CWA # 2052
The World This Quarter
The United States (Jan-Mar 2026)
Tariffs, Ukraine, Iran and Operationalization of Trump’s World Order
The Trump approach is 21st-century gunboat diplomacy with the US as sole dealmaker, renting out its military and economic power rather than promising it to allies, while pursuing a bilateral and transactional relationship.
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Shreya Upadhyay
5 April 2026
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Donald J Trump’s second-term presidential campaign was centred on a “peace” platform pledging to end “forever wars”. His first year back in office has seen more US military strikes on foreign soil than the Biden administration did across four years. This contradiction is not accidental; it is the defining logic of Trump's world order. The first quarter of 2026 confirms what was suspected; Trump’s foreign policy is not collapsing under its own contradictions; it is running on them. Trump’s doctrine, if one can call it that, is 21st-century gunboat diplomacy, the US as sole dealmaker, renting out its military and economic power rather than promising it to allies, pursuing relationships that are bilateral, transactional, and entirely on Washington's terms.
1. Tariffs and Trump’s New Economic Order
The most bruising domestic-international collision of the quarter was on trade. After slapping sweeping tariffs on India, China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Mexico, and others, the Supreme Court struck down the legal basis for the tariffs in a 6-3 ruling. The administration pivoted to Section 301 investigations targeting sixteen economies on charges of industrial overcapacity and forced labour, determined to rebuild the tariff wall through other means. This episode underscores the corrosive institutional predictability that has persisted in the post-World War II period.
The WTO framework, rule-based trade, and all were created with the US blessing decades ago and are now being rendered irrelevant. Tariffs were used as a pressure tool and a negotiating weapon not only by foreign governments but also by domestic political actors for signalling. For India, the damage was immediate. The interim trade agreement, called the “father of all deals”, announced on February 6, was potentially rendered ineffective as a barrage of new tariffs hit. Indian solar exporters were hit with a 125.87 per cent countervailing duty. New Delhi postponed its negotiating delegation's visit to Washington.
2. Trump’s road to nowhere on Russia and Ukraine
On Russia-Ukraine, the United States has continued to support Ukraine militarily while pushing both Russia and Ukraine to negotiations to end the war. Trump cast himself as a peacemaker, convening three rounds of talks since January in Abu Dhabi and Geneva. This produced the first prisoner exchange in five months. The talks have since moved to more thorny questions: the fate of Ukraine's eastern Donbas territory and security guarantees for Kyiv. Russia's negotiators have been predictably obstructionist, and the New START treaty, the last remaining arms control framework between Washington and Moscow, expired on February 5, with no replacement in sight.
3. A new US policy towards the Middle East and its global fallouts
The most dramatic rupture of the quarter was the joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, Operation Epic Fury, alongside Israel's Operation Roaring Lion, launched on February 28 with the stated aim of eliminating Iran's nuclear programme, destroying its ballistic missile arsenal and crippling its naval forces. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day. Over 2,000 strikes followed. Trump, in a televised address (at the time of writing this article), claimed US military goals have been "nearly completed."
The more consequential story is what the Iran war has revealed about the Indo-Pacific's exposure. Asia's economic engine runs on Gulf energy. It is required for aviation, fertilisers, food supply chains, and household electricity – all of which flow through the Strait of Hormuz. The crisis to Asia's west is not somebody else's problem. It is a hard lesson in energy sovereignty, and governments across the region, including India's, are learning it.
4. Questioning NATO and the Trans-Atlantic Partnership
Trump’s relationship with NATO and Europe was already fraying before the Iran war, but is now under active strain because of it. Trump has publicly criticised NATO members for staying out of the conflict. Member nations such as Italy and Spain have called it "unjustifiable" and "dangerous." Trump does not need to formally exit NATO to destroy it. That is a long-drawn process beyond any president's unilateral discretion. What he can do, and appears to be doing, is simply refuse, in practice, to honour Article 5, the guarantee that an attack on one member is an attack on all. The trust deficit between Western Europe and the United States has never been wider in the post-war era. Europe is spending more on defence than ever, buying American weapons in record volumes, and trusting Washington less with every passing month. Again, a lesson for Washington’s allies is the realisation that alliances with America now come with an expiry date. This growing divergence signals a deeper breakdown of the transatlantic partnership, where shared strategic trust is being replaced by cautious, transactional cooperation rather than enduring alliance unity.
5. Trump’s New World Order
Cutting across all of this is a single, structural reality is the deliberate dismantling of the US-led multilateral world order. The UN has been told to "adapt or die." 2025 was the worst year for global humanitarian aid on record. Sixty-six international organisations were abandoned in a single announcement. If Trump 1.0 was a trailer. What is playing out now is the full film of transactional bilateralism, Western Hemisphere dominance, Uncle Sam's wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the systematic demolition of every institution America built.
6. India-US partnership in stress
For India-US relations, each of these developments carries a direct cost. A trade deal disrupted, an energy partner at war, a superpower that is simultaneously indispensable and unpredictable. For New Delhi, the lesson from the US of this quarter is not new, but it has never been more urgent: strategic autonomy is not an ideology. It is a survival instinct in a world where rules are meant to be broken.
To Conclude: The US in Jan-Mar 2026
What emerges from the first quarter is the consolidation of a new global order which is defined by uncertainty, coercion, and conditional alliances. The United States is proving that it does not intend to be the anchor of stability it once claimed to be. It is now a power reshaping the system in its own image. For India, the message is clear: adapt fast, hedge hard, and trust no permanence.
About the author
Dr Shreya Upadhyay is an Assistant Professor at Christ (deemed to be) University, Bengaluru.
