India in Multipolar World, Where US Lost Its Dominance

To paraphrase Wayne Gretzky, a country must move to where the geopolitical puck will be, not where it was.

In other words, try to figure out what the world will look like ten, twenty and thirty years from now. The ones who can accurately predict the trend and adapt their strategy will be the most secure and prosperous.

We will analyze this critical topic from India’s perspective.

Look at India’s geopolitical relations since independence, and the ups and downs have been mind-boggling. While relations with Pakistan have been consistently strained and the relations with USSR/Russia have been positive and steady, many others have flipped 180 degrees, sometimes multiple times.

For example, in the beginning of the post-colonial days, India was very much excited about non-alignment principles, and even played a leading role in the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955. However, the idealistic principles were jettisoned within a few years when India and China clashed on the border. Later – from 1990 to 2020 – the two Asian giants seemed to have figured out the recipe for cooperation, only to slide back into conflicts and distrust. The confusion is compounded by the fact that India still depends a lot on China for critical imports, and they both are members of BRICS and SCO.

All through the Cold War, the US and the UK actively worked against India and allied with Pakistan. The CIA is even suspected of assassinating India’s nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha and Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966. Few years later, the US sent a navy fleet to the Bay of Bengal to bully India, but the Soviet Union came to the rescue and chased the Americans away. In the 1980s, US weapons and training not only created the Mujahideen in Afghanistan but also terrorists in Kashmir. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US-India relations improved significantly. By 2010, the US decided to embrace India as a counterbalance to China. Nevertheless, due to various reasons, India cannot afford to be America’s “ally”– like Europe or Japan, which allow US military bases and almost blindly follow the US in all geopolitical matters.

As for other regional neighbors such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Maldives, complex power dynamics have made India’s relations challenging.

Now, the geopolitical rollercoaster is only about to get crazier, since profound changes to the world order are imminent.

While the US constantly brags about how it’s #1, their elites know that their glorious days are coming to an end. When Chile’s President Boric visited the White House earlier this month, (senile) Biden blurted out something that should have been headline news.

If taken at its face value, Biden’s statements are extremely troubling, since they could signal global wars within 2-3 years. However, as the failing proxy war in Ukraine has revealed, the collective West’s military capabilities, economic might, and diplomatic influences are not indomitable. The US/EU have run out of ammunition to send to Ukraine. Despite the extraordinary sanctions, Russia’s economy is growing at a healthy rate, while Germany is in recession and Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by a third. Finally, as a slap in the face of the Western imperialists, the Global South has enthusiastically embraced Putin. From Asia to Africa and Latin America, President Putin is more popular than ever before.

Moreover, the world’s condemnation of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza reveals the precipitous fall of Western hard and soft power.

As Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Putin and Ray Dalio – the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund – have reiterated, profound changes unseen in a century are happening in real time.

These will manifest themselves in four ways:

The factors underlying this change of world order are systemic, multidimensional and inexorable. The profound shifts are happening in multiple spheres:

Let’s dive deep.

America’s rise as a superpower in the 20th century was mainly due to self-inflicted wounds of Europe. Before WW1, the US dollar had absolutely no role as a global currency. And in the 1930s, the US was mired in the Great Depression. However, European empires destroyed themselves and handed over the crown to the US; the world’s smartest scientists fled Europe during WW2 and helped the US build the atomic bomb; and the gold confiscated from Europe laid the foundation for the US dollar to become the global trade/reserve currency. (Later, when the US ran out of gold, the dollar was backed by oil, thanks to the petrodollar deal with Saudi Arabia).

What many people don’t realize is that the United States of America peaked around 1950, when the US accounted for half of the world’s GDP and two-thirds of global manufacturing. However, the glory did not last too long. The USSR soon surpassed the US in the space race; and by 1980, Japan had overtaken the US in automobile manufacturing as well as in semiconductor technology. The Japanese even had an operating system that could have become a global phenomenon like Microsoft Windows.

Only when Japan was bullied into the Plaza Accord – an illegal and immoral economic coercion along with forced technology transfer – did the US regain its technology supremacy.

