Taiwan at the crossroads: Adapt or be absorbed

Featured

Posted on by

Brahma Chellaney, Taipei Times

Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics.

The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within.

This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future relationship with China. As political polarization deepens, Taiwan’s ability to forge consensus on critical security decisions becomes increasingly constrained — precisely when unity is most essential.

For decades, Taiwan’s security rested on an implicit guarantee: that American military superiority and democratic solidarity would shield the island from Chinese aggression. That certainty has crumbled under the weight of changing geopolitical realities.

The Trump administration’s disruptive approach to Indo-Pacific partnerships — including launching what amounts to an economic war against India, America’s key strategic partner — has introduced dangerous unpredictability into Asian security calculations. Meanwhile, growing American domestic political constraints and strategic exhaustion raise uncomfortable questions about Washington’s willingness to risk direct conflict with China over Taiwan.

These doubts emerge at the worst possible moment. China’s military provocations have become routine, with fighter jets and naval vessels regularly crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait in brazen displays of force. Diplomatically, Beijing has relentlessly chipped away at Taiwan’s international space, including poaching several of its diplomatic allies. Simultaneously, China wages an unprecedented influence campaign, deploying disinformation, economic inducements, and cyber operations to undermine Taiwan’s democratic institutions and social cohesion.

Perhaps most ominously, China has embarked on the most rapid and ambitious peacetime military expansion in human history. Beijing’s defense industrial complex produces warships, missiles, combat aircraft, and drones at a pace that dwarfs Cold War arms races. Its missile arsenal — now comprising thousands of precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles — can potentially devastate Taiwan’s military infrastructure.

The Chinese navy has become the world’s largest fleet by ship count, while China’s nuclear weapons stockpile expands at speeds unseen since the 1960s. Through such a buildup, Beijing is signaling to Taipei that absorption of Taiwan is inevitable and resistance futile. Beijing may calculate that overwhelming military superiority provides multiple pathways to absorption — either through direct invasion, economic strangulation via blockade, or gradual political capitulation under the weight of unsustainable military pressure.

Against this backdrop, Taiwan’s survival depends on abandoning outdated security assumptions and embracing harsh realities. Deterrence cannot rely solely on external guarantees; it must begin with credible self-defense capabilities that exploit Taiwan’s inherent geographic advantages.

In fact, Taiwan’s geography is its greatest asset. The island’s mountainous terrain, limited beaches suitable for amphibious landings, and rough waters around it for much of the year create natural defensive barriers — but only if Taiwan adopts the right military strategy.

This means prioritizing asymmetric capabilities over conventional big-ticket systems: mobile anti-ship missiles that can sink invasion fleets, naval mines to seal off landing zones, swarms of defensive drones, and distributed coastal defense units that can operate independently under intense missile bombardment.

Equally important is abandoning investments in vulnerable high-value targets. Advanced fighter jets and large surface ships become expensive liabilities when facing China’s missile barrages. Instead, Taiwan should focus on survivable, cost-effective systems that deny China quick victory and impose prohibitive costs on any invasion attempt.

Civilian resilience forms the other pillar of effective deterrence. Ukraine’s experience offers a lesson: resilience is as much about civilian preparedness as about frontline firepower.

Taiwan must expand reserve training programs, conduct regular civil defense drills, and establish distributed stockpiles of critical supplies including fuel, medical equipment, and communications gear. The goal is ensuring that Chinese missiles or a blockade cannot paralyze civilian infrastructure or break social cohesion.

China’s influence operations represent an equally dangerous threat that demands sophisticated countermeasures. Beijing’s strategy targets Taiwan’s democratic vulnerabilities through cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and covert political funding designed to polarize society and erode faith in democratic institutions.

Taiwan’s response must be equally comprehensive. Enhanced media literacy programs can inoculate citizens against online manipulation tactics. Electoral laws require strengthening to prevent covert Chinese financing of political candidates and parties. Cybersecurity capabilities must extend beyond government agencies to encompass private operators of critical infrastructure.

Most crucially, Taiwan’s democratic institutions must remain resilient, transparent, and trusted. The stronger its democracy, the less fertile ground exists for China’s influence operations.

While American support remains vital, Taiwan cannot afford complete dependence on Washington’s commitment. Instead, Taipei should cultivate deeper partnerships with other democracies that share interests in preventing Chinese hegemony.

Japan increasingly views Taiwan’s security as inseparable from its own national defense. India, which faces its own border pressures from China, shares an abiding interest in keeping the Indo-Pacific free from Chinese domination. Australia and Europe, too, are recognizing that Taiwan’s fate is an international concern.

Taiwan’s diplomatic strategy should operate on three levels: informal security dialogues and exercises that build cooperation habits with regional democracies; international legal frameworks emphasizing Taiwanese people’s right to chart their own future free from coercion; and expanded economic partnerships that make Taiwan’s isolation or conquest economically prohibitive for the international community.

None of these measures diminishes the importance of American deterrence, which remains the most significant counterweight to Chinese coercion. However, while continuing to deepen security ties with Washington, Taiwan must also hedge against the possibility that US intervention may be delayed, partial, or politically constrained.

The challenge is maximizing partnership while avoiding dependence. If Taiwan shows genuine resolve and capability, it strengthens the case for international support. Conversely, complacency will breed doubts about Taiwan’s commitment, undermining others’ willingness to take risks on its behalf.

China’s goal to absorb Taiwan is undeniable. What remains uncertain is whether Taiwan will take sufficient steps to ensure this ambition never succeeds. A strategy of layered deterrence — combining robust self-defense, democratic resilience, and expanded global partnerships — can make Chinese aggression far costlier and significantly less likely to achieve its objectives.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).

China’s Himalayan megadam poses a global threat. Where is the world’s outrage?

Featured

Posted on by

The world ignored warnings about the Three Gorges Dam until it became an environmental nightmare. It cannot afford to repeat that mistake with China’s super-dam near the Indian border — a project whose ecological fallout will ripple globally.

