By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

There are two ways for a powerful nation to contain an adversary that is increasingly challenging its core interests. One is to contain the foe by seeking to isolate and squeeze it, including bringing its economy and security under pressure through sanctions and strategic alliances. The other way is to seek discreet containment while maintaining normal relations in trade and diplomacy.

President Trump’s pivot to rein in an expansionist China is just beginning, but it is already apparent that his approach — in a significant departure from Cold War-era overt antagonism or former President Joe Biden’s Russia policy — is likely to embrace the second path. Trump’s approach will seek to limit the influence and power of China without resorting to open hostility.

Trump has sought early on in his term to halt what he has called the “senseless war” in Ukraine, largely because the conflict has diverted American attention from pressing challenges in the Indo-Pacific region and made China the big winner. A Russia-Ukraine ceasefire would allow the U.S. to shift strategic focus and military resources from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, a pivotal region in shaping the new global order.

This was underscored by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Feb. 12 warning to Europe that “the U.S. will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency” and that Europe must take “responsibility for its own security” by leading “from the front” so that America can prioritize “deterring war with China” in the Indo-Pacific.

America’s 80-year run as the world’s preeminent power is under increasing challenge not from Russia, whose revanchist ambitions are largely confined to what it calls its “near abroad,” but from a globally ascendant China. In fact, with Russia preoccupied with Ukraine, China — despite its “no limits” partnership with Moscow — is quietly chipping away at traditional Russian spheres of influence, including drawing Central Asia’s former Soviet republics into its orbit. And in the Indo-Pacific, China is increasingly flexing its muscles, as shown by its recent military drills off Australia, Vietnam and Taiwan.

The Trump administration is working toward clamping down on China’s access to advanced U.S. technology as well as on Chinese investments in critical American infrastructure. A recent White House memorandum to departments and agencies sought to remake the economic relationship with Beijing through a series of proposed restrictions, including thwarting the use of U.S. capital to modernize the Chinese military and blocking Chinese investment strategies to secure “cutting-edge technologies, intellectual property and leverage in strategic industries.”

The memorandum also called for new or expanded restrictions on American investments in China in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum, biotechnology, hypersonics, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, directed energy and other areas important to Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy.

Trump views himself as a dealmaker, and he appears open to cutting deals with Beijing that help reduce China’s huge trade surplus with America. Blending flattery with hardball tactics, Trump has periodically lavished praise on Chinese leader Xi Jinping, including calling him “a brilliant man.”

But Trump has already escalated his tariff war. An extra 10 percent duty on Chinese goods this month is on top of a 10 percent tariff slapped by Trump in early February. And this combined 20 percent duty adds to tariffs of up to 25 percent on Chinese imports that Trump imposed in his first term.

One reason for Trump’s hardline approach toward Canada and Mexico is that these countries serve as back doors for low-cost Chinese goods to enter America duty-free. The concern over origins of goods also may explain why Trump’s suspension of his 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican products applies just to goods covered under the 2020 North American trade accord, thus leaving a lot of products still subject to the new high duties. The 2020 agreement’s rules permit duty-free entry of goods into the U.S. only if the products have been largely made with North American components.

The China angle is also apparent from Trump’s recent 25 percent tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. These tariffs, while penalizing U.S. allies, seek to target China. Faced with a slowing economy, including stubborn disinflationary pressure and a deepening real estate crisis, China has dumped much of its excess steel and aluminum output in the markets of American allies and partners, which, in turn, have exported large shares of their own more-expensive production to the U.S.

More fundamentally, Trump’s early moves appear designed to beat back the Chinese export tsunami. In an untenable situation, China produces 31 percent of the world’s manufactured goods but accounts for just 13 percent of global consumption. A U.S.-led pushback against China’s increasing reliance on exports for growth could deepen its current economic woes, slowing down its rapid military buildup and crimping its debt-trap diplomacy.

As part of an apparent strategy for “containment with a smile,” Trump will continue to express the importance of “getting along with China,” as he did soon after returning to the White House. But we can expect his administration to pursue economic engagement with strategic restraints, including limiting Beijing’s access to critical technologies, rigorously screening Chinese investments and prodding American businesses to step up efforts to diversify supply chains away from China.

Deploying targeted economic restrictions rather than broad sanctions will permit continued engagement in less sensitive areas while still applying pressure where needed.

The U.S. military posture in the Indo-Pacific, for its part, is likely to be defined by deterrence. While shunning provocative actions that could escalate tensions, the Trump administration is expected to strengthen deterrence to prevent aggression, including against an increasingly vulnerable Taiwan.

The strategy will likely seek to ensure that the adversary feels the walls closing in — without feeling the punch.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Disagreement about how to end the Ukraine War is upending the transatlantic relationship, transforming Europe’s approach to its own security, and deepening divisions between the Global South and the West. With the conflict having reached a stalemate, a realistic approach to peace negotiations is essential.

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

At a time of rising geopolitical tensions and deepening global fragmentation, the Ukraine war has proved particularly divisive. From the start, the battle lines were clearly drawn: Russia on one side, Ukraine and the West on the other, and much of the Global South hoping only for the conflict to end. Now, however, alignments are shifting. Whether this will advance efforts to resolve the conflict and strengthen global stability remains to be seen.

