On Thursday, beaming down from a giant screen on Times Square, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, wished New Yorkers blessings following his 75th birthday. The image of the leader of India was enormous: a multi-coloured, pixelated icon, depicting Modi as a benign, elderly leader, offering amity and goodwill to the American people.
In reality, the White House is at war with New Delhi, punishing the world’s fifth-largest economy with 50 per cent tariffs, while US president Donald Trump tries to enlist the EU to do likewise. Whoever paid for the giant ad for India in Times Square - presumably the Indian government or its allies in the US - is trying to change the narrative by painting India as a friend of America.
Why should this PR campaign be happening in the US right now? Possibly, the reason is that India understands the world axis is shifting towards Beijing. India wants to play both sides. This means staying on good terms with the Americans while keeping its options open elsewhere, particularly with China and India’s petrol station, Russia.
The emergence of a new tripartite alliance in the East, of India, China and Russia, was recently captured in Tiananmen Square where Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Modi reaffirmed their commitment to providing the world with a real alternative to the West. It looks, in all but name, like a “plot against the West”. These leaders want to reshape global governance, reduce reliance on Western-dominated institutions and carve out a multipolar world. They have the population, the economic heft, the resources and the reasons to do so.
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China’s economy is worth $17 trillion, making it the second largest in the world. India’s is $3.5 trillion, the fifth largest in the world, while Russia’s, at $2.02 trillion, is the 11th biggest in the world. Taken together, these three countries are home to three billion people – about 40 per cent of the world’s population. Most of the world’s rare earths and a sizable chuck of the world’s oil and gas reserves are under the Siberian ground.
All three countries run huge trade surpluses, while China alone accounts for 30 per cent of the world’s total manufacturing. When it comes to military spending, China, India and Russia are the world’s second, third and fourth biggest spenders, after America. All three are run by nationalists who believe that they have played second fiddle to the West for far too long.
Meanwhile, in London, the old world powers, Britain and the USA, have just reiterated their mutual and historic bonds. In a spectacle straight from a Hello! Magazine centrefold, Trump was flattered with tiaras, taffeta and trifle as the royals pulled out all the stops. The US president and first lady appeared chuffed with it all. For the UK, it was a diplomatic triumph, the type of TV event that most countries can only dream about and one that will doubtless drive up prices in London’s five-star hotels. Here in New York, from where I’m writing, morning TV chat shows have wall-to-wall coverage of Beefeater Britain. When it comes to soft power, the crown is hard to beat.
Militarily, China is well on its way to becoming a maritime superpower to rival the US
But there is a difference between power and pageantry. Windsor Castle appeared more period drama than hard politics. Sure, the money men turned up, with the giants of American tech and media in attendance, but there was a lack of seriousness about the spectacle, as if the West’s rich and powerful were in fancy dress, mainly worried about who got to sit closest to the Sun God. From a geo-strategic point of view, the main problem is that it isn’t 1945 any more, or 1989 or even 2000. It is 2025 and the world is in the middle of a new cold war, with the emerging powers ruthlessly perusing their own interests.
Chinese president Xi, rejecting US hegemonism, sees China as the champion of the global south and architect of an alternative world order. He speaks of a “community of common destiny” to promote Chinese models of development as alternatives to Western liberal norms. Beijing’s narrative emphasises respect for sovereignty and development without Western political conditions. As the American economist Larry Summers observed, when poor countries talk to China they get roads, when they talk to America they get lectures. Xi refers to “yesterday’s world” when he talks about institutions like the IMF, World Bank and even the UN.
Although the “community of common destiny” is still rather vague, a centrepiece of Xi’s strategy is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), through which China finances infrastructure across Asia, Africa and Latin America, expanding Beijing’s influence and reducing developing countries’ dependence on Western aid. These investments, coupled with trade ties, position China as an economic partner of choice.
Militarily, China is well on its way to becoming a maritime superpower to rival the US, largely driven by China’s exposure to trade on the high seas. The vast majority of its imported energy comes on tankers from the Middle East and almost all of its exports are shipped out of China by sea. This means China can’t afford to have the US navy pre-eminent in either the Pacific or Indian Oceans.
Embracing India, a traditional enemy of China, can be seen through this need to have an ally in the vast Indian ocean. In the past month, as Trump turned on India and doubled down on his support for its arch enemy Pakistan, China opened up the invitation for Modi to join the putative counterweight to America. In response, Pakistan promoted Trump for the Nobel prize. Who said flattery can’t get you anywhere?
The first quarter of the 21st century has been characterised by China catching up economically and technologically with the USA
For Putin, being brought in from the cold by Beijing is a huge diplomatic victory. Russia and China have had a tense relationship for many years, not least because Russian Manchuria – part of the Siberian far east where much of Russia’s mineral resources lie – used to be, up until 1858, Chinese. Today, this huge region is home to only four million Russians while over the border in Chinese Manchuria, live 107 million Chinese.
Russia simply can’t control this region because it doesn’t have the manpower and therefore a deal with Beijing is not only an economic pact, it’s a self-defence policy. As things stand, Russia gives China energy and China gives Russia consumer goods and technological knowhow. China is Russia’s biggest trading partner, consuming 28 per cent of all Russian exports.
Energy imports also dominate India’s relationship with Russia, underpinning historical links between India’s various socialist-leaning governments and Moscow. India imports significant quantities of arms from Russia, and all three countries are major nuclear powers with substantial nuclear arsenals.
The first quarter of the 21st century has been characterised by China catching up economically and technologically with the USA. It still has some way to go but across a whole host of metrics, the direction of travel is obvious. Now Beijing’s diplomacy is centred on prising the global south away from Washington and creating a viable alternative to the world set up by America after 1945.
Here in America, there are plenty within the Maga movement who are fine with that, happy to recede behind two great oceans into splendid isolation. Secure in the notion that no country could every invade the USA, many American patriots argue that it’s time to bring everything back home: corporations, tax money, army bases and soldiers.
We will miss it when it’s gone.
