India's Chance At Chanakya Neeti As World’s Hegemons Remain Distracted By Tariffs

The assumptions that held the world aloft for 80 years have crumbled—both economically and politically—since Donald Trump’s inauguration.

There has been an overload of commentaries on matters that are both volatile and uncertain, to use VUCA language. The USA has identified China as its primary, and possibly only, enemy in a new war for global dominance over the next 25 or more years.

The US President is turning the geopolitical clock backwards to a multipolar age of great powers, a so-called fourth turning, where instead of nation-states, there will now be empires surrounded by vassals. Imposing Pax Americana and the rules-based order is too expensive a proposition for the USA today.

It is fiscally draining to be the world’s policeman, and with its known proclivity to oscillate between intervention and isolation—reminiscent of yesteryears’ empires such as Hanoverian Britain or Ming China—the USA has re-entered the latter condition: one in which a ‘war economy’ paradigm ties together fiscal, monetary, industrial, trade, military, and political policy.

Trump ram-rodded a rustic tariff formula based on trade deficits, not caring for the endless asterisks and hyphens characterising economists’ understanding of international trade. The world has entered a stage where no economic model will work until the world resettles to find a new political equilibrium.

China, Trump’s bête noire, seems to have been economically, diplomatically, and militarily prepared for the US’s gambit. If economics is politics with money, politics is economics with power. In the birthing pains of a new world order, and as complex economic interdependencies fray, a world where several systems are simultaneously running is evolving.

The five modern empires—America, China, Russia, India, and Europe—characterise these systems. They are interacting amongst themselves, with no deep-seated enmities save that between the first two. Typical examples of this are the concurrent viabilities of groupings like the Quad, BRICS, I2U2, and the US-Japan-Australia Trilateral, none of which are in dissonance with the others.

The difference between the old nation-state unipolar or bipolar model (G1, G2) and today’s civilizational model is that each of the empires is resigned to the other four exercising their local hegemony in their immediate geographical neighbourhoods.

There could be economic overlap between them—not in the free-flowing patterns of nation-states, but more in the nature of piecemeal arrangements. This is multipolarity. Smaller states will become buffers between empires.

Harking back to Mackinder, the importance of physical geographical proximity as a historical and economic pivot is a reality that all nations, including the USA, now recognize. But perhaps the USA has always known this—the Monroe Doctrine is 200 years old.

Bhārat finds itself in an attractive position amid the USA-China tariff wars as a swing state. Its patient handling of its economic, political, and cultural affairs during the past 11 years of the NDA government now stands it in good stead, as it did during the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine war.

It is the favoured second-best alternative for the four other empires: for the USA it is the ideal counterweight to China; for China it stands for regional stability; for Europe it stands for diversification; and for Russia it stands for trade and commerce.

As the USA and China undergo a politically driven, dishevelled economic decoupling, they are likely to remain preoccupied with their core interests. Peripheral issues in the Indian subcontinent will be a low priority for them unless India is sucked into any of their core interest zones of contestation. This allows Bhārat a golden window to sort out its festering civilizational issues and carry out critical reforms to enhance competitiveness.

Even as the overenthusiastic commentariat exaggerates our importance as vishwagurus, one should remember that our economy is only a fifth of China’s and a seventh of the USA's—our importance in the grand scheme of things is small. We are below the radar level of the two hegemons. We should use this invisibility to sort out local problems that do not interest them. As economist Ruchir Sharma said, “the most promising hype for any country is none at all.”

Employing the idiom of Chanakya, who typifies surrounding kings as equal, inferior, and superior, India is in the enviable position of having two superior kings (USA, China), two equal kings (Russia, Europe), and many inferior kings, all proximal.

As for China, it too realises it has neither the time, reason, nor the capability of inflicting pinpricks on India—whether they be in Chittagong, Skardu, or Ladakh. It has its own problems in Tibet, East Turkestan, and above all, Taiwan, to start causing street riots in Murshidabad or Vaniyambadi, or funding insurgents, electoral and otherwise. All these tamashas are now consigned to history’s dustbin.

India must confine itself to actions which lie within our natural abilities, given our culture and traditions—it should not make unqualified economic allies with either the USA or China. If the former, China will start its pinpricks; if the latter, we risk antagonising the most powerful of the empires. Opinions will vary, but a 70% tilt towards the USA, with sufficient economic mollification for the Chinese, seems reasonable. To reiterate, neither of these empires cares about how internal reengineering is undertaken by us—whether it is sama, dana, bheda, or danda.

For India to become Bhārat, we must settle the unresolved issues of Partition, an outrage inflicted on us by the cynical self-aggrandisement of our colonisers in a previous era.

Unless we address and admit that there are 615 million Muslims living in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh among the 1.1 billion Hindus in India—not to speak of the hapless 25 million in Bangladesh and 4 million in Pakistan—and that the attitudes of a third of those who inhabit Bhāratavarsha are at best equivocal towards the dominant two-thirds majority, we deny ourselves a Hindu Rashtra and Dharmic constitution.

In other words, we deny ourselves the chance to overturn the existing order within our empire and its environs, as Donald Trump is attempting with his American empire.

Civilizational issues are the gap between India and Bhārat, and are also the gap between us and the two hegemons. To lessen the gap, we must hold sway over the extended Bhāratvarsha from Kandahar to Mandalay and from the ocean to the mountains. The innate civilizational unity of Bhārat, cemented by its organic diversity, has been the case for millennia.

The Vishnu Purana makes a pointed reference when it says: “Uttaram yat samudrasya, Himadreshchaiva dakshinam, varsham tad Bharatam nama, Bharati yatra santatihi.” The defining feature of Bhāratavarsha is geographical, not creedal.

Undoubtedly, India has made many preparations to smoothen things out in this regard in our neighbourhood, with respect to domains in Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Gilgit-Baltistan, Balochistan, Sindh, Afghanistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

These arrangements were made largely during the previous world order (pre-Trump), and of necessity were circumspect and discreet. A wise country would follow Deng Xiaoping’s advice to hide one’s strength and bide one’s time. But the time to show one’s strength has come, and we can finally afford to punch above our weight—in the confidence of America’s shrewd blessing.

The natural question that arises in the minds of many Bhāratiyas is: which of our self-avowed Islamic protuberances should warrant immediate attention? Chanakya again provides an answer when he asks which is to be marched against—an assailable enemy involved in troubles to a greater degree or a strong enemy troubled to a lesser degree?

Let us assume that Bangladesh is the assailable enemy while Pakistan is the strong enemy. Chanakya is clear in his answer and says that the conqueror should march against the strong enemy under less troubles first, for the troubles of the strong enemy, though less, will multiply when attacked.

Clearly, this will come true—even small pinpricks we deliver now in Pakistan can result in an amplified domino collapse, and Gilgit-Baltistan can simply deliver itself into the Union of India, where it always legally belonged, without a shot being fired from our side. We would be only following the other great Asian war exponent, Sun Tzu, who advocated victory in war without fighting.

After this, the existence of Pakistan itself will come into question, and the other empires will be ready to cut their own deals with India, which would have finally recovered its access to Central Asia.

To conclude, Chanakya describes the king as one who is possessed of foresight, ready to avail of opportunities when afforded in respect of place, time, and manly efforts, clever enough to discern the causes necessitating the cessation of treaty or war with an enemy, to avail himself of the enemy’s weak points—and all this with no loss of dignity or secrecy.

The king of today’s India will assure for himself a place in history if he seizes the moment. To use the cliché: timing isn't the main thing—it is the only thing.