After more than three years, Europe – including the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Norway – remains largely steadfast in its support of Ukraine. The largest armed conflict in its neighborhood since World War II has deeply affected the European psyche, as it has challenged basic assumptions about continental security and revived the specter of nuclear annihilation that loomed over Europe throughout the Cold War. The prevailing view has always been that a Russian “victory” – including a peace deal that ceded some Ukrainian territory to Russia – would amount to an “existential threat.”

The United States, however, has decided that it no longer wants to “pour billions of dollars” into what Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls a “bloody stalemate, a meat-grinder-type war.” So, US President Donald Trump is seeking to negotiate a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. To press Ukraine to accept the concessions such an agreement will undoubtedly entail, the Trump administration suspended and later resumed military aid and intelligence support.

This is not about ending a “savage conflict” for “the good of the world,” as Trump claims. While years of sanctions were supposed to drain Russia, economically and militarily, to America’s benefit, they bolstered an unholy Sino-Russian alliance against the West, while sustaining a conflict that kept US attention and resources in Europe. With his push for a peace deal in Ukraine, Trump is seeking to cut America’s losses and shift its strategic focus and military resources toward the Indo-Pacific – the home of America’s real enemy: China.

As Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden recognized, only China has the resolve and capability to surpass the US as the foremost world power. Yet the US still has more than 100,000 troops stationed in Europe. That is why US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently warned that the US can “no longer tolerate” an “imbalanced” transatlantic relationship that “encourages dependency.” Europe must take “responsibility for its own security,” Hegseth said, so that the US can focus on “deterring war with China.”

The question is whether Europe is capable of managing its own security. The answer probably should be yes. As Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently pointed out, Europe does not lack economic strength. Nor does it lack people: there are “500 million Europeans begging 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians.” What is missing is the European Union’s belief that it is a “global power.” The result is a rudderless Europe.

When it comes to supporting Ukraine, Europe has another critical shortcoming. As NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has noted, Europe lacks the necessary military-industrial base to provide sufficient arms support to Ukraine. That is why some, including Rutte, want to make a deal with the US: you keep supplying Ukraine with weapons, and we will foot the bill. Unless the Trump administration accepts such an arrangement, the British-French plan to build a “coalition of the willing” to do the “heavy lifting” on Ukrainian security will face powerful headwinds.

Meanwhile, the Global South is still struggling to cope with the Ukraine war’s economic fallout, especially sharply higher food and energy prices, which have had particularly devastating consequences for small and vulnerable developing countries with limited foreign reserves. Sri Lanka is a case in point. In the months that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, skyrocketing global prices drained its reserves, leading to fuel, food, medicine, and electricity shortages. The resulting economic meltdown pushed a frustrated population over the edge, triggering widespread protests that toppled a political dynasty.

This explains why developing countries remain largely unified in advocating an early negotiated end to the war, even if that means leaving a sizable chunk of Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation. If anything, calls for a peace agreement have grown since 2023, with even NATO member Turkey and close US ally Israel charting more independent stances on the conflict. It does not help that, for many countries in the Global South, the West’s contrasting responses to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza reek of hypocrisy.

For now, Ukraine and Europe remain committed to seeking peace through strength. But as admirable as Ukraine’s resistance has been, and as important as it is to defend the international legal principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that Russia has flagrantly violated, the fact is that the conflict has reached a stalemate, while the international fallout continues to grow. Rather than repeat the mistakes of the 1950-53 Korean War – in which an armistice agreement was reached only after two years of military deadlock – all parties should adopt a realistic approach to ending the war and negotiate accordingly.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2025.

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

Former President Joe Biden left President Trump a mess in Ukraine, with Russian forces continuing to occupy one-fifth of Ukrainian territory and advancing along the front lines. The U.S. faces diminishing options after three years of deepening entanglement in a brutal war that has devastated numerous Ukrainian cities, towns and villages.

The war has distracted America from pressing challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s emerging economic and geopolitical hub that is poised to shape the new international order. Worse still, China has emerged as the big winner, as the conflict has ensnared NATO and Russia.

China, significantly stronger than Russia in economic output, military spending and other strategic metrics, remains America’s chief global rival. As Biden’s national security strategy acknowledged, China is committed to achieving global dominance by surpassing the U.S. as the foremost world power.

The U.S.-led “hybrid war” and unprecedented sanctions against Moscow have inadvertently strengthened China’s hand, including by making it Russia’s banker. Russia now conducts much of its international trade in Chinese yuan and deposits the proceeds in Chinese banks, effectively granting Beijing a share in its financial returns.

More concerning is China’s strategic maneuvering to co-opt Russia in an unholy alliance against the U.S. Their “no-limits partnership,” declared in 2022, is creating a two-against-one geopolitical competition that threatens to accelerate America’s relative decline through strategic overreach. A formal Sino-Russian military and strategic alliance could produce a pan-Eurasian colossus — America’s worst geopolitical nightmare.

