In the emerging multi-polar world, few nations will throw in their lot with exclusively one nation. Rather, like India, they’ll try to maintain advantageous relationships with as many nations as possible. From Andrew Korybko at korybko.com:
By always keeping its options open, India hopes to motivate other partners to offer it even better deals, ultimately deciding upon whichever proposal is best for its objective national interests as its leadership sincerely considers them to be.
Modi and Trump met in DC last week, but their meeting was largely overshadowed in the media by Trump’s call with Putin several days prior, which led to them initiating peace talks on Ukraine. Many observers might have therefore missed how this latest summit showcased India’s multi-alignment strategy. Their joint statement can be read here while RT summarized the key takeaways here. The main outcomes are that India and the US plan to cooperate more closely on trade, military, and energy.
These plans were agreed to at a crucial moment in the global systemic transition whereby multipolarity has finally become inevitable but the final form thereof has yet to take shape. The US wants to remain the most important player in global affairs while India wants to play a greater role commensurate with its demographic and economic size. These goals aren’t mutually exclusive since they agreed to work together in pursuit of them as can be understood by their joint statement.
