Despite Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-H1B stance, Indian-American venture capitalist Asha Jadeja Motwani has emerged as the fourth highest donor to Trump SuperPAC MAGA Inc. Out of the total $102.17 million raised by MAGA SPAC, Motwani donated around $5 million, as per the federal campaign finance filings, which detail contributors of $100,000 or more.

Her election-to-date contribution stands at over $5.1 million, as per the filings. Other donors include Reliance Health Care, a subsidiary of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), which donated around $100,000 to Trump’s SPAC.

The conference is confined largely to members of the Commonwealth. But the issues related to Parliament that it is likely to debate have a certain relevance far beyond the Commonwealth. Issues likely to be taken up include the role of Speakers and Presiding Officers in maintaining strong democratic institutions; use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in parliaments; social media and its impact on Members of Parliament; and innovative strategies to enhance public understanding of parliament and citizens’ participation beyond voting.

In Washington, every new administration arrives with its own ideological coalition and inevitably produces a document verbalizing its ideas of U.S. national security policy. The latest version of the  (NSS), which was released by the Trump administration last week, is very much part of that tradition. More significant, however, is the way in which the document is a departure: If past strategy documents reflected minor variations on a broad post-World War II and post-Cold War foreign-policy consensus, this one marks a dramatic rupture from that consensus.

Whether the document is a reliable guide to U.S. President Donald Trump’s future actions is unclear. But it is undeniably an important milestone in the evolution of the domestic debate about the United States’ relationship with the world—one that captures the worldview of the MAGA movement and reflects the changing American mood. For Asia, the document offers a revealing window into how the second Trump administration understands the Indo-Pacific, treats U.S. alliances, assesses China, and imagines U.S. leadership in an era of geopolitical competition.

Now that the much awaited National Security Strategy (NSS) December 2025 is out, it is interesting to compare the present version with the NSS dated December 2017 which was published by the first Trump administration. A broad-brush assessment is given below. Analysts will no doubt pore over the 33-page document of the NSS 2025 ( the NSS 2017 was 68 pages long!) and give their detailed assessment in the days and weeks ahead.

America First: Both the NSS 2017 and the NSS 2025 put “America First” and this manifests itself through the core foreign policy interest which is protection of homeland security. The 2017 document is clear: The fundamental responsibility is to protect the American people, the homeland and the American way of life. The 2025 document goes one step further and talks of “full control over borders, over immigration system and over transportation networks through which people come into the country – ±ô±đ˛µ˛ą±ô±ô˛âĚý(emphasis mine) and illegally.” By clubbing legal and illegal immigration together, the NSS 2025 makes its intentions clear – to stop “destabilizing population flows” and allow the US full and sovereign control over who is admitted and who is not. The NSS 2025 proclaims that the era of mass migration is over and that a border controlled by the will of the American people as implemented by their government is fundamental to the survival of the US as a sovereign republic.

The difficult negotiations over Ukraine open the door to a potential restructuring of relations among the US, Europe, and Russia. But Delhi must first correct the distortion in its Russia policy

President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India this week — his first in four years — comes in the midst of intensifying peace efforts in Ukraine. It offers Delhi an opportunity to reinvent the relationship with Russia that is much-valued but performs well below potential and is rather skewed.

Despite Delhi’s ritual celebration of Moscow as India’s “best friend forever”, the reality is less flattering. Indo-Russian ties have been reduced to a thin gruel over the years. Its narrow government-to-government interface has little traction among India’s new elites or its dynamic private sector. The Russian presence in Indian public life is a faint echo of the Soviet past. In Moscow too, India remains marginal to the Russian elites preoccupied with America, Europe, and China. If the relationship has endured, it is thanks largely to Putin’s personal commitment rather than a structural Russian interest.

US President Donald Trump’s new peace plan for Ukraine offers a fresh look at what has long seemed an impossible proposition — a US-Russia partnership. Washington and Moscow have been at odds for nearly two decades, and many capitals have assumed the rivalry is permanent. Trump is challenging that assumption. He appears willing to take the relationship in a different direction.

His Ukraine peace plan contains ideas with sweeping implications — reintegrating Russia into the world economy, inviting Moscow back into the Western G7, and launching a broad US-Russia economic partnership. Trump’s 28-point peace formula for Ukraine mirrors key Russian demands — ceding eastern Ukraine and Crimea, keeping Kyiv out of NATO, and limiting its military.

