Manish Tewari | Trump Tariffs Dismantling US Security Architecture

The post-1945 world order, meticulously constructed by the United States over seven decades, stands not upon military might alone, but upon a complex edifice of alliances, economic interdependence and a rules-based framework.

Its genius lies in recognising that American security and prosperity are inextricably bound to the security and prosperity of key regions across the globe. The Trump administration's aggressive imposition of tariffs, framed within a rhetoric of economic nationalism, constitutes not merely a recalibration of trade policy but a profound act of geopolitical malpractice, actively dismantling this intricate strategic architecture, born from the ashes of the Second World War and the exigencies of the Cold War.

The historical basis for American protectionism, articulated forcefully by its first Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, was inherently developmental and temporary, designed to nurture vulnerable infant industries within a nascent republic operating in an era of explicit isolationism. Hamilton’s vision was never intended as a blueprint for a global superpower deeply embedded in a network of alliances and security commitments.

President Trump’s application of protectionism, however, reveals a troubling inconsistency in statutory interpretation, where the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause is subjected to contextual analysis to “cure a mischief”, and the Tariff Act of 1930 and subsequent legislation are construed with rigid literalism to justify sweeping import duties, prioritising immediate, often opaque, domestic political or perceived economic gains over the stability derived from consistent adherence to established international norms — norms the US itself championed and upon which its security edifice rests.

The post-1945 strategic architecture was a direct consequence of abandoning isolationism. Confronted by the Soviet threat and the imperative of preventing another global conflagration, the United States erected an unparalleled global security network: Nato became the bedrock of European defence; bilateral treaties with Japan and South Korea secured Northeast Asia; the ANZUS pact anchored the Pacific; and a complex web of partnerships extended across the Middle East and beyond.

This architecture served multifaceted purposes — containing Soviet expansionism, ensuring freedom of navigation vital for global commerce and providing a framework for resolving disputes within a US-led, rules-based order. Investments in partners, however fraught — such as the decades-long military and financial support to Pakistan, a relationship sustained through military dictatorships despite its destabilising role in South Asia, including support for asymmetric warfare against India — were calculated sacrifices within the broader Cold War calculus, received significant American military and economic aid as a perceived Cold War bulwark against Soviet influence in Afghanistan and functioned as a counterweight to India’s perceived Soviet leanings.

The trajectory of US-India relations serves as a potent microcosm of both the potential inherent in this post-war architecture and its alarming current fragility under the strain of Trump’s doctrine. For decades, India was viewed ambivalently through a Cold War prism, often overshadowed and strategically disadvantaged by the US-Pakistan-China nexus. Pakistan, despite its undeniable role as an incubator for jihadist groups like those that attacked Mumbai in 2008 and the sanctuary it provided Osama bin Laden, continued to receive significant military aid, viewed through the lens of regional realpolitik.

India’s emergence as a pivotal strategic partner is a relatively recent phenomenon, painstakingly cultivated over the past quarter-century. The tentative steps initiated during the Clinton-Vajpayee era found concrete expression in the landmark US-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement under President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a symbolic and substantive breakthrough overcoming decades of non-proliferation orthodoxy. This partnership deepened significantly under Presidents Obama, Biden and Trump, and Prime Minister Modi, driven largely by shared democratic values and, more pressingly, converging concerns over an assertive China, manifesting in frameworks like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and the Indo-Pacific strategic concept.

President Trump’s tariff policies, however, threaten to unravel these decades of patient statecraft through a combination of perceived motivations — a fundamentally transactional, corporate mindset misapplied to grand strategy, prioritising narrow, short-term “deals” over alliance cohesion; the potential for private financial gain leveraging the market volatility induced by tariff threats; a deliberate strategy to contain the economic and political rise of the BRICS nations, challenging the Western-dominated G7; or a blunt instrument to pressure nations like India on unrelated issues, such as ending the Ukraine conflict by coercing reductions in trade barriers.

The consequences, irrespective of the precise motive, manifest in the rapid degeneration of the global security order. In Europe, decades of reliance on the US security umbrella are giving way to a tangible push for strategic autonomy, driven by the Franco-German engine under President Macron and Chancellor Merz, alongside Prime Minister Starmer’s Britain, actively developing a credible EU defence pillar — a direct response to Trump’s transactional questioning of Nato’s Article V commitment and his broader unilateralism.

Across the Pacific, profound doubts regarding the reliability of the US defence umbrella now permeate strategic thinking in Tokyo and Seoul; facing an increasingly assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea, these allies perceive Trump’s demands for disproportionate burden-sharing and his disregard for multilateral frameworks as signals of waning commitment, fostering internal debates on nuclear options and regional hedging strategies that inherently weaken the deterrence posture the alliances were designed to provide.

Australia, while maintaining the ANZUS alliance, watches US policy volatility with deepening concern, recognising its own security is inextricably linked to American power projection in the Pacific. This uncertainty compels Canberra towards complex diplomatic manoeuvres, strengthening regional ties and diversifying partnerships as a necessary hedge against perceived American retreat or unreliability.

India possesses significant strategic autonomy absent in traditional US treaty allies — a diversified arms procurement portfolio spanning Russia, France, Israel, and domestic production; growing defence industrial self-reliance; independent nuclear deterrence; a formidable military ranked fourth globally in firepower; and a massive domestic market less susceptible to external coercion. New Delhi will unhesitatingly prioritise its national interests. The apparent shift in South Asia policy signals a bewildering reversal of the post-9/11 consensus and directly undermines counter-terrorism cooperation with India, raising fundamental questions about US strategic priorities and consistency.

The Quad’s future is now shrouded in uncertainty. Trump’s economic fanaticism risks triggering unintended and counterproductive strategic realignments, pushing India and China towards pragmatic, albeit limited, economic cooperation (“the Elephant and Dragon dining, if not dancing, together”) and significantly reinforcing the already warm strategic partnership between Russia and India.

By forcing nations into binary choices, Trump, echoing Nixon’s diplomatic pressure but lacking its strategic subtlety, effectively pushes Delhi closer to Moscow.

Realpolitik is not an American monopoly; should the EU, Russia, China and India abandon established frameworks in response to US actions, the entire global strategic calculus faces fundamental, unpredictable alteration.