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At the Capitol in January, India’s foreign minister was seated in the front row for President Trump’s inauguration, a sign of the deepening ties that a generation of American presidents have attempted to forge with the world’s most populous nation.
Now, just months later, Mr. Trump is publicly lamenting that India has abandoned him for the embrace of China, Washington’s strategic rival.
“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday morning, as he posted a photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The three leaders met in China earlier this week.
“May they have a long and prosperous future together!” he wrote.
It was a rare acknowledgment that Mr. Trump’s attempts at blunt-force diplomacy, not to mention punishing tariffs, were having some unintended consequences. The uneasy partnership to create an alternative to the West’s global leadership that began with China and Russia, then expanded to North Korea and Iran, may now be about to incorporate — at least episodically — India, the world’s largest democracy.
It is too early to predict whether Mr. Modi’s visit to China, the first in seven years, marks a real shift or just a warning shot to Washington. During the Cold War, India led the nonaligned movement, and it is skilled at playing superpowers off against each other. This may be one of those moments.
Later on Friday, Mr. Trump tried to downplay his rift with India.
“I’ll always be friends with Modi. He’s great,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I just don’t like what he’s doing at this particular moment. But India and the United States have a special relationship. There’s nothing to worry about. We just have moments on occasion.”