Given this backdrop, the U.S. needs to return to its old grand strategy, which helped the West win the Cold War by driving a wedge between Moscow and Beijing. Ending the Ukraine war would also enable the U.S. to reallocate military resources from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, where its global primacy is truly at stake.

Trump’s diplomatic outreach to Moscow — aimed at resolving the Ukraine war, as he promised to do in his campaign — has created not only a furor in some Western capitals but also a toxic and divisive political discourse at home. Even before the efforts to end the war have made any tangible progress, Trump already faces fierce criticism. Opponents accuse him of giving Moscow a free pass and endorsing a “Ukraine sellout.” Some claim he has lifted Russia’s international isolation, despite evidence that the West never succeeded in actually isolating Moscow.

But diplomacy between adversaries is crucial to defuse tensions and prevent direct conflict. Biden firmly shut the door to diplomacy with Russia, prolonging Ukraine’s suffering. Only after a change in U.S. leadership did the American and Russian leaders resume direct communication, agreeing to explore pathways to peace.

Ending the Ukraine war will require a complex and carefully negotiated resolution — one that is “enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all parties,” as Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it. But the political backlash from pro-war factions in the West is making the search for peace even more difficult.

Regardless of how the peace process unfolds, the transatlantic alliance is set for a major transformation. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bluntly told European leaders recently to take “responsibility for [their] own security” so that the U.S. can focus on “deterring war with China.” Consequently, tens of thousands of American troops currently stationed in Europe may be redeployed to the Indo-Pacific.

The European Union, which dutifully followed Biden’s lead in escalating the Ukraine conflict through transfers of increasingly sophisticated weapons, now seeks a role in peace negotiations. But the EU is rudderless and deeply divided, grasping for common ground. Its inclusion would be a drag on the negotiations, which may explain why the U.S. and Russian delegations met not in Europe but in Saudi Arabia.

The fact is that the Ukraine conflict remains in many ways a proxy war between Russia and the U.S., with Ukraine caught in the middle — a pawn in the geopolitical chess game. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has worked to snuff out the country’s nascent democracy through draconian measures, admitted this month that, without America’s continued military aid, it will be “very, very difficult” for Ukraine to “survive.”

By opening direct dialogue with Moscow, the Trump administration has demonstrated both its commitment to ending the war and the marginal role China plays in securing peace in Ukraine. The only nation that benefits from prolonging the war is China, which has more than doubled its nuclear arsenal since 2020 and is expanding its conventional forces faster than any other country has since World War II.

Trump’s decision to extricate America from the Ukraine conflict aligns with long-term U.S. strategic interests. The war, through the flood of Western arms supplies to Kyiv, has exposed the West’s military shortcomings, such as its depleted stocks of critical munitions and air defense systems, as well as America’s struggle to ramp up weapons production.

As Biden himself acknowledged, a “negotiated settlement” is the only viable path to ending the war. A U.S.-Russia peace deal must be reached before Beijing and Moscow can cement a strategic axis that erodes America’s global primacy and increases Taiwan’s vulnerability. A Chinese annexation of Taiwan would reshape the global order, ending America’s global preeminence and undermining its alliance system.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

Last time Donald Trump was president, ties between the United States and India flourished. But the bilateral relationship began to fray during Joe Biden’s presidency, owing not least to divisions over the Ukraine war. Will Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest meeting with Trump at the White House mark the first step toward restoring this critical relationship?

Trump has made no secret of his conviction that personal bonds between leaders can underpin stronger bilateral relationships. And he and Modi certainly share an affinity: both are nationalist politicians who love little more than to please a roaring crowd with elaborate theatrics. In September 2019, the two came together for a public rally in Houston, attended by 50,000 Indian-Americans and several US legislators. The following February, Trump addressed more than 100,000 people in Ahmedabad. “America loves India,” he declared. “America respects India, and America will always be faithful and loyal friends [sic] to the Indian people.”

US-India relations took a turn for the worse after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Biden administration mobilized America’s allies and partners to join its campaign to punish Russia – and, ideally, compel it to change its behavior. But far from joining this effort, India stayed neutral and seized the opportunity to secure cheap Russian oil.

There were other points of contention, as well. The Biden administration sought to weaken Myanmar’s military junta by imposing stringent sanctions on the country and sending “non-lethal aid” to rebel groups – a policy that has contributed to instability in India’s border state of Manipur. Biden also coddled Pakistan’s military-backed regime, including by approving a $450 million deal in 2022 to upgrade the country’s fleet of F-16 fighter jets.

Similarly, Biden welcomed the interim government that Bangladesh’s military installed following the overthrow of the country’s India-friendly government last August. Bangladesh’s rapid descent into lawlessness and Islamist violence since then has raised serious security risks for India, which is already home to millions of illegally settled Bangladeshis.

America’s approach to Sikh separatist leaders on its soil has also raised India’s hackles. Under the Biden administration, the US carried out a criminal investigation into India’s alleged involvement in supposed assassination plots against Sikh militants in the US and Canada. Last September, just days before Biden met with Modi in Delaware, senior White House and US intelligence officials met with Sikh separatists to assure them that they would be protected from “transnational repression.” The following month, the US charged a former Indian intelligence officer in an alleged failed plot to kill a New York-based Sikh militant, who is on India’s most-wanted list.

