This week’s photos of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin holding hands at a conference hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared to support the conclusion reached by numerous experts that the United States had failed to successfully engage India in diplomatic relations.
India, a historically non-aligned country, has been cultivated by successive US presidential administrations as a geopolitical counterbalance to China and Russia.
However, as demonstrated by the pictures of Modi in Tianjin, US President Donald Trump seems to have undermined that objective for the time being with a number of acts. These have included openly berating New Delhi for what his administration perceives to be its opportunistic purchases of cheap Russian energy and imposing 50% tariffs on Indian imports.
