The new threat to America’s security is not just from transnational forces like COVID-19 and climate change, but from Americans’ domestic failure to adjust their own attitudes to this new world. That is the painful lesson that COVID-19 is teaching us.
The coronavirus has all but halted the world of international diplomacy, derailing major summits and leaving diplomats stranded as governments temporarily ban international travel. The World Trade Organization joined a raft of United Nations agencies, financial institutions, and international organizations that have been forced by the virus’s spread to cancel, suspend, or postpone conferences on everything including human rights, the Law of the Sea, and antimicrobial resistance.
A bipartisan U.S. foreign policy consensus has elevated the rise of China to an organising principle of U.S. grand strategy. And realists on both sides of the political aisle argue that Washington’s and New Delhi’s interests align in seeking a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region, with India’s heft and capabilities necessary for reaching that goal.
At the urging of President Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s lower house of Parliament passed legislation Tuesday allowing him to run for a fifth term as president. Putin, who is 67 years old and was first elected in 2000, noted that the legislation would still have to be approved by Russia’s Constitutional Court and in a nationwide plebiscite in April.
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It took the Trump administration 17 months to clinch a preliminary agreement with the Taliban – a first step toward ending more than 18 years of U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan. The deal is not so much a peace agreement as it is a way for Washington to manage conflict in the southwest Asian nation in the aftermath of the American withdrawal, which is supposed to be finalized by May 2020 (assuming the Taliban uphold their end of the bargain).
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President Donald Trump’s high-voltage visit to India has further cemented the close ties between the world’s oldest and largest democracies. The two sides have agreed to elevate relations to a Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership. The addition of the word “comprehensive” acquires new salience in a time of flux, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.
More immediately though Delhi, like Beijing, must deal with Trump’s determination to recast the global trading system and reconstitute major trading partnerships. Trump is convinced that the rest of the world has taken advantage of America’s “foolish” trade policies in the past. He only blames America’s globalist establishment.
India and the United States are far from becoming formal allies. They are dogged by persistent trade disagreements, which India shows no inclination to settle. But given Trump’s record with other U.S. allies, his administration has been surprisingly lenient when it comes to India’s uncompetitive trade practices. It has also kept mum about India’s feared drift toward illiberalism, enabling both countries to push ahead on strategic, especially defense, cooperation, which has always been the lodestar that guides U.S.-Indian relations.
Three years into Trump’s presidency, the strategic partnership with India that successive U.S. administrations have cultivated as a silent bulwark against China hasn’t just survived—it has flourished. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump have met on numerous occasions and even appeared together last September at a “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston, Texas, that drew 50,000 Indian Americans.
State inspection of foreign investments at home isn’t novel. Probing NGOs and mandating registration of foreign lobbyists are just two decades-old examples. What’s different today is that countries are accelerating and expanding these powers where they already exist, or freshly architecting them altogether. It’s a way for governments to address two things: perceived foreign influence over their domestic technology spheres, and perceived risks of foreign governments using investments and acquisitions to access sensitive data.