Against this backdrop, it is easy to see why Trump’s victory in last November’s presidential election raised hopes in India for a reset in bilateral relations. It helps that Trump has repeatedly pledged to negotiate a quick conclusion to the Ukraine war, meaning that India’s choice not to pick a side in that conflict would no longer matter.

A few weeks into Trump’s second presidency, however, there are reasons to doubt this rosy scenario. So far, Trump has done nothing to spare India from his frenetic push to implement his campaign promises, from raising tariffs to deporting undocumented immigrants. When the Trump administration sent more than 100 Indian nationals back to India on a military aircraft – a 40-hour ordeal – their hands and feet were shackled. Modi said nothing.

In fact, far from standing up to Trump, Modi has preemptively slashed tariffs on US imports, hoping that this would keep India out of “Tariff Man’s” sights. But a dissatisfied Trump, who has called India a “very big abuser” of tariffs, has not spared India from his steel and aluminum levies. He wants India to wipe out its $35 billion bilateral trade surplus, by buying more oil and petroleum products, and more weapons, from the US.

India is the world’s third-largest primary energy consumer, after China and the US, and the largest source of oil demand growth. That makes the country a highly attractive market for a US administration that is committed to increasing domestic oil and gas production. It also means that Trump’s commitment to pushing down oil prices, including by applying pressure on OPEC leader Saudi Arabia, would benefit India’s economy.

But Trump has never been particularly concerned about ensuring that his trade agreements are mutually beneficial. Regarding India, his plan may well be to use the threat of tariffs to compel Modi’s government to accept the trade deal of his choosing. That is what he did to Japan during his first presidency. He also tried to do it to India, but failed, so he stripped India of its special trade status instead, prompting India to impose retaliatory tariffs on some US products.

If Trump ends up slapping more tariffs on India, the Indian economy could slow, at least marginally. More broadly, Trump’s “America First” trade agenda – which clashes with Modi’s “Make in India” initiative – threatens to undermine India’s status as the world’s “back office,” providing extensive IT and business services to US companies.

Where trade is concerned, Trump treats friends and foes alike. But it matters that India is a friend – and Trump should want to keep it that way. The US-India strategic partnership helps advance the two countries’ shared interests in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s emerging economic and geopolitical hub, including strengthening maritime security and supporting a stable balance of power. Already, the two countries are working to deepen military interoperability, and the US has overtaken Russia as India’s leading weapons supplier, as new contracts show.

As Trump and Modi build on their rapport, both should recognize that India is America’s most important partner in countering China’s hegemonic ambitions. It is thus in both countries’ interest to restore and deepen the bilateral relationship, including by strengthening collaboration on critical and emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence to biotechnology. Warm personal relations are an added bonus.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2025.

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

International relations theory gives weight to impersonal factors such as the cold calculations of national interest by different states and their cooperation, competition and conflict. But the return of Donald Trump as president, whose actions on trade, technology and security threaten to shake up global affairs, is a reminder that history is also shaped by the agendas and personalities of leaders, including their personal strengths and weaknesses, their idiosyncrasies and their hobbyhorses.

Decisions and actions of national leaders guide international relations. As the UNESCO constitution states, “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”

In high-level diplomacy, personal bonds between leaders can make a significant difference. And Trump is a great believer in the notion that relationships between leaders can positively mold ties between nations.

In his first term, Trump pursued a personalized approach to diplomacy to help shape U.S. relationships with key countries. In 2019, he became the first sitting American president to set foot in North Korea, crossing the Demilitarized Zone for a brief meeting with dictator Kim Jong Un. And the volatile Middle East moved toward stability as Trump, far from starting a new war, brokered the Abraham Accords.

But Trump’s use of diplomacy to steer relationships from confrontation to cooperation and to end wars (like in Afghanistan) came under withering criticism from commentators and opponents, who wanted him to wield American power assertively.

Many world leaders pursue personalized diplomacy. They give diplomatic moves their imprimatur through social media posts under their names.

Understanding the role of personal factors is important in the study of interstate relations. The power of interpersonal relations in statecraft also extends to the knowledge gained about counterparts’ personalities through private interactions, which can strengthen one’s hand in negotiations.

Trump is first and foremost a dealmaker who views diplomacy through the prism of potential transactions. This makes personalized diplomacy — and personal outreach to other countries’ leaders — critical to his efforts to advance American interests. In fact, he often employs the tactics he outlined in his 1987 book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” “A little hyperbole never hurts,” Trump wrote of his deal-making, which he said could also be advanced through some flattery, cajoling and hardball tactics, including seeking to pummel the other side.

In his search for deals, Trump has not hesitated to flatter foreign leaders, including dictators, even as his threats remain barely disguised. For example, Trump has called Chinese President Xi Jinping “a brilliant man” and “a very good friend,” and said “nobody in Hollywood could play the role of President Xi.” And he has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin, like Xi, is “smart” and “tough.”

Trump has praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for getting “very high marks” for governing “very, very strongly.” And after meeting Kim, Trump said, tongue-in-cheek, “We fell in love.”