August 19th, 2025

As summits go, the one in Anchorage, Alaska between Presidents Trump and Putin was terribly significant from a geopolitical perspective. Still, it is important to recognize what the summit achieved and what it did not.

There is widespread consensus that the summit represented the “de-pariahfication” (I am making up this word) of Russia and its return to global centre stage as a great power. President Putin, against whom there is an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC), also comes in from the cold and almost instantaneously becomes persona grata. The more substantive gains for Russia are also obvious. One, there is no immediate cease fire agreement which would not have made sense for Russia which is still winning the war. Second and more important, there was agreement at least between the two leaders that the “root causes” of the Ukraine conflict must be dealt with. This has been a longstanding demand of President Putin. Third, to quote Putin: “All of Russia’s legitimate concerns must be taken into account, and a fair balance in the security sphere in Europe and the world as a whole must be restored”. India was one of the earliest countries to say at the UN that the “legitimate security interests” of Russia must be taken into account in any final settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. We were then persuaded to drop this expression in our statements at the UN due to Western pressure. It is a matter of ironical satisfaction that this has now been accepted by the US. Note that Putin also talks of “all Russia’s legitimate concerns” which will doubtless include removal of international sanctions against it and re-establishment of normal ties between Russia and the US. There is already talk of resumption of direct air travel and restoration of the strength of the diplomatic missions between Russia and the US.

The Alaska summit must be viewed as an incipient peace process than as a one-off meeting that produced concrete outcomes. For instance, this summit is reportedly to be followed by a one-on-one meeting between Presidents Putin and Zelensky (something the Kremlin is yet to agree to) eventually to be concluded with some kind of a framework peace agreement at a trilateral summit in the near future involving Trump, Putin and Zelensky. The Alaska summit did produce understandings but these are not final and may be reneged upon by the principals at any point in the future. Even so, President Trump stated that he and President Putin had agreed on many things except one or two big things which led him to declare tautologically that “there is no deal until there is a deal”! In the absence of a Joint Statement or written agreements, one can only speculate on the content of the Alaska summit meeting.

What could the two big things be that are outstanding? One might be the interpretation of what constitutes Russia’s security interests. The real fundamental Russian security interest relates to preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. So that would be non-negotiable from Putin’s perspective. Having secured that understanding, Putin did make a concession by saying that the security interests of Ukraine would also be taken into account. This could involve the limited presence of Western, non-NATO troops in Ukraine, which Putin may have agreeed to in principle. The EU and Ukraine would ideally want American troops to be part of this and wish to see an “Article 5-kind” of security guarantee. Following the Alaska Summit, alarmed European leaders (who were not part of the Alaska meeting) met with Trump along with Zelensky and issued a joint statement: We are clear that Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Poland, Italy, Finland and the European Union institutions said in the statement and welcomed President Trump’s statement that the US is prepared to give security guarantees. It remains to be seen whether Russia can agree to this or will seek to dilute it. Reports attributed to Putin say that Russia has committed to not attacking or seizing terrritories from other countries on its border. This has been an obsession of the EU which firmly believes that Putin will attack the Baltic states before long and that his ultimate objective is the reconstruction of the erstwhile Soviet Empire.

The second big outstanding issue is the question related to territorial swap. This is arguably the most difficult to achieve for negotiators on both sides. Putin has let it be known that he wants the entire Donbas region for Russia. This means really Donetsk where Russia occupies 70 per cent of the territory. Luhansk is largely under Russian control anyway. In addition to this, Crimea too is non-negotiable for Russia. In return, Ukraine gets to maintain the fontlines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, but little else. This will be tough for Zelensky and EU to swallow, but they may have little choice in the matter. The Ukrainian constitution itself may have to be amended for this purpose and Zelensky’s political future could be on the line.

One may ask what is in it for President Trump (and the US) in all of this. There is talk of Zelensky having agreed to buy American military hardware. The Limousine ride where only Trump and Putin were present may have some hidden deals, who knows. But more than anything else, Trump believes himself to be the ultimate “anti-war” President. His desire for the Nobel Peace Prize is an open secret. But if by some miracle he does bring the intractable conflict in Ukraine to a close, he will have strengthened his claim to that prize.

