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.

July 29th, 2025

It was customary to say when President Trump assumed office that trade was one area worth watching. After all, Trump loved the word “tariffs” and threatened to use it massively against one and all. But fast forward 6 months, Trump has surprised everyone. Consider the deals he has made: with china in May, with Japan in July and now with EU. These are significant, since US, China, EU and Japan not only top the global GDP charts but also top the share of global trade. With these deals, it may even be argued, somewhat counterintuitively, that a certain amount of security and predictability has been injected by Trump into the global economy.

The one with China was perhaps the most important, at least from a geopolitical perspective. Foreign policy wonks were keen to know how he would deal with China. In the event, Trump agreed a deal with China, with both countries making compromises. The White House Fact Sheet said the following:

Both US and China affirmed the importance of the critical bilateral economic and trade relationship between both countries and the global economy.

For too long, unfair trade practices and America’s massive trade deficit with China have fueled the offshoring of American jobs and the decline of our manufacturing sector.

In reaching an agreement, the United States and China will each lower tariffs by 115% while retaining an additional 10% tariff. Other U.S. measures will remain in place.

Both sides will take these actions by May 14, 2025.

This trade deal is a win for the United States, demonstrating President Trump’s unparalleled expertise in securing deals that benefit the American people.

The fact of the matter, however, is that both countries wanted a truce in the matter. But maybe, just maybe, the US wanted it more since China’s restrictions of rare earths to the American market had the potential to seriously hurt the US economy.

Japan, a treaty ally of the US, was next. Western analysts were concerned that Japan was being treated not as an ally but like any other country. But the deal announced on July 22 again called a truce between the two countries. The most important feature was the promised commitment by Japan to invest USD $550 billion directed by the United States to rebuild and expand core American industries. The following points are noteworthy:

This is the single largest foreign investment commitment ever secured by any country in a trade deal and may generate U.S. jobs, expand domestic manufacturing, and secure American prosperity.

These funds will be targeted toward the revitalization of America’s strategic industrial base, including:

Energy infrastructure and production, including LNG, advanced fuels, and grid modernization;

Semiconductor manufacturing and research, rebuilding U.S. capacity from design to fabrication;

Critical minerals mining, processing, and refining, ensuring access to essential inputs;

Pharmaceutical and medical production, ending U.S. dependence on foreign-made medicines and supplies;

Commercial and defense shipbuilding, including new yards and modernization of existing facilities.

The United States will retain 90% of the profits from this investment.

Japan may have found it convenient to agree to this massive investment in the US, rather than risk a trade war with an important ally. Japan has also agreed to a baseline 15 per cent tariff and has agreed to open up its market for American agriculture products, US autos and also agreeed to buy commercial aircrafts and LNG from the US.

Last, but not least, US has also agreed to a trade deal with its most important transatlantic partner i.e. the EU on July 27. The White House Fact Sheet calls it a “massive trade deal”. Again, the US has emphasized the fact that the EU will purchase USD 750 billion in US energy and will make investments amounting to USD 600 billion in the US, both by 2028. With the exception of steel, aluminum and copper where the EU will pay 50 per cent tariffs, all other EU exports to the US will attract a baseline tariff of 15 per cent. There has been some criticism from some EU countries, mainly France against the deal agreed with the US by the Commission. It is doubtful however that any country will derail the deal reached with the US.

It is worth recalling that in April of this year President Trump declared a national emergency in response to the “large and persistent U.S. goods trade deficit caused by a lack of reciprocity in bilateral trade relationships, unfair tariff and non-tariff barriers, and U.S. trading partners’ economic policies that suppress domestic wages and consumption”. The question is has Trump managed to find answers to the difficult question of America’s persistent trade deficit? Whatever the answer, it is clear that Trump’s negotiating strategy is based on two main objectives: one, securing market access using tariffs as an instument and two, seeking massive foreign investment from its trading partners into the US to create jobs and a manufacturing base to make America great again. Will it work? Only time will tell.

September 4th, 2025

It is now clear that the Alaska Summit meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin on August 16 followed by the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) Summit in Tianjin on 31 August/1 September, marks a turning point when a new world order may be gradually beginning to take shape. In geopolitical terms, the two Summits taken together may represent profound developments: one, the end of the construct “West” as we know it; two, the obvious re-establishment of Russia as a great power after a hiatus and three, the strategic signalling to President Trump by countries like China and Russia that they are not bereft of options.