Brahma Chellaney, Special to The Globe and Mail

A man fishes on the banks of the river Brahmaputra, where China is constructing the world’s largest dam. BIJU BORO/AFP/Getty Images

Last month, China officially acknowledged that it is constructing the world’s largest dam, on the Yarlung Zangbo River (better known as the Brahmaputra) in Tibet, just a few kilometres from the Indian border.

Though satellite imagery had suggested activity at the site for some time, Premier Li Qiang‘s July announcement marked Beijing’s first open admission of the megaproject, which will have far-reaching environmental, geopolitical and hydrological consequences across Asia and beyond. For proof, just look at the current largest dam in the world, China’s Three Gorges Dam. It has proved to be an environmental nightmare; its mammoth reservoir has triggered landslides, increased seismic activity and even slightly slowed Earth’s rotation.

One would have expected such a revelation to trigger strong international reactions. Yet, despite the dam’s extraordinary implications, the world has stayed silent.

China’s new super-dam seeks to exploit the immense drop in elevation as the Brahmaputra descends from the Himalayas before curving into India. This geologically unstable, ecologically sensitive zone lies close to the heavily militarized border with India’s Arunachal Pradesh state – a territory almost three times the size of Taiwan that China claims as its own.

Thanks to its 1951 annexation of the resource-rich Tibetan Plateau – the source of 10 major Asian rivers – China is the origin of cross-border flows to more countries than any other nation. Since the 1990s, its frenzy of dam-building has shifted from internal rivers to international ones, without consultation or transparency.

China already boasts more large dams than the rest of the world combined, and it has emerged as the main obstacle to institutionalized co-operation on shared water resources in Asia. It has no water-sharing treaty with any downstream neighbour because it asserts “indisputable sovereignty” over waters within its borders, including claiming the right to divert as much as it wishes. In this way, water is not merely a resource for China, but a strategic instrument.

The havoc caused downstream by China’s 11 giant dams on the Mekong – which sustains Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – has not deterred it from building more on that river. Against this backdrop, China’s colossal Brahmaputra project threatens to accelerate environmental degradation on the Tibetan Plateau, which is warming at twice the global average rate. That degradation could, in turn, disrupt Asian monsoons, weather and climate patterns.

With its towering height rising into the troposphere, the Tibetan Plateau profoundly shapes these patterns, influencing even the Northern Hemisphere’s atmospheric general circulation – the vast system of winds that transports warm air from the equator toward higher latitudes, helping to define different climate zones.

Tibet’s environmental fragility already has planetary implications, including accelerating biodiversity loss. Faster glacial retreat and permafrost thaw threaten to undermine the plateau’s role as Asia’s “water tower.”

Besides destabilizing a delicate Himalayan ecosystem, China’s super-dam – located on a geologic fault line – stands out as the world’s riskiest megaproject. It represents a potential water bomb for millions downstream. The Brahmaputra is a lifeline for northeastern India and for Bangladesh, the world’s most densely populated major country, and the super-dam will disrupt natural river flows, threatening food and water security for millions downstream.

In an era of increasing water stress and climate volatility, China can now deploy water as an instrument of coercion. The new dam will hand Beijing a potent new lever against India, its strategic rival. Should bilateral tensions with India rise, China could regulate or disrupt flows – whether by withholding water during the dry season, releasing excess water in flood season, or altering ecosystems. Even without hostile intent, unilateral control of river flow introduces long-term uncertainties for downstream communities, infrastructure planning and disaster management.

Yet India, in the absence of credible diplomatic options, has responded to China’s acknowledgment with restraint, voicing “concern” while stressing the “need for utmost transparency.” Other powers, meanwhile, have remained conspicuously silent, wary of offending Beijing. Such silence may appear low-risk today, but as the world’s largest dam rises in the fragile Himalayas, inaction carries long-term costs – not just for Asia’s water security, but also for the planet’s ecological balance.

The international community ignored warnings about the Three Gorges Dam until its consequences became undeniable. It should not repeat that mistake. By averting its gaze now, the world risks not only destabilizing South Asia’s water and food security but also undermining the environmental stability of an entire continent – with ripple effects that will be felt worldwide.

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

Appeasing China Won’t Help India Counter Trump

Featured

Posted on by

Appeasement has never tamed revisionist powers, and it has often emboldened them. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi learned this the hard way during his first years in power, when China took advantage of his goodwill to alter the Himalayan status quo in its favor, but now he is at risk of falling into the same trap.

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

In 2020, China’s stealth encroachments into India’s Himalayan borderlands triggered deadly clashes and a prolonged military standoff that nearly erupted into war. Five years on, the border crisis remains largely unresolved, yet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is headed to China in an apparent effort to ease friction – just when India is facing punishing tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. But recent history offers a stark warning: trusting China is a dangerous path.

One can certainly understand Modi’s motivations for seeking a diplomatic thaw with China. The US-India relationship, once touted as a bedrock of America’s strategy for ensuring a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” has plunged to its lowest point this century. The decline began during the final years of Joe Biden’s presidency, but accelerated rapidly under Trump, who has now raised tariffs on US imports from India to 50%.

Trump’s actions are as ironic as they are absurd. The US long courted India as a vital counterweight to China across the vast Indo-Pacific region, yet it is India that is now being subjected to sky-high tariffs, while China is enjoying a reprieve. Moreover, Trump claims he is punishing India for buying Russian oil, but India purchases less energy from Russia than China or Europe. Trump’s real objective, it seems, is to strong-arm India into a lopsided trade deal.

Meanwhile, Trump is attempting to woo Russian President Vladimir Putin – to whom he has shown far more respect than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – so that Putin not only ends the Ukraine war, but also takes a step back from China. But while Trump recognizes that punishing and isolating Russia drove the country closer to China, creating considerable risks for the US, he is repeating this mistake with India.

Modi, however, should beware of letting Trump push him into China’s arms. In journeying to China at this moment, given the pressure he is under, India’s prime minister will come across less like a confident leader shaping events than a wounded statesman courting his country’s chief security threat. Past experience indicates that China is far more likely to exploit any hint of Indian weaknesses than act as a reliable partner.