Trump has reportedly expressed interest in making an early visit to Beijing. While the Chinese Communist Party finds Trump’s unpredictability somewhat perturbing, it must love his transactional approach to foreign policy, as the ruling party also likes to cut deals. In fact, assertive mercantilism is a central leitmotif of China’s foreign policy.

More fundamentally, Trump has upended traditional ideas about leadership and diplomacy through his complex personality, which blends refreshing candor with deliberate combativeness, braggadocio and grandiosity. And unlike former President Joe Biden, Trump isn’t scripted, as his freewheeling speeches and news conferences underscore.

Trump is known to talk tough. But his tough talk does not often translate into action. His Iran policy in the first term included withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, reimposing sanctions and assassinating in Baghdad by drone strike Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Yet Trump was reluctant to take on Iran directly lest it embroil the U.S. in another war.

In 2017, Trump threatened “fire and fury” unless North Korea halted its nuclear-weapons program. But just months later, Trump embraced Kim in Singapore in the first-ever U.S.-North Korean summit.

When Trump’s threats center on more realistic action, such as slapping trade tariffs or stepping up or putting on hold military support to an ally, he is able to win through intimidation. Recently, Trump helped secure a Gaza ceasefire deal by warning that there would be “all hell to pay” if the hostages were not freed by his inauguration day — a threat aimed at not only Hamas but also Israel.

And through his pre-inauguration threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian exports to the U.S., Trump precipitated a crisis in Canada’s governing Liberal Party that proved the last straw for the deeply unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who decided to resign. Indeed, Canada has announced a slew of border-security measures to address Trump’s main concerns — illegal border crossings by migrants and the smuggling of illegal firearms and drugs into the U.S.

Trump basically is a pragmatist. Despite his thunderous criticism of China as an economic predator, Trump did not impose any sweeping trade sanctions against China in his first term, choosing instead to employ the tariff card, while sprinkling some flattery on Xi.

Railing against “endless wars,” Trump finished his first term as the first American president since Jimmy Carter not to start a new war. And he wishes to have a similar record in his second term, saying he wants to be a “peacemaker” who builds the world’s strongest-ever military whose success would be measured “not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps, most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

But that has not restrained Trump’s expansionist itch, including taking back the Panama Canal and buying Greenland from Denmark. He has invoked the notion of “manifest destiny,” which drove 19th‑century U.S. territorial expansion.

Real political power comes not from the office a politician holds but from the way a leader is able to change people’s thinking. That power lasts beyond the leader’s term in office. The international power of Trump’s conservative populism will extend beyond his lifetime.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

President Biden wanted his foreign policy to be grounded in both realism and moral values, even as he came to define competition between democracies and autocracies as the central geopolitical struggle of today. Given his lifetime of foreign policy experience in Washington, did Biden manage to build a distinct legacy for which he will be remembered?

“America is back” was Biden’s refrain when he took office. But, with the balance of power shifting as the world becomes multipolar, translating that slogan into practice proved increasingly challenging.

In fact, thanks to Biden’s actions (or inaction), the incoming Trump administration faces difficult policy choices on the Ukraine war and China’s aggressive expansionism in Asia, as well as containing the Middle East conflicts.

With Biden’s foreign policy having driven Russia and China into an “unholy alliance” against the U.S., the new administration must also find ways to shove a wedge between these two nuclear powers, lest their growing collaboration unravel America’s global preeminence.

America’s eroding global primacy already signifies that Washington must work not just with its traditional allies but also with new partners to meaningfully exercise power and influence.

However, the Biden White House’s Cold War-style “us-vs.-them” rhetoric, while bracing for some Americans, undercut the U.S. imperative to forge new partnerships, including to isolate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The non-Western world largely chose to remain neutral on the Ukraine conflict, including even U.S. allies such as Israel, Turkey and the Gulf Arab states.

A less rigid, more adaptive approach would likely have served American diplomacy better. After all, in the eyes of countless non-American observers, Biden’s foreign policy generally did not square with his claim that the U.S. was leading a global battle for democracy against autocracy.

From visiting Communist-ruled Vietnam and fist-bumping Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to propping up a military-installed regime in Bangladesh, Biden undercut his own “democracy vs. autocracy” narrative. To make matters worse, he remained silent on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own moves toward authoritarianism.

Zelensky has effectively snuffed out the country’s nascent democracy by outlawing opposition parties and independent media outlets and cracking down on dissent. In fact, Zelensky, who remains in office despite his five-year term having ended in May, has essentially followed in the footsteps of his nemesis, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Biden’s foreign policy used democracy and human rights promotion as a geopolitical tool to selectively target some nations while turning a blind eye to abuses in nondemocratic states whose leadership is friendly to America’s regional interests.

But nothing proved more damaging to the credibility of Biden’s diplomacy than the president’s backing of Israel’s devastating military operations in Gaza, puncturing his claim of pursuing a values-based foreign policy.

While standing by America’s longtime ally Israel was understandable given the existential crisis that country faces from hostile regional forces, Biden’s policy, by stepping up supply of weapons and other aid to Israel as it staged its military assaults, effectively condoned the large-scale destruction and human suffering in Gaza.

