C. Raja Mohan
“Multialignment” has been Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lodestar as he moved India and its foreign policy out of the dead end of nonalignment over the last decade. In Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump last week, Modi got to see—firsthand and in real time—how Trump was developing a multialignment of his own. Trump’s efforts to loosen U.S. commitments to Europe, reach out to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and publicly woo Chinese President Xi Jinping mark an epochal break with the idea of a rules-based international order backed by U.S. power and a collective West. With his vision of America First, Trump is now looking for bilateral deals with other powers to secure U.S. interests. If Trump succeeds in this, multialignment could well become the norm among the major powers of the international system.
In nudging India closer to the United States than ever before, Modi abandoned one of the important but unstated principles of India’s longtime nonalignment policy: keeping a political distance from the United States on global and regional issues. At the same time, Modi chose to maintain India’s old partnership with Russia while sustaining a difficult dialogue with China amid persistent border tensions and a mounting trade deficit. Under Modi, New Delhi also ended its prolonged indifference to Europe by stepping up engagement with key powers, including France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the European Union in Brussels.
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