US President Donald Trump’s comments that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked for mediation in Kashmir has literally set the cat among the pigeons, both on Twitter and to a lesser extent in South Block.
It took less than an hour for the Ministry of External Affairs to shut down Trump’s lie but it stopped short of calling him a liar. What Trump said was not just bombast — ill-informed bombast — it’s also a dangerous thing. His comments are born out of his naiveté when it comes to complex international problems. When naiveté meets superhero instincts, it is a dangerous cocktail.
Look at the way Trump has dived headlong into the North Korea nuclear problem or dismantled years of carefully built deal with Iran or completely upended the trade relationship with China.
He even appointed his son-in-law as a special envoy to the Middle East. Hoping Jared Kushner can solve Israel-Palestine conflict is worse than imagining that Rahul Gandhi can revive the Congress. Trump is a vain politician who thinks that all the world’s problems can be solved by his genius. The amount of damage Trump’s simplistic framing of global issues is doing to America's standing in the world will take decades to repair.
The question now is how does India deal with this? It was the right thing for the MEA spokesperson to come out and clearly expose Trump’s lie. India should stop being churlish about calling Trump out. He’s an oddball President who's going to occupy the White House for a finite period of time. India and Indo-US foreign policy should just wait him out and whenever required, drop nuance and call a spade a spade. That’s the only language Trump understands.
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