By Sushil Kutty
It’s not just US President Donald Trump and his attacks who are stewing in their juices watching the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) take the Trump tariff bull by the horns but also hawks in India who don’t like India and China get closer even if by no default.
These gentlemen and the odd lady among them have unleashed a war of words questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his ability to switch sides so very comfortably and oddly enough they appear to be on Trump’s side while just days ago, they were hammer and tong against the man for his unwanted tariffs.
And as the SCO gets down to brasstacks, taking up issues that not only resound regionally, but also globally, like terrorism, for instance, President Trump must be feeling isolated and neglected. The SCO has condemned the Pahalgam terror attack, which was not there on Trump’s desk when he cosied up to Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir and made a huge thing about “but for me there would have been a nuclear holocaust.”
President Trump did not once condemn Pahalgam. But the SCO is on the same page with India, even if a little late in the day. “Perpetrators (of Pahalgam) must be brought to task” was the sentiment in Tianjin, China, where the SCO Summit has been taking place. India’s quest to put the brakes on cross-border terrorism was finally on a major international forum’s table and China-baitors in India were not doing somersaults.
India’s condemnation of terrorism of whatever make is in focus. Pakistan is very much part of SCO and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was in the room when the Shanghai body condemned Pahalgam and the condemnation figured in the joint statement of the 10-member SCO, which called for punishment for perpetrators of the horrendous terror attack which killed 26 Indians and a Nepali citizen as well.
Will self-promoted Field Marshal Gen. Asim Munir accept the twist in the tale, a tale which he crafted and which received fine appreciation in the enlightened environs of the White House where sits a man who can’t now fathom how and why the tables turned during the time he thought he was on top of the world.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is avenging President Donald Trump’s war on BRICS. Trump’s tariff wars that sought economic applecarts across the globe and continues to leave millions in danger of losing livelihood even as Trump’s adult children are selling crypto and making tonnes of money.
Trump’s war against Russia in particular, against India and China. Trump’s wars are the flavour of the world this season, ever since he took charge of the United States on January 20 this year with previous US presidents at the inauguration and nobody missed the flourish with which Trump heralded his own coming.
Nobody at the time thought of the upheavals in the offing thanks to Trump’s arrival on the scene and here we’ve the world in free-fall which the SCO, hopefully just might be able to slow down.
Anyway, the Indians who don’t want India-China coming to terms with the gremlins in their ties are not China-haters or India-haters or, for that matter, ardent America-lovers. But they have skin in the game and it has to do with domestic politics and no quarter to be given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his regime, which must be toppled at any cost.
Current politics in India has no room for Prime Minister Narendra Modi gaining a halo. The ‘Vote Chori’ campaign against him cannot be sacrificed at the altar of renewed India-China bonhomie. So, questions such as “have we forgotten the deaths of 20 Indian Army soldiers in Galwan?” and “didn’t Modi keep reiterating ‘Operation Sindoor’ was fought against China and not Pakistan?”
Also, all of a sudden, Trump’s USA is by far a more friendly superpower than the one in the making. Prime Minister Modi’s detractors are questioning the Modi government for distancing India from the world’s most powerful democratic power, and for what and why?
It is another matter that some of these detractors were till recently sitting in the lap of the USA and the ‘West’ asking for the removal of the dictatorial Modi dispensation. Truly, President Trump doesn’t have a clue as to what all he has triggered in his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is now a pipedream.
Will Trump ever forgive Prime Minister Narendra Modi? The Trump administration has not given up on the ‘Nobel’ and Trump will not. But it is strange that Trump’s worldwide peace efforts have been at odds with the results of those efforts. The Russia-Ukraine War, the India-Pakistan aborted war, the middle-east conflagration which refuses to die down, the sham of an Iran-Israel-US faceoff, nothing worked for President Trump.
And now there are other players, more serious players, like the SCO with China taking the lead without even trying to and acting like the real-deal superpower and not one in the making! This is even as the United States, still the sole superpower, appears to be looking askance at its own vulnerabilities.
Is President Trump presiding over the beginning of the end of the United States’ superpower dominance? Is China in the final laps of its race to be number one power? Is India taking a moral leap for the halo of the moral superpower of the world? Is Russia and the rest of BRICS in line for larger things to come?
Is the outline of a ‘New World Order taking shape from the sands and snows of time? These are some of the questions wracking minds as United States President Donald Trump looks at his vein-challenged swollen hands and fights his imaginary enemies and the trenches fight back with gusto to the unwanted challenge from a maverick on steroids. (IPA Service)
