AA Edit | World Survives Trump’s Year Of Anarchy & Bluster

The year 2025, which marked Donald J. Trump’s second coming, was quite unlike any preceding years. A year that he said would be marked by peace in the wake of the wars he would be ending around the world may be finishing on a belligerent note with US air strikes on the Islamic State in Nigeria even as Israel continues to pound Gaza occasionally and Russia is stepping up the bombing of Ukraine in a war which Trump said he would be solving within a day of assuming office.

The US President began with a promise to drive the United States in a different direction. He did indeed, though anarchy was more often the result, most of all in his homeland where he has virtually demolished all democratic institutions while bringing the language of the street into hallowed environs and in his diatribe aimed at the media, including a charming “Quiet Piggy!” barb at a woman journalist.

Trump’s presence has been so polarising that friends and allies are left unsure of whether they are in America’s good books or whether they should be seeking pastures farther away while asserting their strategic autonomy. Contrarily, he courted Vladimir Putin like a long-lost friend while teasing America’s oldest European allies seemed like a pastime even as his new strategy document had alarming things to say of trans-Atlantic scenarios.

No nation suffered as much as India from his economically ill-advised tariff regime though he claims, ad nauseam, that he ended a possible nuclear war between subcontinental neighbours by threatening to stop trade. Maybe, Trump asked Pakistan to step back because an air base controlled by the US received a few BrahMos hits on its runways and hangars.

The fundamental changes that he wrought in policy, trade, politics and American society, which he protected well enough from continued migration from the southern border, will spill over into 2026, a year that could find difficult to match 2025 in which the global economy, with India leading the way in topping eight per cent in the first two quarters, fared well enough.

The US economy grew three per cent even as China’s trade surplus went past the trillion-dollar mark despite all the sabre rattling by Trump that famously tapered off as he lived up to the acronym used to describe his chickening out after making threats. There was more bombast than action when it came to a promised trade war with China, but why Trump singled out India despite claiming a great bond of friendship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi will remain the year’s biggest riddle.

India does not have China’s monopoly access to rare minerals, nor can it woo an egomaniac as Pakistan did with the Nobel Peace Prize nomination and a big investment in the Trump family cryptocurrency business. A promised trade deal with India may have been finalised at the negotiating table but is yet to be formalised. But there have been spinoffs as India spread its trade outlook to cover faraway continents as Trump danced with Pakistan’s emerging dictator in Field Marshal Asim Munir.

The bluster from Washington will continue even as the President stretches his partisan sinews. Curiously enough, the world did not change as the US itself may have, as seen in its hounding of legitimate guest workers, its denial of visas and its threat to penalise Indian rice. In fact, the rest of the world, save Ukraine and Gaza, did well enough despite Trump tariffs, tantrums, threats and tumult.