Ever since China annexed Tibet in 1951, turning what had previously served as a buffer with India into a Chinese military stronghold, Sino-Indian relations have been marked by rivalry and mistrust. When Modi became prime minister in 2014, he made it his mission to change that. His initial hope of improving the relationship may not have been misguided; but his refusal to change course, even when China relentlessly exploited his goodwill to make quiet territorial advances on the ground, certainly was.

China took few pains to hide its intentions: its troops encroached on an Indian borderland as Modi welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to India for the first time. While that initial 2014 summit was portrayed as a success, Chinese forces remained on Indian territory until India dismantled its defensive fortifications there.

The following year, Modi delisted China as a “country of concern,” in order to attract Chinese investment. What India got instead was a flood of cheap Chinese imports. China’s trade surplus with India has grown so large that it now exceeds India’s entire defense budget – the world’s fifth largest. In effect, India is helping to finance China’s military buildup and thus its territorial revisionism.

In 2015-2019 – as China steadily tightened its strategic axis with Pakistan, erected militarized “border villages” along India’s frontier, and expanded its high-altitude military infrastructure – Modi met with Xi 18 times. So committed was Modi to rapprochement that he continued to engage in “appeasement diplomacy,” even after China’s 2017 seizure of the strategic Himalayan plateau of Doklam. It was only after Chinese soldiers quietly surged across multiple frontier points in April 2020 – inexplicably catching India off guard – that Modi suspended his overtures to China.

Five years later, Modi is at risk of falling into the same trap. Modi is traveling to China mainly to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin. But the SCO is largely a Chinese initiative, and India – the only established democracy among its ranks – has not treated it as a priority. Last year, Modi skipped its summit in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital; and in 2023, when India held the rotating chair, he downgraded the summit to a virtual format. Modi’s decision to show up this year was probably more about signaling conciliation toward China than about the SCO.

China has given India no reason to think this time will be different. On the contrary, when India conducted targeted strikes on Pakistani terrorist camps in May – a response to a brutal attack on tourists in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir – China lent Pakistan critical support, including real-time radar and satellite data. Furthermore, China recently confirmed plans to build the world’s largest dam adjacent to India’s border – an undertaking that will have grave ecological and national-security implications for India.

Appeasement has never tamed revisionist powers; more often, it has emboldened them. By allowing China to profit from Indian markets even as it chips away at India’s sovereignty and security, Modi has conveyed that India, despite its tremendous economic and strategic clout, is willing to be treated as a doormat. Only with a hardnosed strategy that meets Chinese coercion with Indian resolve can Modi safeguard India’s interests and territorial integrity.

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.

Trump’s hidden goal in Alaska was to break the China-Russia axis

Featured

Posted on by

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

The Alaska summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was more than a high-stakes encounter over the Ukraine war. It signaled America’s recognition that its own missteps have helped drive Russia closer to China, fueling a de facto alliance that poses the gravest threat to U.S. global preeminence since the Cold War.

Washington’s miscalculations helped build the China-Russia partnership it now fears most.

In a world where the U.S., China and Russia are the three leading powers, the Alaska summit underscored Trump’s bid to redraw the great-power triangle before it hardens against America.

The president’s Alaska reset seeks to undo a policy that turned two natural rivals into close strategic collaborators, by prioritizing improved U.S.-Russia ties.

Trump’s signaling was unmistakable. In a Fox News interview immediately after the summit, he blasted his predecessor. “He [Biden] did something that was unthinkable,” Trump said. “He drove China and Russia together. That’s not good. If you are just a minor student of history, it’s the one thing you didn’t want to do.”

The remark captured the essence of America’s dilemma. Two powers that are historic rivals — one vast in land and resources, the other populous and expansionist — have been pushed into each other’s arms by Washington’s own punitive strategies.

For decades, the bedrock of U.S. grand strategy was to keep Moscow and Beijing apart. President Richard Nixon’s 1972 opening to Beijing was not about cozying up to Mao Zedong’s brutal regime, but about exploiting the Sino-Soviet split by coopting China in an informal alliance geared toward containing and rolling back Soviet influence and power.

That strategy helped the West win the Cold War, not militarily but geopolitically.

Since 2022, however, Washington has inverted that logic. In response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. unleashed unprecedented sanctions designed to cripple Russia economically. Instead, the sanctions drove the Kremlin toward Beijing while tightening Putin’s grip on power. What had been an uneasy partnership has become strategic collaboration against a common adversary — the U.S.

Rather than playing one against the other, America finds itself confronting a two-against-one dynamic, with China as the primary gainer. Western sanctions have effectively handed resource-rich Russia to resource-hungry China. Beijing has also chipped away at Russian influence in Central Asia, bringing former Soviet republics into its orbit.

Meanwhile, despite the grinding war in Ukraine, Russia remains a formidable power. Its global reach, military capacity and resilience under sanctions have belied Western hopes that it could be isolated into irrelevance.

On the battlefield, Russia holds the strategic initiative, strengthening Putin’s bargaining hand and reducing his incentive to accept any ceasefire not largely on his own terms. The uncomfortable truth for Washington is that it risks losing a proxy war into which it has poured vast resources.

The legacy-conscious Trump recognizes this. His push for a negotiated end to the war is not a retreat but an attempt to cut losses and refocus U.S. strategy on the larger contest with China that will shape the emerging new global order.

Among the great powers, only China has both the ambition and material base to supplant the U.S. Its economy, military spending and technological capabilities dwarf that of Russia. Yet Beijing remains the main beneficiary of America’s hard line against Moscow.

In fact, sanctions and Western weaponization of international finance have turned China into Russia’s financial lifeline. Russia’s export earnings are now largely parked in Chinese banks, in effect giving Beijing a share of the returns. China has also locked in discounted, long-term energy supplies from Russia. These secure overland flows, which cannot be interdicted by hostile forces, bolster China’s energy security in ways maritime trade never could — a crucial hedge as it eyes Taiwan. Far from weakening Beijing, U.S. policy has made it stronger.