Worse still, this approach has left the U.S. internationally isolated and in a defensive crouch for almost a year. There is no better illustration of this than last month’s American veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution — supported by the other 14 members — calling for “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” as well as “immediate access [to] humanitarian assistance” in Gaza. It was the fourth time the U.S. blocked a Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire.

This all puts the incoming administration in a challenging situation that demands forward-looking and innovative approaches to international diplomacy to advance American interests.

Trump could use his personal rapport with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convince him that his drive for permanent victory, instead of tangibly advancing Israel’s security, may be making the country’s situation more tenuous. Israel needs a more stable, not a more troubled, neighborhood.

More broadly, American interests demand a more pragmatic and balanced approach to human rights and democracy promotion, given that China and, to a lesser extent, Russia are gaining greater influence in the non-Western world. Democracy and human rights promotion may have a legitimate role in American foreign policy, but if pursued selectively or disproportionately, the U.S. will have few countries outside the Western bloc to partner with.

But, more fundamentally, the incoming administration’s biggest foreign policy challenge is to disentangle the U.S. from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East so that it can focus attention and resources on revitalizing America’s economic security and arresting its relative decline.

The only real winner from the Ukraine war, which Biden has escalated in his final days in office, is China, America’s main challenger at the global level, which dwarfs Russia in terms of economic output, military spending and other material measures.

China has more than doubled its nuclear-weapons arsenal since 2020 and is expanding its conventional forces faster than any other country has since World War II. It is using its growing might to supplant the U.S. as the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific, a region that will shape the next world order.

Biden’s troubled legacy has also contributed to an increasing line of countries seeking to join the BRICS grouping, the world’s first major non-U.S. international initiative that represents a search for a post-American world.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

The Nobel Prize season ended last month when winners of the six different awards were announced for their outstanding accomplishments in fields ranging from medicine to literature. But over the years, no award has generated more controversy than the Nobel Peace Prize.

This year’s Peace Prize to the Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo came as a surprise, signifying a welcome respite from the award’s increasing politicization.

The six prizes, each worth 10 million Swedish kronor ($917,000), are named after Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist who made his fortune selling cannons and munitions, including the explosives he invented — dynamite and gelignite. The prizes are handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s 1896 death. While the Peace Prize winner is selected and honored in Norway, the other Nobel awardees are chosen by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, where the prizes are handed out.

Alfred Nobel’s will stipulated that the Peace Prize should go to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

But an examination of the 104 Peace Prizes awarded since 1901 shows that this prize has not developed in line with what Nobel laid down. As the official Peace Prize website acknowledges, the parameters for selecting a winner have expanded over the decades to include humanitarian work, democracy and human rights, climate and environmental change and other issues.

Worse still, the Peace Prize committee in Oslo has increasingly allowed geopolitical considerations to guide the selection of an awardee. In fact, the Nobel Peace Prize has become more about geopolitics than about peace. Consequently, the prize over the years has gone to a number of undeserving recipients. The prize runs the risk of losing its legitimacy.

President Barack Obama had been in office for less than one year when the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided in 2009 to award him the Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and “his work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

The stunning decision was met with criticism in the U.S., including from some Obama supporters. He received the prize not for his accomplishments but merely for succeeding President George W. Bush, whose invasion of Iraq on false pretenses made him deeply unpopular internationally.

Far from being a peacemaker, Obama in office relied, like Bush, on hard power, even as he deplored the ethos of “might makes right.” Obama waged serial military campaigns from Somalia and Yemen to Iraq and Syria. His 2011 U.S.-led military campaign removing Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi from power created an enduring failed state, while his effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad helped spawn the terrorist Islamic State organization.

And while championing “a nuclear-free world,” Obama led an extensive modernization of the American nuclear arsenal, stoking a new arms race.

Another Nobel Prize recipient, Muhammad Yunus, today presides over rampant human rights abuses in Bangladesh. In August, the 84-year-old Yunus was installed as head of an interim regime by the country’s powerful military, which, capitalizing on deadly violent protests, packed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina off to neighboring India before she could formally resign.

Yunus pioneered microcredit, or giving small loans to rural families, for which he and the Grameen Bank that he headed jointly received a Nobel Prize in 2006 — not in economics but for peace, after former President Bill Clinton lobbied for him. While presenting Yunus with the Peace Prize, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, “In 2002, Bill Clinton put it this way: ‘Dr. Yunus is a man who long ago should have won the Nobel Prize and I’ll keep saying that until they finally give it to him.’ Now Clinton will no longer need to remind us.”

Underscoring the award’s geopolitical agenda, the committee chairman hoped that “this peace prize will represent a possible approach to the Muslim part of the world” given the post-9/11 tendency to “demonize Islam.” He added, “It is an important task for the Nobel Committee to try to narrow the gap between the West and Islam.”

Bangladesh, with Yunus as the regime’s nominal head, is today effectively under military-clerical rule and faces a growing risk of sliding into chaos. The country is wracked by Islamist attacks, including on religious and ethnic minorities; extrajudicial killings; and arbitrary arrests, with the regime jailing thousands just last month.

