Donald Trump’s bitter post drags India into his China melodrama

New Delhi: Donald Trump looked every inch the sore loser on Friday, firing off a late-night “truth” that declared, “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” 

The post sat above a photo of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi walking through a gilded doorway, a stage-managed image that the former US president used to push a simplistic “with us or against us” narrative.

Analysts say whenever Trump struggles to bend geopolitics to his ego, he lashes out and pretends partners have “switched sides.” 

However, Delhi’s foreign policy has, for decades, been built on strategic autonomy, a many-to-many playbook, not a one-flag pledge. 

India has always maintained that it talks to Washington, Moscow and Beijing when it must, and to everyone else when it should. That multi-alignment frustrates arm-twisting politicians but it serves India’s interests, which is precisely the point.

Old grudges, new theatrics

As president he called India the "dead economy" and “tariff king,” yanked duty-free benefits under the GSP programme, and dangled threats over everything from medical devices to Harley-Davidson bikes. 

He even tried to freelance as a “mediator” on Kashmir, a claim New Delhi publicly swatted away. For Russian war into Ukraine, he riffed on India’s energy purchases without acknowledging basic math on affordability and security of supply. The net effect was predictable: hostility dressed up as deal-making.

The post on Truth Social follows the same knee-jerk script. It reduces a complex triangle, India’s competition with China, Russia’s dependence on Beijing, America’s need for a reliable Indo-Pacific partner, into a schoolyard taunt. 

India will not be a prop in somebody else’s campaign

Trump has been trying to turn India into a prop for domestic point-scoring, one day flattering the diaspora, the next day sneering at India’s choices. That approach misreads India entirely. 

This is a G20 economy, a tech and space power, a nation that buys where it gets value and partners where interests align. It will not sign up to perform loyalty theatre for a US politician’s base.

The post is also a tell: Trump fears losing narrative control over a world that does not revolve around him. So he invents a betrayal and dares others to disprove it. That might work on talk radio. It does not stand up to even cursory scrutiny of India-US ties in defence, technology, clean energy, education and people-to-people links, relationships built across administrations, not on one man’s mood.

Sour grapes dressed as strategy

Calling India “lost” is not analysis. It is sour grapes. It ignores the hard work diplomats on both sides invest to manage differences without blowing up the relationship. 

It ignores that India will keep talking to Russia for legacy military spares and discounted energy while deepening co-production and critical tech with the US. It ignores that Delhi’s China calculus is defined by deterrence at the LAC, not by photo-ops in grand corridors.

Strip away the bluster and Trump’s message is simple: if you won’t be my pawn, you are my enemy. That is not how serious countries operate. India does not exist to validate a campaign line. Nor will it allow any leader, friend or otherwise, to create wedges where none exist.