A formal China-Russia alliance would unite Eurasia’s vast resources and power — America’s ultimate nightmare, as it would accelerate its relative decline. The Ukraine war has drained U.S. focus even as China expands influence in the Indo-Pacific, the true theater of 21st-century geopolitics.

This is why the Alaska summit mattered. Trump and Putin seemed to recognize that improved ties could reshape the global balance of power. For Trump, the goal is clear: Reverse America’s blunder, separate Moscow from Beijing and refocus power on the systemic challenge posed by China.

Critics call this appeasement, but it echoes Nixon’s outreach to Mao: exploiting geopolitical rivalries to keep the U.S. globally preeminent.

Washington needs similar clarity today, not doubling down on a failing proxy war, but easing tensions with Russia while strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, where the stakes are truly global.

Trump’s tariff-first approach, evident in his punitive approach toward India, has already hurt important partnerships. Yet his instinct on the U.S.-China-Russia triangle could be transformative. If he can begin to pry Moscow away from Beijing — or even sow just enough mistrust to prevent a durable Sino-Russian alliance — he will have altered the trajectory of world politics.

America need not befriend Russia — it need only prevent Russia from becoming China’s junior partner in an anti-U.S. coalition. That requires ending the Ukraine war and creating space for a geopolitical reset.

The Alaska summit was only a first step. But it acknowledged what U.S. policymakers resist admitting: continuing the current course will further strengthen China and entrench America’s disadvantages. A shift in strategy is not weakness. It is the essence of grand strategy — recognizing when old approaches have outlived their usefulness.

If Trump can reengineer the strategic geometry of the great-power triangle, he will have preserved America’s place at the apex of the global order.

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

Trump’s economic war on India is a gift to China

Featured

Posted on by
US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a bilateral meeting on the sideline of the 2017 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Manila.

Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

President Trump’s decision to slap secondary sanctions on India over its imports of Russian oil, while also unleashing a tariff barrage on Indian exports, is more than a trade dispute. It is a self-inflicted wound to America’s most vital strategic partnership in Asia at a time when China is flexing its military muscle throughout the region.

Washington has long courted India as a bulwark against an expansionist China and as a critical pillar of its “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy. Yet Trump’s punitive steps against India are eroding the very trust on which strategic alignment rests — to Beijing’s delight.

The mutual trust painstakingly built over years underpins bilateral cooperation. Once lost, it will be hard to rebuild. Even if the administration eventually reaches a trade deal with India, it may not be able to repair the damage.

Targeting India over Russian oil purchases smacks of selective enforcement. The European Union’s large imports of Russian energy products, especially liquefied natural gas, have been left untouched. Such European imports not only contribute more to Russia’s coffers than India’s purchases, but Europe spends more on Russian energy than on assisting Ukraine.

Trump has also spared the world’s largest buyer of Russian oil and gas: China. But India, the very country Washington has spent years courting as an Asian counterweight, has become the first victim of his secondary sanctions. This suggests Trump’s tactics are less about punishing Moscow than about pressuring New Delhi.

Russian oil is a pretext to strong-arm India into accepting a Trump-dictated trade agreement, much as he foisted a largely one-sided deal on the European Union. That his tariffs on India have little to do with Russian oil is evident from one telling fact: Indian exports to the U.S. of refined fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — increasingly made from Russian crude — remain exempt from his tariffs.

Such is the Trumpian logic. He has hit Indian non-energy exports with steep tariffs, but spared booming exports of refined fuels made largely from Russian crude. Trump seems to have no problem with Russian oil — as long as it is refined in India and then pumped into American planes, trucks and cars.

Furthermore, given continued U.S. imports of Russian enriched uranium, fertilizers and chemicals, Trump does not seem troubled that his own administration is helping fund Russia’s war in Ukraine while still locked in a proxy war with Moscow.

In truth, Trump is using New Delhi’s Russian oil purchases as a crude bargaining tactic to secure a bilateral trade deal on his terms. India illustrates how the Trump administration has weaponized tariffs not merely to extract trade concessions but also to bind other countries more closely to American strategic and security interests. In seeking to bend India to its will, it has targeted that country’s traditionally independent approach to global affairs, including neutrality on conflicts.

Indian exports to the U.S. now face a steep 50 percent tariff, signaling the end of Trump’s bromance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His moves against strategic-partner India are harsher than against China. This marks a dramatic U-turn from his first term, when bilateral relations thrived to the extent that Trump declared at a huge February 2020 rally in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, “America loves India, America respects India, and America will always be faithful and loyal friends to the Indian people.”

In Trump’s second term, Modi was among the first world leaders to visit the White House, agreeing to fast-track trade negotiations. In July, the Indians believed they had reached an interim deal, awaiting only Trump’s approval. But in characteristic fashion, Trump abruptly rejected the accord and embarked on punishing India.

New Delhi has publicly criticized the Trump administration’s double standards. But it is more concerned about a deeper question: If Washington can so easily turn its coercive tools on a supposed ally, what is to stop it from doing so again?

U.S.-India relations have probably plunged to their lowest point in the 21st century, thanks to Trump’s economic war and his singling out of India for secondary sanctions.

The fallout will extend beyond lost trade. India could respond by doubling down on strategic autonomy — hedging between the U.S., Russia and others — and diversifying its economic and security partnerships. Trump’s gamble may wring out trade concessions in the short term, but it risks undermining the security architecture in the Indo-Pacific, where unity among key democracies is the only real check on China’s expansionism. America is effectively handing China an opening to court a disillusioned India.

New Delhi is already signaling that it has other geopolitical options. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to visit India in the coming weeks. In less than three weeks, Modi is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, which Putin will also attend. Moscow is pushing for a revived Russia-India-China grouping.

A stable Indo-Pacific order demands more than joint military exercises and communiqués; it requires political will to accommodate each other’s core interests. Punishing India in ways that ignore its legitimate security and energy needs sends the opposite message.

Ironically, Trump’s sanctions-and-tariffs blitz may have done India a favor by exposing the strategic reality of America’s unreliability. By presenting the U.S. as a fickle, transactional power, Trump has signaled that Washington cannot be counted on to separate short-term commercial considerations from long-term strategic imperatives.