Then, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US was poised to enjoy a unipolar moment, which turned out to be ephemeral.

Fast forward thirty years, Asia’s economy is much larger than that of North America. And if Europe and Asia were to cooperate, the Eurasian economy makes the US much less relevant to the world. Look at the IMF chart below that shows the nominal GDP of different regions:

Furthermore, if you compare the PPP GDP – which is a better measure than nominal GDP in many cases – here are some stunning facts:

Also critical are technological and industrial leadership, where Asia leads the world in patents, scientific publications, and manufacturing. Combine that with Asia’s rising middle class, which will be 3.5 billion in size by 2030, it is clear where the world’s center of gravity will be in the future. The rise of Africa, a continent brimming with young people, should not be underestimated either.

But how does the US still maintain its soft power or reputation? For example, most people around the world still don’t see the US as an empire. Even people in Japan, South Korea and Germany – countries literally occupied by the US military – view the US as a benevolent force. The answer lies in America’s undisputed control over global media and social media. This grip enables them to spread their propaganda while surgically censoring people, competing media, and narratives. However, this power has been weakening over the last decade, and hence the perceptible alarm among the globalists. Moreover, as Assange and Snowden revealed, America’s omnipresent spying provides the ammunition for blackmail and subversion.

While American elites gloated about the “end of history” in 1991, they missed the rise of China and Asia. Within twenty-five years, China had surpassed the US in GDP calculated by purchasing power (PPP GDP).

More importantly, the USA deindustrialized itself, driven by Wall Street’s greed. American corporations outsourced much of their critical manufacturing to China. (Now, even the US military cannot make missiles or fighter jets without components and processed rare earth minerals from China). Then, they replaced industrial production with a financialized economy, which turned healthcare, education and housing into predatory sectors. This was also the reason behind the 2008 global financial crisis, which could be seen as the year when the American Empire ended. Now, with the Federal Reserve Bank having hiked the rates by five percentage points, the real estate faces another hard landing.

The American economy is now a “fugazi” – to use the term from the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. The delusion of American wealth and prosperity is based on debt, financial engineering (such as stock buybacks and derivatives) and the dollar’s exorbitant privileges. The total debt in the USamounts to staggering $96 trillion – this is the sum of government, corporate and household debts.

The boom-bust cycle of financial capitalism has created enormous inequality in the US, where the top 0.1% own as much wealth as the bottom 90%. The Middle Class in America has been shrinking steadily for decades; and half of all Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck, with virtually no savings. Household debt is at record highs, and young Americans are crushed by $1.8 trillion of student debt. But the propaganda of cruel capitalism is that you just need to work harder to get rich.

Since 2008, homeless tents have sprung all over the country. Drug addiction is also a crisis, with 100,000 Americans dying every year from drug overdose. The US is also #1 in the world in the use of psychiatric medications such as antidepressants. Countless towns in middle America have turned into ghost towns; and suicide rates in the US are now twice as bad as China – 16 versus 8 per 100,000 population. Sadly, such grim facts have led to a new term: Deaths of despair.

How about education, the cornerstone for any successful society? The US ranks at the bottom among the OECD countries. Asian countries like China, Singapore, Japan and South Korea consistently outperform American high school students in PISA scores for math, science and reading. Indians are highly successful in the US, and are the CEOs of many Fortune 500 firms such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, and FedEx.

In the oligarchy parading as a democracy, 73% of Americans say that the country is going in the wrong direction, and the US Congress has an abysmal approval rating of 13%. However, US elites are always waging wars to spread this dysfunctional system – at least, that’s the terrible propaganda.

In the delusional echo chamber of Washington elites, global domination is just around the corner – if only they could conquer the Middle East, Russia and China.

Using 9/11 as an excuse, warmongers in the Pentagon planned to “take out” 7 countries in 5 years. So, they lied about weapons of mass destruction and wasted trillions of dollars on bombing Iraq and Afghanistan. When that failed, they resorted to a cheaper solution: use jihadist mercenaries to destroy Libya and Syria. Then, they started a proxy war against Russia using neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

And it has been a total military and geopolitical humiliation for the US. After twenty years of bombing and occupation, the US military scrambled out of Afghanistan like they did in Vietnam, letting the Taliban back into power. In Iraq, the government is polite towards the US only because all the Iraqi oil revenues are deposited in and controlled by the New York Fed. Meanwhile, US military bases in Iraq are under periodic attacks from militants.

