long range strike ICBM DF 61 which is speculated to have a range of 15000km
but the thing that was very rare too see was the chinese showing there Df5,Df4 and Df41 warheads
the 3.3 megaton and 5 megaton monsters that you talk about they were displayed on the parade
what message is Beijing sending to the world and why is that Beijing is not giving up its megaton warhead arsenal and not moving to below 500kt weapons like americans and french have moved
Not sure why no one understands the psychogical edge a side with a 3.3 MT Vs 500 KT incoming
Both their DF-41 and JL-3 MIRV systems have the sub 300 KT warheads, as reported. 3MT+ warheads are still needed for hardened targets and for value and counterforce targets, who’s areas are large enough to warrant such use apart from what Bharat has expounded. Take a simple escalation dominance example and see what happens when one stops at only a reliable 20 KT and other untested claims. These war games will start way before any real war and India’s capitulation will be before any real escalation happens. At this point It is useless to talk about competing with China – unless we have leadership that wants to double the defense budget for the next 20-30 years. I hate to come around to the view of Read Admiral K. Raja Menon – focus on the IOR, it is our only chance for any offensive action. (paraphrasing).
Shaurya@ — read the section in my 2015 book “Why India Is Not a Great Power (Yet)” on why Raja Menon’s “switching strategy” won’t at all work, and is the wrong military option
You’re underestimating the weight of the lala lobby. Their crony bussines model mostly consist of arbitrage. None of them have invested in R&D and are unikely to do so in the future. As Ashok Atluri, of Zen Technology, remarked that you have to have R&D in your DNA.
The R&D of Indian Automotive sector is negligible, far from innovating they haven’t even indigenised components and Machines. Privatisation should not be fetishized, it’s a means to an end. The end being the STEM technology creation, Automation and expansion.
GOI should incentivize and invest in private R&D focused companies to produce Na-ion battery, Microchips and electronics, HSR, Quantum computing, AI, Nuclear etc. If it fails in funding and guiding the R&D companies the lala lobby will just buy cheaply from China and sale it here, with added screwdivergiri.
Prof Karnad, heartening news, though unconfirmed.
“India wants to Patrol the Malacca Straits along with Singapore, Indonesia & Malaysia. Singapore has extended its support”
@BharatKarnad What do you make of Donald Trump’s lamentation of having lost India to China?
Please see this, https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/weve-lost-india-russia-to-darkest-china-trump-shares-pic-of-modi-putin-xi-together-from-sco-summit-2782533-2025-09-05 – Flattery [he has admitted to using flattery and believes in using flattery]? Deception? Having come to senses? – or India should just ignore this?
Listen to what Luttnick has to say — he drips contempt for India
@BharatKarnad Even if Howard Lutnick drips contempt for India, he still is subordinate to Donald Trump and not the decision-maker.
So, do you think people like Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent and Peter Navarro are more like attack dogs, if I may call them so, based on their behaviour towards India, to attack India, while Donald Trump depending on his mood, like yesterday, laments, in order to keep India guessing?
Attack dogs are let loose by their master.
@BharatKarnad You are unfortunately for India, right about Howard Lutnick, because of statements like these by Howard Lutnick, read at, https://www.deccanherald.com/india/india-will-be-at-negotiating-table-saying-sorry-in-a-month-or-two-us-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-3714333.
So, how should India deal with attack dogs like Howard Lutnick and their master Donald Trump?
Pay less attention, disengage
The problem with Modi is that he is a liberal democrat. India needs a Deng like CEO of country who will crush the babus, lalas, money exchangers, political dynasts and rent seekers; who will bring India’s population down to 400 million of high quality(Aesthetic, high IQ, Martial) individuals; who will incentivise the scientists, engineers and builders.
We need a techno-martial ruling and governing class who understands what it takes to acquire power when you don’t have any, amidst incumbents who will not give you any.
You can’t reform babus and lalas, they have to be replaced. Modi should create a parallel structure of techno-martial bureaucracy, judiciary, business class and military to replace the existing one; and adopt the Chinese model of governance.
And how such model of government be any good for a common citizens?
even 10% of Indians would not fit into your hypothetical “Techno Martial” race.. Countries, govts exist for people not the vice versa.
@BharatKarnad What do you make of Donald Trump’s recent statements like, “India and the United States having a special relationship”, “Just have moments on occasion”, “I’ll always be friends with [Narendra] Modi” to name some, as read at https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/trump-says-hell-always-be-friends-with-modi-nothing-to-worry-about-india-us-ties/article70018416.ece/amp/?
Do you think such statements by Donald Trump are also due to him feeling some kind of backlash or pressure from maybe, some within his own Republican Party and Corporate America/Wall Street due to his imposition of 50% tariffs on India?
Trump’s policy can change with his mood. Indian policy should not rely on US.
@BharatKarnad Do you think Trump is completely insensitive to Corporate America/Wall Street, when he and some of his secretaries and appointees themselves are businessmen?
See reports of all the corporate honchos invited to dinner at WH and purring praises of Trump.
Professor, China can not be a primary threat to India, as it lacks the penetration. Whereas, west, due to the anglification of India, has been able to capture the elite and shape policy beneficial to its empire.
Sidelining Jaishankar will not work, as it overlooks the layers of elite capture from military to media. Indians have internalized their own culture/language as inferior and, therefore, requiring a western governing class. So deep is the inferiority complex amongst deracinated elites that every blow from the West is considered as a well-needed pat; they have no linguistic/cultural connection to the country or the people.
If the Chinese elite want to rule the world and globalize their language/culture for empire building, Indian elites merely want to be the peon of Western rulers because India does not have elites, only the middle classes who’ve become chattering classes and are incapable of governing as they are insecure,status-seeking strivers.
We will eventually capitulate but it will not be public. Likes of Tellis, Asha jadeja motwani in the west and Jaishankar, Coupta, frint etc here will make sure that India doesn’t break out of Western plantation.
What Modi&co do is far more imporant than what they say. CCS has been sitting on every atmanirbharta project for years, delaying funding for every indigenous peoject, and instead favoring imports.
Modi doesn’t understand how R&D focused manufacturing works since he comes from people who make their money through dalali. The cronies have already started running to China for imports, and eventually they will shape GOI policy in favor of America.
@BharatKarnad If India was to pay less attention and disengage with the USA, wouldn’t it make them increase all the bad things and lies they’re spreading about India?
Wouldn’t it then portray India as a doormat on which anyone can walkover and as a punching bag which any Tom, Dick and Harry can punch and walk away scot-free?
Why not retaliate in kind to each and every word and action against India?