Trump’s economic coercion risks alienating a vast, still-growing market that U.S. firms see as central to their future growth. India remains the world’s fastest-growing major economy, and as many other economies stagnate and populations shrink, it stands out as a rising giant.

Sacrificing a linchpin of Indo-Pacific stability for a fleeting win in a tariff war is not tough bargaining. It is strategic recklessness — and a gift to China.

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

Bangladesh Is a South Asian Time Bomb

Featured

Posted on by

Many hoped that the overthrow of long-time leader Sheikh Hasina last year would open the way for Bangladesh to transition to democracy after an authoritarian lurch under the country’s “iron lady.” Instead, the country has faced proliferating human-rights abuses, intensifying repression, and widespread Islamist violence.

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

In the year since the violent, military-backed overthrow of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government, Bangladesh has descended into chaos. The economy is reeling, radical Islamist forces are gaining ground, young people are becoming increasingly radicalized, lawlessness is taking hold, and religious and ethnic minorities are under siege. The country’s future has never looked bleaker.

Many had hoped that Hasina’s ouster would open the way for Bangladesh to transition to democracy following an authoritarian lurch under the “iron lady.” After all, they reasoned, it was a student-led uprising that toppled her regime. But this narrative downplayed the decisive role of the powerful military, which had long chafed under Hasina’s attempts to curb its influence and ultimately forced her into exile in India. Similarly, Islamist forces – who provided much of the muscle behind the student protests – viewed her overthrow as an opportunity to end the marginalization they faced under her secular rule.

The illusory promise of Hasina’s overthrow was further enhanced by the installation of Muhammad Yunus – the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate celebrated as a savior of the poor for pioneering microcredit through his Grameen Bank – as the nominal head of the interim government. But, again, the headline misrepresents reality.

In fact, the Nobel Committee’s choice was less about the Grameen Bank’s actual impact than it was about geopolitical signaling. In presenting the award, the Committee chair invoked Yunus as a symbolic bridge between Islam and the West, expressing hope that his selection would counter the “widespread tendency to demonize Islam” that had taken hold in the West after the US terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It is no coincidence that former US President Bill Clinton had lobbied for Yunus.

As the leader of Bangladesh’s interim government, Yunus has promised sweeping reforms and democratic elections. But elections have been repeatedly postponed. Meanwhile, despite lacking constitutional legitimacy, the interim government has launched sweeping purges of independent institutions, ousting the chief justice and the next five most-senior Supreme Court justices, and outlawing Hasina’s Awami League, the country’s oldest and largest political party, which led Bangladesh to independence.

The government has also presided over proliferating human-rights abuses and intensifying repression. Those identified as Hasina’s supporters – including lawyers, academics, journalists, artists, and opposition figures – are being jailed in droves, with thousands reportedly detained since February. International media watchdogs have sounded the alarm over escalating attacks on journalists, many of whom are charged with bogus crimes, from murder to abduction. Reports of extrajudicial killings and torture in custody have become commonplace.

But perhaps the most alarming development is the rehabilitation of Islamist extremists. The military-mullah regime that Yunus nominally leads has reversed bans on jihadist groups previously linked to terrorism, and has freed notorious Islamist leaders. Several extremists now occupy ministerial or other government posts, and mobs affiliated with them openly terrorize perceived opponents.

Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, tribal communities, and members of Islamic sects that Islamists consider heretical are being attacked with impunity. Women dressed “immodestly” face public shaming and assault. A culture of Taliban-style moral policing is rapidly taking root. The situation has gotten so bad that even the pro-regime Bangladesh Nationalist Party, long the Awami League’s arch-rival, has decried the erosion of basic freedoms, the “madness that erupted in the name of religion,” and the “terrifying violence” on the streets.

A collapsing economy will only exacerbate these problems. GDP growth has tumbled, foreign debt has ballooned, and inflation has soared to a 12-year high. With investor confidence plummeting, the stock market has fallen to its lowest level in almost five years. Job losses and declining living standards create fertile ground for continued radicalization and social unrest.

Bangladesh once embodied the promise of secular democracy in a Muslim-majority country. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, it was making impressive progress on economic development and social stability. But now it risks slipping into the kind of military-sanctioned dysfunction that has long plagued Pakistan, the country it fought so hard to break away from.

The consequences will reverberate across the region. India, which borders Bangladesh on three sides and is home to millions of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants, will be hit particularly hard. Under Hasina, Bangladesh was one of India’s closest partners, especially on counterterrorism and regional connectivity. Her departure thus dealt a blow to India’s strategic interests. India’s government is now scrambling to manage the fallout, such as by stepping up border security to prevent infiltration by extremists.

Whereas India immediately recognized the risks posed by Hasina’s overthrow, the United States endorsed the regime change. But if Bangladesh continues on its current trajectory, it will significantly complicate US-led efforts to ensure a free, open, prosperous, and stable Indo-Pacific. Some have warned that Bangladesh could become another global flashpoint that draws in even faraway countries.

If the international community is serious about defending democratic values, religious freedom, and regional stability, it can no longer turn a blind eye to Bangladesh’s downward spiral.

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.

China’s super-dam is an ecological and geopolitical time bomb

Featured

Posted on by

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

China has built more dams than any other country and more large dams than the rest of the world combined. This month, it officially acknowledged construction of the biggest dam ever conceived in human history — although satellite imagery suggests the groundwork began much earlier, following the megaproject’s approval by China’s rubber-stamp parliament in 2021.

Located on the Brahmaputra River just before it curves into India, this super-dam is being developed with little transparency in a seismically active and ecologically fragile region near the heavily militarized Tibetan-Indian frontier. Once completed, the massive structure will dwarf the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, and is expected to generate nearly three times as much hydropower by harnessing the Brahmaputra’s sharp descent from Himalayan peaks into the world’s deepest canyon.

Yet far beyond electricity production, the project portends a looming geopolitical and environmental crisis. It stands to disrupt the hydrological balance for millions of people downstream, destabilize a delicate Himalayan ecosystem and provide Beijing with a potent new lever over India, its strategic rival.