In Syria, the US spent a decade attempting regime change. Thanks to Russia and Iran, the US/NATO-sponsored terrorists were defeated, and Assad is still in power. Now, China is ready to rebuild Syria and turn that beautiful country into a crucial hub in the Belt and Road Initiative – just like it was the gateway for the ancient Silk Road centuries ago.

American elites never learn. Despite all the failures over the previous two decades, they used Ukraine to start a proxy war against Russia. Their fantasy consisted of three goals: defeat the Russian military on the frontline, crush the Russian economy, and do a regime change in Moscow. The Western propaganda was ridiculous beyond imagination – the Ghost of Kiev, Russia using semiconductor chips from washing machines to operate missiles, Russia running out of ammunition and soldiers, new weapons like HIMARS or German tanks would guarantee a glorious Ukrainian victory etc. In the end, Russia has defeated NATO, EU and the US combined. Even the Council on Foreign Relations, the think tank that dictates US foreign policy, is now recommending that Ukraine should forget about Crimea and Donbass.

The net-net is that the US empire cannot win wars anymore. Although the US has 800 military bases in 140 countries, its ability to project real power has been crippled. The three main geopolitical rivals – Russia, China and Iran – are now strong enough to defend themselves against any aggression from the US and its vassals.

America’s strength comes from the US dollar, which underpins the deceptive American prosperity and influence. Take the dollar away, the US loses its ability to maintain all its military bases, run large fiscal and trade deficits, bully countries with sanctions, and buy influence around the world. Well, guess what, the dollar’s days of preeminence are numbered.

Countries around the world are eagerly embracing dedollarization. Russia and China are now conducting 95% of their bilateral trade in their own currencies. The Chinese yuan has now surpassed the Euro in global trade. Even India is dumping USD and trading in rupee whenever possible. ASEAN countries are boosting the use of local currencies for trade and tourism.

The tectonic changes in global finance and trade are happening in real time. The repercussions will soon be felt within the USA, which will be forced to embrace austerity that the IMF has imposed on developing nations for decades.

Are Americans ready for higher taxes, cut in government spending, weakening of dollar, higher cost of imports, and decline in standard of living? Not at all.

Most Americans are still brainwashed about the US being the “greatest country” and an “indispensable country.” Thus, America’s politics is destined to be more chaotic and turbulent in the coming years. Even a civil war of sorts cannot be ruled out.

The world was always truly multipolar until European colonization, which was based on relative technological advantage such as ships and guns. Then, the stolen wealth led to the rise of capitalism, industrial revolution, middle class prosperity, and Machiavellian geopolitics. However, thanks to globalization, the rest of the world has caught up, and we are returning back to multipolarity.

China is now leading the world in the 4th industrial revolution and many future technologies such as electric cars, renewable energy, and telecommunications (5G and beyond). In robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, drones, quantum computing, and biotech, China is virtually on par with the West. Even in cancer research, China is now inventing pharmaceutical drugs (which are simply bought by US Big Pharma and resold at a profit of 3000%). In semiconductor manufacturing, Taiwan and South Korea are far ahead of the US.

India’s potential for growth is vast. In a sense, India is now where China was 20 years ago, which means that, with dedication and focus, India can achieve a real GDP growth of 7-10% over the next decade. India needs to be geopolitically smart and strategically neutral. India must create synergy with Russia for defense, Middle East and Russia for energy, China for manufacturing, and the collective West for finance and software.

The biggest imperative for the Global South is to avoid wars – i.e., don’t become an expendable pawn in the geopolitical chessboard. That strategy calls for disciplined pragmatism and reasonable compromise, which may seem politically difficult, but can be achieved by building goodwill through trade, mutual development, and people-to-people exchange.