The Peace Prize has even gone to people who did more to scuttle peace than to promote it. One such awardee was Henry Kissinger, whose disastrous decisions while serving under President Richard Nixon resulted in immense death and destruction across vast regions, including the U.S. carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos. North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho, who was jointly awarded the prize with Kissinger, declined his half of the spoils, as he did not want to share the award with a war hawk.

The Peace Prize Committee has often demonstrated its geopolitical activism by awarding the prize to Western-backed anti-regime activists in the developing world, from Aung San Suu Kyi to Liu Xiaobo, or by seeking to promote the bridging of regional divides. For example, the 2014 prize was given jointly to a Pakistani Muslim and an Indian Hindu.

Against this background, the Peace Prize has become not only increasingly controversial but also, as one author put it, “the world’s most reviled award.” This year’s uncontroversial award to the Japanese organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may be an effort to restore international faith in the prize.

But for such an effort to succeed, the Peace Prize Committee must no longer give the award to make a geopolitical point. It should stick to Alfred Nobel’s mandate that the prize be given for international peace and disarmament — not for human rights promotion, civil rights work, environmental protection, economic opportunities for the poor or antigovernment activism.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Brahma Chellaney, opinion contributor, The Hill

History will likely remember President Joe Biden for his disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which helped make the Taliban great again, and for involving the U.S. deeply in the Ukraine war, only to see Russia incrementally expand its territorial gains.

But his most troubling legacy, which threatens to unravel America’s global preeminence, has been to drive China and Russia, historical rivals, into a de facto strategic alliance. This unholy partnership is the result of Biden’s failure to play China against Russia, despite investing in personal diplomacy with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Driving a wedge between Moscow and Beijing had long been at the heart of American grand strategy. It helped the U.S. win the Cold War, not militarily, but geopolitically. By co-opting China from the 1970s onward in an informal alliance geared toward containing and rolling back Soviet influence and power, the U.S. established a two-against-one competition that contributed to the Soviet Union’s imperial overstretch and, ultimately, to the West’s triumph in the Cold War without direct armed conflict.

But now the U.S. has become the bridge that unites China and Russia. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin portray America as an aggressive hegemon with a Cold War mindset. They share a vision to reshape the world by ending the era of Western dominance. Putin and Xi also seem to be providing cover to each other’s expansionism.

Simply put, a two-against-one geopolitical contest is returning, but with America on the receiving end. Consequently, an overextended U.S. seriously risks accelerating its relative decline through strategic overreach.

The Sino-Russian entente has raised the strategic imperative for America to forge an informal alliance with another nuclear-armed giant: India.

India’s decades-old rivalry with Beijing goes back to China’s 1951 annexation of the buffer Tibet and the resultant Sino-Indian border war of 1962. In more recent years, China and India have been locked in a tense military standoff along their long Himalayan frontier.

India, now the world’s fastest-growing major economy, has a huge market that has become increasingly important for American exporters given China’s sputtering economic-growth engine and deepening demographic crisis. The U.S. needs India as an economic and geopolitical ally, especially if it is to avert strategic overstretch and prevail in its sharpening rivalries with China and Russia.

This explains why there is bipartisan support in Washington for closer ties with India. Indeed, successive presidents since Bill Clinton cultivated closer ties with New Delhi, with every administration leaving the relationship in stronger shape than what it inherited.

However, under Biden, the relationship between the world’s two most populous democracies has come under increasing strain, leading to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent meeting with Xi. The meeting, coinciding with an India-China agreement on border patrolling to ease their military standoff, has signaled a thaw in the icy hostility marking relations between the Asian giants.

The U.S.-India strategic partnership holds the key to counterbalancing China’s hegemonic ambitions and maintaining the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s emerging economic and geopolitical hub. So, by impelling India to seek a thaw with Beijing as a hedge against American unpredictability, Biden has compounded his blunder in helping to build a Sino-Russian axis.

Tensions with New Delhi have arisen over a series of issues, starting with Biden’s surrender of Afghanistan to a Pakistan-reared terrorist militia. Tensions grew with India’s neutral stance on the Ukraine war. In an ungainly attempt to bully New Delhi into submission, the White House in 2022 threatened that “the costs and consequences” for India would be “significant and long-term” if it refused to take sides in Ukraine.

The Biden administration’s hectoring tone has struck a raw nerve in India, including when it recently demanded that it “won’t be fully satisfied until there is meaningful accountability” from New Delhi over what the U.S. alleges was a failed 2023 plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a New York-based Sikh separatist who is on India’s most wanted list. But the U.S. has taken no action against Pannun for making terrorist threats against India, including warning passengers not to fly Air India between Nov. 1 and 19 — a notice that has coincided with a spate of hoax bomb threats against Indian carriers that have disrupted air travel.

In fact, the increasing role of terrorism-glorifying Sikh separatists based in the U.S. and Canada is reopening old Indian wounds from the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight that two separate Canadian inquiries found was the handiwork of Canadian Sikh terrorists. The mid-Atlantic bombing killed all 329 people on board.

