US president Donald Trump

The TOI correspondent from Washington: With a single cryptic post, US President Donald Trump on Friday signaled a tectonic shift in global alignments, taking America deeper into an isolationist and antagonistic stance by clubbing India, Russia, and China together as allies. The post also appeared to publicly cede to China a leadership position adversarial to the US. “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump posted first thing on the morning on Friday, sending shock waves across the world, including in the US strategic community that did not anticipate such a stark and public indication of a geopolitical realigment. There was much for analysts to unpack in the 20-word post by America’s mercurial President, who often takes to social media to troll and taunt adversaries and sometimes even allies. First, there was the sense of resignation and acknowledgement that he, with his MAGA vision for US, has lost India and Russia (mentioned in that order), countries he implicitly seemed to expect to be aligned with Washington. Then the negative characterisation of China as a “deepest, darkest” entity, which seemed to suggest that he now regarded it as a conspiratorial and primary adversary. Calling the US President’s evolving stance arguably “the greatest own goal in modern foreign policy,” CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria said Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric had caused many of the world’s pivotal states are to move away from the US toward China. The Trump post seemed to concede it was a self-goal.It is rare for Trump to admit any loss, in keeping with the core principles of his book Art of the Deal, which emphasizes never conceding defeat and claiming victory even in the face of setbacks. The sense of resignation, unless it is read as a negotiating tactic or sarcasm, was unreal and un-Trumplike.Indeed, the post surprised even Trump surrogates, who held their counsel for now as they tried to figure out the President’s motive for such a cryptic but provocative post. Some of Trump’s cabinet principals and the non-partisan bureaucracy have been quietly working to keep the India ties on an even keel, given the time and energy both sides have expended on the construct that it will be the most consequential and “defining relationship of the 21st century.” Even some MAGA megaphones read more sarcasm than any drastic realignment in the post. The NYPost read it as nothing more than a “snarky takedown” of Russia and India “cozying” up to China. Absent any immediate elaboration about the post from the administration, trolls and agent provocateurs on social media had a field day, from taunting the US President with his signature “Thank you for your attention to this matter!” to gibing if he had taken his morning medication. India partisans ridiculed him for his recent embrace of Pakistan, attributing it to his family’s business interest in cryptocurrency that is reported to have netted $5 billion through a firm wooed by Islamabad. “Actually you are left with Pakistan. Rest entire world has abandoned you already,” gibed one post, while another wished Trump “a happy future with jihadis” for “forgetting 9/11 and where Osama bin Laden was found.“MAGA xenophobes too jumped into the fray, one of them suggesting “it is time we put the Indian people in camps and mass deport them.” Trump’s increasingly antagonistic stance towards India has unleashed a torrent of racial abuse and slurs on the far right. (May be updated)