The notion of the “West” may be traced back in history even to the nineteenth century, but its more recent conceptualization begins with the World Wars and with the United States of America arguing for a political, economic and military union of all democracies. There are several fora such as the WTO, UN Security Council, IMF, World Bank etc which were used to pursue the interests of the “West”. It is a fact that these institutions have been weakened to a great degree. The ballast for the “West” was nevertheless the transatlantic alliance between the US and Europe.  The Alaska Summit meeting which seeks to lay the foundations of a new European security architecture did not see the direct participation of EU and this is strategically significant. President Trump’s foreign policy has forever altered the conception of the Western construct. The picture of the major European leaders sitting in rapt attention in the Oval Office in front of Trump will haunt Europeans for a long time to come.

The other big implication is that Russia is back as a great power. In the past, the US and EU have done everything in their power to marginalize Russia and render it impotent following its invasion of Ukraine. It is fair to conclude that these attempts have come to nought with the one everlasting image from the Alaska Summit of Putin walking the red carpet and Trump waiting to receive him. The other enduring image is that of American marines bending down to straighten the red carpet for Putin.  Russia will henceforth be a paramount factor in any security architecture being crafted for Europe.

To the extent President Trump has adopted a stable foreign and security policy doctrine, it is this: he tends to seek grand bargains with great powers, he puts American interests over everything else and consequently, he does not necessarily concern himself too much about the interests of lesser powers. But it is interesting that both China and Russia at the China Victory Day Parade on 3 September, were essentially signalling to President Trump that they will stay the course and not necessarily buckle under his pressure.

Where does all this leave India? India is not yet a great power so it will have to go back to the drawing board and reconfigure its ties with each of the great powers. It will doubtless seek to advance its vital national interests based on its time-tested policy of strategic autonomy. Doing so may require serious adjustments in India’s strategic calculus. With the US for example, India should stop expecting any leverage deriving from the fact of it being used as a counterweight to China, largely because the US and President Trump do not necessarily see it in those terms anymore. India should therefore start laying the foundation for a consequential and enduring relationship with US on its own merit, regardless of third country interests. There is enough convergence of strategic interests between the world’s oldest and largest democracies to do this. Looking at the medium to long term must inevitably be part of this exercise.

It is a truism that any détente in ties between US and Russia is good for India. It gives India that much more strategic space for advancing its interests by working closely to build on its legacy relationship with Russia. India argued long back that the solution to the Ukraine problem lay not in the battlefield but in dialogue and diplomacy. India was also the first to state that the “legitimate security interests” of Russia must be considered, for which it took a good deal of flak from EU and others. US-Russian ties are now at a serious inflection point. The famous Limousine ride between PM Modi and President Putin in Tianjin is the subject of much speculation. But since this comes close on the heels of PM Modi’s telephonic conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky, it must be assumed that a good part of that conversation was about how to bring the war to an end in Ukraine.

If the US is ambivalent about looking at ties with India through the lens of its own relationship with China, then India too believes that its ties with China “should not be seen through a third country lens”.  This bestows on India more strategic space and flexibility in its own dealings with China. India must therefore lay a fresh and enduring basis for its own ties with China, a neighbour with whom it shares a long and disputed border and faces strategic competition in South Asia. India must strive for a multipolar Asia and in this it needs to convince China that stability in Asia is vitally linked to this single factor. The meeting on August 31 in Tianjin between Xi Jinping and Modi saw the two leaders agree that they are development partners, not rivals, which is a huge statement to make. But truth be told, structural impediments like the border issue continue to bedevil bilateral ties. Indian foreign policy was undoubtedly aligning itself closer to the “West” over the last two decades or so. President Trump, through his actions, may have brought this shift to an abrupt halt. What is more, there may be no “West” to align with, at least not the way we understood “West”.

The world is far from experiencing any strategic equilibrium or balance of power. Instead, the evolving world order seems, on the surface, like three great powers i.e. US, China and Russia jostling to delineate and carve out their own spheres of influence. That, however, would be an overly simplistic assessment. Sooner or later, middle powers like EU, India, ASEAN and Japan will make their presence felt within their geographies and by allying themselves with one or more of the great powers. Meanwhile, get used to a multipolar world that so many people had wished for. Multipolar the world order may be, but it is also one that is messy and fragmented.

Dr Mohan Kumar is a former Indian Ambassador and Director General of the Motwani Jadeja Institute for American Studies and Dean/Professor at OP Jindal Global University. Views are personal.