Ambassador Dr Mohan Kumar is Director General of the newly established Motwani Jadeja Institute for American Studies at OP Jindal Global University.

October 19th, 2025

When President Trump unleashed the tariff war on “liberation day” in April of this year, many economists stayed true to their vocation of belonging to the “dismal science”. Catastrophic scenarios were forecast and economic doomsday was freely predicted. Six months on, what is the state of affairs?

Well, it must be admitted that things could have been a lot worse. Indeed, the IMF in its World Economic Outlook released on October 14, 2025 stated that the good news is that the growth downgrade is at the modest end of the range, with global growth projected at 3.2% this year and 3.1% next year, while inflation has increased modestly and is proving more persistent now. More importantly, the IMF stated that the impact of tariff measures was milder than expected due to trade exemptions, increased stocking up, restrained retaliation, and swift private-sector adjustments. Loose financial conditions, expansionary fiscal policies in key economies, and booming U.S. investment in AI and technology further softened the impact. This then is the good news. The bad news is that the IMF also went on to add : The tariff shock is here and it is further dimming already-weak growth prospects. This is clear even in the US; growth is revised down from last year. The labor market is weakening and inflation has been revised up and is persistently above target, signs that the economy has been hit by a negative supply shock. So, is this the proverbial calm before the storm?

The former IMF Chief Economist, Gita Gopinath, has in fact warned (in an article in “The Economist”) recently that the current rally in American stock markets, fuelled by Artificial Intelligence, may be setting the stage for a subsequent painful market correction. Indeed she goes as far as to predict that the impending crash, should it come to pass, could torch a whopping $ 35 trillion of wealth. Some economists argue that the irrational exuberance we are seeing now is reminiscent of the late 1990s, which ultimately led to the dotcom crash of 2000. Gita Gopinath makes the important point that the sheer scale of exposure, both domestic and international, to American equities now, as opposed to 2000, points to unprecedented interconnectedness and that any sharp downturn in American markets will reverberate around the world.

Against this backdrop, it is hard to overestimate the importance of the trade ties between the two biggest players of the global trading system: the US and China. It may be recalled that China has imposed fresh restrictions on exports of rare earths and critical minerals to the US, beginning December of this year. In response, President Trump, as is his wont, has threatened to impose a whopping extra tariff of 100 per cent on Chinese products to the US beginning 1 November. Both sides know the repercussions of this brinkmanship. So, it must be hoped that there will indeed be a meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping on the margins of the APEC Summit in South Korea, end of this month. One might say, without fear of contradiction, that the fate of the global economy hangs in the balance. As the latest edition of ” The Economist” points out, this spat between the two biggest players reveals a dangerous dynamic and a “balance of economic terror” cannot serve as the basis for stable economic ties between the US and China.

The Director General of WTO is at pains to point out that 70 per cent of global trade still happens on an MFN (Most Favoured Nation) basis although that share is decreasing every year. The WTO Secretariat also points out that the global import share of the US is about 13 to 14 per cent, so there is no need to exaggerate the impact of Trumpian tariffs. But this is easier said than done. There is the impact on global trade sentiment and investment is guided by non-quantifiable factors as well. As Gita Gopinath notes the spat between US and China would damage not just their bilateral trade but also global trade, since a number of countries are exposed to the world’s two largest economies via complex supply chains. She notes, ominously, that the structural vulnerabilities and macroeconomic context are more perilous today and that countries should therefore prepare for severe global consequences.

India is doing the right thing by trying hard to conclude a tariff deal with the US, doing everything in its power to conclude an FTA with the EU and recalibrate its economic and investment ties with China. It is also making attempts to diversify its trade with other partners in the world. This is all to the good. The one area where India could perhaps do more is in domestic economic reform. It is understood that India is a rough and tumble democracy and deep-seated economic reforms are easier said than done. But reform we must, for the alternative may be yet another missed opportunity for India. It is worth noting that 2025 has not been catastrophic for countries of the Gobal South including India. There is no reason, however, to think 2026 will follow suit.

Ambassador Dr Mohan Kumar is Director General of the newly established Motwani Jadeja Institute for American Studies at the O P Jindal Global University. Views are personal.