But at the root of U.S.-India tensions are American policies in South Asia that New Delhi sees as detrimental to its core interests. The Biden administration has been coddling military-backed governments in Pakistan and Bangladesh (where a recent U.S.-supported regime change was seen by many in India as a “color revolution”), while seeking to overthrow Myanmar’s military junta, including through stringent sanctions and “nonlethal” military aid to rebels, despite the spillover effects on Indian border regions.

Restoring mutual respect and trust in the relationship with India, which Biden has acknowledged is “among the most consequential in the world,” should be a priority for the next American administration. Fortuitously, there will be an India connection either way — whether the U.S. elects its first Indian American president in Kamala Harris or its first Indian American second lady in Usha Vance, wife of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

No less pressing is the imperative for the next president to forestall a formal China-Russia alliance, including by taking advantage of the historical Sino-Russian mistrust to play one against the other. If Beijing and Moscow cement a military and strategic alliance against America, Washington’s worst geopolitical nightmare would come true.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

The BRICS have so far struggled to become a united, effective global force with defined and realistic political and economic objectives. Nonetheless, one should not underestimate their potential to catalyze the shift to a multipolar global order.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

A new age of international relations is dawning. With the West accounting for a declining share of global GDP, and the world becoming increasingly multipolar, countries are jostling to establish their positions in the emerging order. This includes both the emerging economies – represented by the recently expanded BRICS grouping – that seek a leading role in writing the rules of the new order, and the smaller countries attempting to cultivate relationships that can safeguard their interests.

With the BRICS, what began as an asset class has become a symbol of the yearning for a more broadly representative global order, a hedge against Western-led institutions, and a means of navigating growing geopolitical uncertainty. All this has proved highly attractive. Earlier this year, the BRICS expanded from five countries (Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa) to nine (adding Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates). And almost three dozen more countries – including NATO member Turkey, close US partners Thailand and Mexico, and Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country – have applied to join.

While the diversity of the grouping’s members (and applicants) highlights the broad appeal of the BRICS+, it also creates challenges. These are countries with very different political systems, economies, and national goals. Some are even at odds with each other: China and India have been locked in a military standoff in the Himalayas for over four years, following China’s stealth encroachments on Indian territory.

Translating shared interests into a common plan of action, and becoming a unified force on the global stage, was difficult even when the BRICS had just five members. With nine – and possibly more – member countries, establishing a common identity and agenda will require sustained effort. But other multilateral groupings that are not formal, charter-based institutions with permanent secretariats – such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the G20, and even the G7 – also struggle with internal divisions.

Moreover, the BRICS have demonstrated considerable resilience. Western analysts have been predicting from the start that the grouping would unravel or drift into irrelevance. Yet this month’s BRICS+ summit in Kazan, Russia – the first since the expansion – may well bring movement toward further enlargement, as it underscores the West’s failure to isolate Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

This is not to underestimate the challenge of cohesion. The grouping’s founding members do not even agree about its fundamental objectives: whereas China and Russia want to spearhead a direct challenge to the United States-led world order, Brazil and India seek reforms of existing international institutions and appear uneasy about any anti-Western orientation.

In this disagreement, however, the enlargement might tip the scales. Six of the group’s nine members, including all four of the new additions, are formally part of the nonaligned movement, and two (Brazil and China) are observers. This suggests that there will be considerable internal pressure for the BRICS+ to chart a middle ground, focusing on democratizing the global order, rather than challenging the West.

That said, when it comes to fostering mutual trust with developing countries, the West has not been doing itself any favors lately. On the contrary, its weaponization of finance and seizure of the interest earned on frozen Russian central-bank assets have caused deepening disquiet in the non-Western world. As a result, a growing number of countries seem interested in exploring alternative arrangements, including new cross-border payment mechanisms, with some also reassessing their reliance on the US dollar in international transactions and reserve holdings.

All of this could aid the larger designs of Russia and China, two natural competitors that have become close strategic partners partly in response to US policy. China, in particular, stands to gain, such as from increased international use of the renminbi. Russia now generates much of its international export earnings in renminbi and stores them mostly in Chinese banks, thereby effectively giving China a share of the returns. China’s ultimate goal – which Western financial warfare is inadvertently aiding – is to establish an alternative renminbi-based financial system.

The BRICS are already engaged in institution-building, having established the New Development Bank – conceived by India and headquartered in Shanghai – in 2015. The NDB is not only the world’s first multilateral development bank created and led by emerging economies; it is also the only one whose founding members remain equal shareholders with equal voice, even as more countries join. By contrast, the US is the dominant shareholder and holds veto power in the World Bank.

The expanded BRICS+ boast formidable global clout. The grouping dwarfs the G7, both demographically (with nearly 46% of the world’s population, compared to the G7’s 8.8%) and economically (accounting for 35% of global GDP, compared to the G7’s 30%). Its economies are also likely to be the most important source of future global growth. Furthermore, with Iran and the UAE having joined their oil-producing counterparts Brazil and Russia as members, the BRICS+ now account for about 40% of crude-oil production and exports.

Yes, the group faces significant challenges, not least uniting to become a meaningful global force with defined (and realistic) political and economic objectives. But they also have the potential to serve as a catalyst for a long-overdue revamping of global governance so that it better reflects twenty-first-century realities.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2024.