China appears to have learned nothing from its own cautionary tale: the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest. Once hailed as an engineering marvel, the dam has become an environmental nightmare — eroding riverbanks and deltas, degrading water quality, triggering frequent landslides and causing lasting ecological damage.

The new super-dam’s site is on a geologic fault line — a recipe for catastrophe. Scientists warn that large dam reservoirs can trigger seismic activity, a phenomenon known as reservoir-triggered seismicity. In this quake-prone region, the tectonic stresses induced by such a megastructure could lead to devastating earthquakes.

The Brahmaputra — the world’s highest-altitude major river — draws its perennial flow from Himalayan springs, glacial melt, upland wetlands and tributaries. The vast majority of these sources lie within Chinese-occupied Tibet, where the river is known as the Yarlung Zangbo. In contrast, India contributes modestly to the river’s year-round volume, though it plays a greater role in its monsoonal surge. After flowing through India’s Arunachal Pradesh and Assam states, the river enters Bangladesh before draining into the Bay of Bengal.

But a river’s flow is not just about water — it also carries nutrient-rich sediment, serving as the ecological lifeblood of entire regions.

By building a gigantic dam just before the river exits Chinese-controlled territory, Beijing gains the power to manipulate cross-border flows, including during the critical dry season. It can withhold or release water at will, trap sediment and potentially weaponize water in future disputes.

By capturing silt-laden waters before they reach India and Bangladesh, the dam will starve downstream floodplains of nourishing sediment that replenishes farmland and sustains fisheries. Bangladesh’s delta, already threatened by rising seas, will shrink further and become more prone to saltwater intrusion and catastrophic flooding.

Equally alarming is the likely disruption of the Brahmaputra’s natural flooding cycle. Seasonal floods during the summer monsoon serve vital ecological functions. Disrupting this rhythm could spell disaster for northeast India’s agrarian economy and for millions in Bangladesh who depend on the river’s pulse.

Moreover, by trapping sediment and altering flows, the $168 billion dam could erode riverbeds, degrade habitats and accelerate coastal loss. China would gain not only hydropower but also hydraulic power — the ability to influence political and ecological outcomes in neighboring nations.

China’s dam-building frenzy on rivers originating on the Tibetan Plateau has long alarmed downstream nations, from Vietnam and Thailand to Nepal. What makes this project uniquely concerning is its sheer scale, high-risk location and the strategic signal it sends.

For India, the dam represents more than just a hydrological threat. It is a potential geopolitical stranglehold. If tensions escalate again — as they did following China’s stealth incursions into Indian territory in 2020 — Beijing could exploit its upstream control to exert pressure. This is especially ominous given China’s claim to India’s sprawling Arunachal Pradesh state, which it labels “South Tibet.”

Hydropower generation is only one aspect of the dam’s utility. Its greater value lies in strategic dominance.

Despite the grave implications, international response has been muted. India has voiced concern, but its political response has been measured. The stark reality is that India possesses few diplomatic or legal tools to counter China’s upstream assertiveness. Nevertheless, India could take the lead in advocating international recognition of Tibet’s status as Asia’s “water tower” and push for binding norms on transboundary river development.

China’s unilateralism deepens distrust and reinforces strategic asymmetry in the region. Beijing is not party to any binding water-sharing treaty with its neighbors. Nor has it conducted credible environmental or seismic assessments for a project of this magnitude — despite its location in one of Earth’s most geologically unstable regions.

The Brahmaputra super-dam thus raises profound questions about regional stability. It epitomizes China’s strategy of “hydro-hegemony” — using upstream control of water to exercise geopolitical influence.

This is not just another dam. In an era when control over water is becoming as consequential as control over oil was in the 20th century, China is methodically locking in future geopolitical leverage.

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

A world in flux offers Taiwan both perils and opportunities

Featured

Posted on by

The world has become less predictable, less rules-based, and more shaped by the impulses of strongmen and short-term dealmaking. Against this backdrop, the fate of democratic Taiwan hinges on how global powers deal with an increasingly assertive China.

Brahma Chellaney, Taipei Times

The world has become less predictable, less rules-based, and more shaped by the impulses of strongmen and short-term dealmaking.

Nowhere is this more consequential than in East Asia, where the fate of democratic Taiwan hinges on how global powers manage — or mismanage — tensions with an increasingly assertive China.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has deepened the global uncertainty, with his erratic, highly personalized foreign-policy approach unsettling allies and adversaries alike. Trump appears to treat foreign policy like a reality show.

Yet, paradoxically, the global unpredictability may offer Taiwan unexpected deterrence. For China, the risk of provoking the United States may now outweigh the temptation of taking Taiwan by force.

Trump’s foreign policy is less about strategy than instinct. Unlike past American presidents who embedded US commitments in alliances and treaties, Trump approaches diplomacy as a real estate mogul might: transactional, impulsive, and often devoid of historical context. For Taiwan, this raises uncomfortable questions. Can it continue to rely on a US security umbrella under a president who has questioned the value of NATO, threatened to pull US troops from South Korea, and hinted in the past at making deals with China at Taiwan’s expense?

Under a president whose loyalty to democratic norms is ambiguous and whose geopolitical thinking centers on short-term leverage, Taiwan could easily become a pawn in a larger bargain — or worse, left to fend for itself. Trump has previously oscillated between fiery rhetoric on China and overtures of camaraderie with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). His unpredictability breeds confusion in Taipei, and, perhaps more dangerously, could encourage miscalculation in Beijing.

However, unpredictability is not always a strategic liability. In the context of Taiwan’s security, it can act as a form of deterrence — especially when facing an increasingly authoritarian and repressive regime like China’s that prizes control and risk management.

Trump’s military strike on Iran last month, executed with little consultation or warning, sent a jolt through global capitals. For Beijing, it was a sharp reminder that a Trump-led America could respond to Chinese aggression not with diplomatic caution, but with military intervention.

