Trump 2.0: Impact on South Asia

by Tissa Jayatilaka

Firstly, my thanks to the Director of the Bandaranaike International Diplomatic Training Institute for the invitation to offer introductory remarks at today’s seminar on the above topic. As I have all of ten minutes only for my remarks, let me get down to my task without any further delay.

If we look back at the Cold War era (1947-1991), we find that the United States had not developed an independent and separate policy towards South Asia, as the latter was then considered a low priority region. Even the little attention that the United States paid to South Asia at that time arose as a result of American concerns about the role of the Soviet Union in South Asian affairs.

From the time of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, and in particular, given China’s role in the Korean War soon thereafter, the Truman doctrine (1947) of the “containment of communism” that targeted the Soviet Union initially was extended to include China as well. The South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was also meant to prevent the spread of communism based on the ‘Domino Theory’ which presents a metaphor of falling dominoes: that is, a rise of communist influence in a country will result in the spread of communism in its neighbouring countries creating a domino effect.

France, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Pakistan helped the United States to create SEATO in 1954 which is considered the brainchild of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles.

It was only after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 that the United States began to focus seriously on South Asia. After the Nixon-Kissinger opening to China (Nixon was the first United States President to visit China in 1972) the United States could have developed a mutually beneficial partnership with China. But, in the context of the Cold War the United States saw every communist country as trying to bury America, to use the words of the former Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev.

Now we have Trump trumpeting a type of isolationism though his message is too incoherent for us to be certain of precisely what he wants or plans to do. Trump’s national security team has the worst kind of crazies in it. And given that Trump seems to know nothing much about foreign affairs (on his first evening of his second term at the Oval Office he said that the “S” in BRICS stands for Spain!), it will be, for the most part a case of the blind leading the blind in Washington.

Marco Rubio, though he is a hawk on China and an unabashed supporter of Israel, is an intelligent (enough!) and a seasoned politician. As Secretary of State, hopefully, Rubio and the professionals in the Department of State may be able to control and minimize the damage that Trump is likely to cause.

We in South Asia will have to brace ourselves to deal with rough political and economic weather that is likely to prevail in the next four years. With the exception of India, the rest of South Asia will doubtless experience America’s “benign neglect” just as much as Europe is expected to be the victim of Trump’s “malign neglect”.

The expectation is that Washington’s South Asia policy will be guided by its concept of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” first announced in late 2017. It will perhaps be updated and implemented with the help of America’s regional allies and partners to checkmate China. It portends less predictable United States – China relations and increased uncertainty in the region.

The Biden administration deepened the perception of China as a “pacing threat” that Mark Esper, then Secretary of Defence in Trump’s first term, spoke of in July 2020. By March, 2021, Biden elevated China as a preeminent threat to the United States. Such a design recognized that China had become increasingly more assertive as the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.

The United States-China rivalry is likely to spill over into the Indian Ocean region given the geopolitics at play. The United States relies heavily on India (a member of the QUAD security arrangement and of I2U2) to help contain China. Exploiting India’s fears of China, the United States has made geopolitical use of India: the global cop United States has outsourced the management of South Asia to the regional cop India.

However, the recent wars in West Asia between Israel and Palestine and in Europe between Russia and Ukraine, the above equation appears to be changing. India, Russia, China and Iran appear to have come closer to each other than before. The recent border agreement between China and India (October 2024) seems to indicate that India’s threat perception of China has changed or is changing. China is India’s largest trading partner and trade between the two countries has surged from USD 65 billion in 2020 to USD 118 in 2024.

Trump has recently directed his ire at India, a founding member of BRICS. India, so far, has managed to avoid immediate conflict by re-affirming its commitment to the US Dollar. India has been quietly hedging its bets by pursuing a rapprochement with China – – a move that could herald a seismic shift in big power relations as Debaish Roy Chowdhury (an India-China watcher) has stated in a recent article.

Chowdhury goes on to suggest that United States- India relations appear to be cooling. The uprising in Bangladesh which ousted Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been portrayed by Hindu supremacist allies of Modi as a CIA – orchestrated regime change. Modi’s ruling BJP has since embraced anti-American sentiment after the United States charged Adani – – a close ally of Modi – – accusing him of securities fraud and bribery in the United States.

Although global attention remains focused on the tariff war between the United States and China, India faces risks of its own. Trump has repeatedly labeled India a ‘very big abuser of tariffs’. In this context, India could be exploiting what it has referred to as its “strategic autonomy” or multi-alignment to play China against the United States. To the extent that India, China and the United States slug it out, smaller South Asian states like Sri Lanka have to be extra cautious in managing its relations with these big powers.

(This article is based on remarks made at the Bandaranaike International Diplomatic Training Institute on January 29, 2025.)