Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton posted on September 2: "For decades, the West has tried to get India to move away from its Cold War-era reliance on the Soviet Union and warned India about the threat from China. Donald Trump's disastrous tariff policies have undone decades of efforts."
Comments: From the perspective of U.S. long-term strategy, winning over India is indeed a crucial part of its layout in the Indo-Pacific and countering China - trying to get India to break away from its traditional ties with the Soviet Union (Russia) after the Cold War, and then strengthening cooperation by stoking the "China threat" narrative. This has been a chessboard that the U.S. has been laying out for several decades. However, Trump's tariff policies have been a "self-destructive" move: a 50% high tariff directly hit the foundation of U.S.-India trade, plus strong pressure on India's purchase of Russian oil, even stepping on India's sensitive lines on the India-Pakistan issue. Essentially, it replaced long-term "strategic enticement" with short-sighted "unilateral pressure".
Bolton's criticism also reflects the dissatisfaction of the American establishment with Trump's diplomatic style: Trump brought "transactionalism" into diplomacy, focusing only on immediate economic calculations and the "satisfaction" of pressure, but ignoring the geostrategic value behind the U.S.-India relationship - because if India becomes dissatisfied and turns to deepen interactions with China and Russia, the U.S. decades of accumulated diplomatic groundwork with India could indeed be shattered by this operation.
Original text: www.toutiao.com/article/1842112967756804/
Statement: The article represents the views of the author himself.