This lesson is not lost on China’s leadership, especially at a time when intra-party power struggles in Beijing are raising questions about Xi’s one-man dictatorship.

Despite its military build-up and increasingly bellicose rhetoric on Taiwan, China remains fundamentally cautious about entering a war it cannot control. The US military still possesses unmatched power projection capabilities in the Indo-Pacific. And now, with Trump in office again, the risks of a US military response to a Taiwan invasion — while not guaranteed — appear less abstract than they might under a more cautious administration in Washington.

Indeed, the combination of Trump’s volatility and America’s military reach could force China to recalibrate its timetable on Taiwan.

Xi may still view “reunification” as a historic mission, but he must weigh that ambition against a backdrop of rising internal vulnerabilities — including economic stagnation, demographic decline, eroding international goodwill and sharpening power rivalries within the Chinese Communist Party. Trump’s return to power, with its promise of intensified economic confrontation and strategic pressure, only accentuates those challenges.

At the same time, the broader geopolitical environment is shifting in ways that offer Taiwan both risks and opportunities. On one hand, Trump’s disdain for traditional alliances weakens the cohesion of the democratic front that has helped shield Taiwan diplomatically and militarily. On the other hand, growing concerns about Chinese assertiveness — from Japan and South Korea to the Philippines and India — have created a more favorable regional climate for closer defense cooperation with Taiwan, even if done quietly and informally.

Europe, too, is awakening to the Taiwan question. While Trump’s disdain for the EU may hinder transatlantic coordination, the European Parliament and several key EU member states have become more vocal in opposing any change to the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. These diplomatic gains, while modest, offer Taiwan a broader base of international sympathy in the event of a crisis.

Ultimately, Taiwan is navigating a world in flux — one where neither deterrence nor diplomacy can be taken for granted. Trump’s second term has added a layer of strategic fog to an already unstable international order.

But this fog is not entirely to Taiwan’s disadvantage. The fear that Trump might launch a military response to a Chinese invasion — not out of alliance loyalty, but out of rage or opportunism — may be precisely the uncertainty that keeps Beijing at bay.

Still, deterrence rooted in unpredictability is fragile and cannot substitute for a coherent long-term strategy.

Taiwan must be vigilant as it continues to strengthen its asymmetric defense capabilities, deepen its informal security partnerships and build public resilience. It must also avoid putting all its eggs in Washington’s basket, especially when that basket is being carried by a man who has repeatedly broken with tradition, institutions, and norms.

In an age where geopolitics is shaped as much by personality as by policy, Taiwan’s fate will hinge not just on its own resolve, but on its ability to read and adapt to a rapidly shifting international landscape.

In this precarious balancing act, Taiwan remains both a frontline of democracy and a test case for how smaller powers can survive — and even thrive — amid great-power struggles and global uncertainty.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).

Trump’s 50-day Ukraine ultimatum is doomed to fail

Featured

Posted on by

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

President Trump campaigned on a promise to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of returning to the White House. Now back in the White House, he finds himself hemmed in by the realities of great-power politics.

Trump’s self-confidence has collided with the entrenched dynamics of a grinding conflict. Frustrated, he has turned to familiar tools of coercion: threats, pressure tactics and a new flow of advanced weapons to Kyiv.

Trump’s latest initiative gives Moscow a 50-day deadline to end its war in Ukraine. He has threatened secondary sanctions on Russia’s key trading partners and opened a fresh weapons pipeline to Kyiv, hoping this twin-pronged approach will force Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hand. But like Trump’s earlier attempts to employ brute pressure as a substitute for diplomacy, this initiative reflects impatience more than strategic clarity.

Trump once believed that his personal rapport with Putin, coupled with a dealmaker’s instinct, could bring about a ceasefire. But six months into his new term, his peace push lies in tatters. Russia continues to press its territorial ambitions, while Ukraine, bolstered by Western military support, shows little interest in making major concessions. Instead of a breakthrough, Trump faces a deepening quagmire.

The irony is unmistakable — the president who pledged to end America’s entanglements in “forever wars” is now escalating U.S. involvement in one that is deflecting American attention away from more-pressing strategic challenges, including from China, which is seeking to supplant the U.S. as the world’s foremost power.

Trump’s new Ukraine strategy bears an eerie resemblance to his Iran policy, when he tried to bomb Tehran into submission, only to end up entrenching animosities further and weakening U.S. leverage.

There is no doubt that ending the war in Ukraine is in America’s strategic interest. The conflict has absorbed vast U.S. resources, diverted diplomatic bandwidth and strained transatlantic cohesion.

More importantly, the war has delayed Washington’s ability to focus on the key Indo-Pacific region — the world’s emerging economic and geopolitical nerve center.

The pivot to the Indo-Pacific is not merely aspirational. A leaked memorandum titled “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, identifies China as the Pentagon’s “sole pacing threat.” The Trump administration is seeking to reorient the U.S. military posture to prepare for a potential showdown in Asia over Chinese aggression against democratic Taiwan.

The war in Ukraine, by draining American attention, resources and capabilities, undermines this rebalancing.

Seen from this angle, Trump is right to seek an end to the conflict. But his approach — escalating arms transfers while threatening punitive sanctions on countries that do business with Russia — is unlikely to yield peace. If anything, it risks prolonging the war by reinforcing the belief in Kyiv that Washington remains committed to a military solution.

In fact, Trump’s threat to impose harsh penalties on Russia’s trading partners lacks credibility. Such sanctions would trigger a U.S. showdown with China, which trades nearly $250 billion annually with Russia, including major oil and gas imports. Sanctioning India could upend America’s Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at maintaining a stable balance of power.

History offers little support for the notion that coercion alone can deliver durable peace. Military pressure may bring parties to the table, but diplomacy is what cements outcomes. The Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian war, and the Camp David Accords, which brought peace between Egypt and Israel, were both products of tough negotiations rather than deadlines and threats.

Trump’s maximalist tactics risk backfiring on multiple fronts. Sanctioning Russia’s trading partners could alienate crucial “swing” nations in the global contest with China. These states are already wary of U.S. unilateralism, and some of them could be pushed into Beijing’s orbit. Moreover, punitive economic measures often fail to change state behavior, especially when national security interests are at stake, as is the case for Russia in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, a flood of advanced new U.S. weapons to Ukraine may boost short-term battlefield performance but will do little to bridge the wider diplomatic impasse. Putin, faced with increased Western backing for Kyiv, is unlikely to scale back his goals. Instead, he may double down, calculating that time and attrition are on his side.

The real path to peace in Ukraine lies not in deadlines or ultimatums, but in a forward-looking diplomatic initiative that recognizes the legitimate interests of all parties while seeking to uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty. The Biden administration made limited overtures in this direction, but Trump, who claims to be a great dealmaker, has an opportunity to go further.

Instead of trying to impose peace through pressure alone, he must find ways to bring both sides to the table — with credible inducements and face-saving compromises.

This will require working with international partners — not just NATO allies, but also influential neutral states like India and the United Arab Emirates that can serve as mediators. It will also require a nuanced understanding of Russia’s domestic political constraints and Ukraine’s security concerns. None of this is easy, but it is more likely to succeed than a strategy built on coercion and deadlines.

Despite promising to end the war quickly, Trump now finds himself caught in the same bind as his predecessor. His failure to secure a ceasefire has deepened America’s involvement in the war — the very entanglement he vowed to end.

Unless he pivots toward a more diplomatic course, his 50-day ultimatum to Moscow will go the way of his 24-hour pledge: unmet and quietly shelved.

Deadlines don’t make peace. Diplomacy does.

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

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

US foreign policy is now a one-man reality show

Featured

Posted on by

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

In his second term, President Trump’s excessive personalization of foreign policy has been on full display. But far from being the deft strategist he portrays, Trump has turned American diplomacy into an impulsive, self-serving spectacle.

The most recent example is telling: Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran blindsided even his own top officials. That a decision of such geopolitical magnitude was made without the knowledge of his senior advisors speaks volumes about his go-it-alone governing style.

From suspending foreign aid to saying the U.S. should “take over and redevelop Gaza,” Trump’s uncoordinated, impulsive approach stands in sharp contrast to traditional U.S. diplomacy, which relies on strategic planning, inter-agency consensus and durable alliances. Trump’s method instead favors drama, unpredictability and personal branding — often at the expense of the national interest.

Trump has long treated foreign policy as theatrical performance, designed more to generate headlines than to achieve lasting outcomes. His habit of bypassing expert advice and established channels consistently undermines U.S. credibility — not just at home, but also among allies and adversaries.

His approach has sown confusion within his administration and distrust abroad. Allies are left wondering whether Trump’s statements reflect official policy or personal whim, and even his own Cabinet is often in the dark. Trump’s foreign policy is less a coherent strategy than a string of dramatic set-pieces crafted for maximum personal visibility.

Take the paradox of his recent Middle East gambit. Trump greenlit Israel’s preemptive war on Iran, then ordered U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites — facilities that are subject to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and are monitored under Iran’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments. After declaring victory, he touted a U.S.-brokered ceasefire as vindication of his strategy. Yet he conspicuously failed to acknowledge the crucial mediating role played by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

It was, in fact, the Qatari ruler who negotiated the truce that ended what Trump dubbed the “12-Day War.” But for Trump, who never misses a chance to claim center stage, downplaying others’ key roles is par for the course.

Trump claimed that he arranged the ceasefire between India and Pakistan following their military hostilities in early May. The confrontation was triggered by an cross-border terrorist attack in Indian Kashmir on April 22 in which Islamist gunmen targeted non-Muslims, killing 26 people.

India maintains that the ceasefire came about through direct bilateral talks after Pakistan requested a truce via the military hotline. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from repeatedly claiming credit and lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize. “They should give me the Nobel Prize for Rwanda, or the Congo, or Serbia, Kosovo … The big one is India and Pakistan,” he recently declared.

Ironically, Trump may believe that bombing Iran helps his case for the Nobel — a prize that, over the years, has gone to a surprising roster of militarists. Theodore Roosevelt (the champion of “Big Stick” diplomacy), Henry Kissinger (the mastermind of the carpet-bombing of Laos and Cambodia) and Barack Obama (the serial interventionist who helped turn Libya into a failed state) all won it.

Yet Trump’s personalization of diplomacy brings risks that go beyond ego-driven showmanship. Major decisions made on impulse, for optics or without consulting national security professionals erode the foundations of U.S. foreign policy. They also increase the danger of strategic miscalculation.

Foreign governments cannot know whether Trump’s declarations reflect actual American policy or are merely the mood of the moment. By sidelining intelligence assessments and undercutting his own officials — as he did by floating regime change in Iran after his team publicly denied such intentions — Trump breeds internal disarray and external uncertainty.

This policy chaos is amplified by Trump’s compulsive communication style. No world leader talks more or posts more on social media. American officials are often left scrambling to explain statements they didn’t anticipate, while global actors are forced to decipher whether the next move will be announced from the Situation Room or on Truth Social.

The blurring of lines between national interest and personal gain further complicates matters. Increasingly, foreign policy appears to double as a mechanism for advancing private interests. In the past six months, Trump’s personal wealth surged thanks to a string of cryptocurrency ventures and deals, and there is mounting evidence that the Trump family’s crypto empire is influencing presidential decision-making.

Consider Trump’s handling of Pakistan in the wake of the Kashmir terror attack. Between the massacre and India’s retaliation, Pakistan hurriedly signed a major investment deal with World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm founded by Trump and his sons before last November’s election. Days later, Trump helped shield Pakistan from further Indian reprisals. Now he declares, “I love Pakistan” — a country that harbored Osama bin Laden for years and still shelters global terrorists.

In the end, Trump has reduced U.S. statecraft to spectacle. American foreign policy today looks less like the work of a global superpower and more like a one-man reality show — replete with cliffhangers, reversals, business deals and applause lines.

Such theatrics may serve Trump’s political ambitions, but they leave America’s strategic credibility — and the international order it helped build — increasingly vulnerable.

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