In “How Nations Fail and the Unmaking of America’s World”, Dogra, who was India’s Ambassador to Italy, takes a critical look at how civilisations, empires and nations collapsed.
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He says the US was never India’s best friend.
“Globally too, it has long been used to bulldozing its way through bluster, bullying and boast. But Trump’s carnage regularly tests even these limits,” Dogra writes in the book, published by Rupa.
According to the career diplomat, countries that depend on the US for one reason or the other have chosen to submit to Trump’s demands.
“But India is neither an ally nor a foe. It is not dependent on the US for financial dole-outs or strategic protection. Still, it has not been able to shield itself fully from the ravages of Trump’s policies,” he writes, adding, “Sadly, it will find little comfort elsewhere.”Also Read: India becomes key petrol supplier to Russia as refinery attacks bite
Europe, he says, itself is on shaky grounds, wondering whether it has enough soldiers and the minimum number of modern arms to put up an effective resistance against a Russian invasion.
And Russia is “happily engaged with China, Iran and North Korea, so it and its partners will not come to India’s aid in case of need in a conflict situation”.
Given this bleak scenario, the occasional tactical favours that the US gives will hardly compensate for the long-term strategic losses India may suffer, Dogra argues.
According to Dogra — who was also Permanent Representative to the UN agencies based in Rome, Ambassador to Romania, Moldova and Albania, and the last Indian Consul General in Karachi — the “misguided optimism” among some middle-sized powers that a multipolar world will be to their benefit lifts India’s spirits too.
“But this is an illusory expectation. The end of the liberal world will not lead to plurality in global affairs. Instead, it may mean that the US and China will be two poles deciding the global destiny for many years to come,” he adds.
Dogra also says that sadly, in this millennium, the US has been led by leaders who were “either not interested in foreign policy or inept practitioners of it like Bush, or simply whimsical and vindictive like Trump”.
“The argument can be extended further to say that the West in general has entered the age of mediocre leaders. France, Germany and the UK have, in recent years, been led by those for whom ‘Peter Principle’ seems a reasonable fit,” he writes.
In contrast, the Russian president Putin and the Chinese leader Xi Jinping are disciplined, strategically minded, and unencumbered in projecting power, he argues.
The US, Dogra says, is currently waging two wars simultaneously, one at home and a second abroad.
“This is something new because the US has never before got into a major war outside when consumed by an identity struggle within.”
“Over the last 80 years, the US has been the most aggressive country in the world. But its decisions to attack are seen, in retrospect, as being either churlish, knee-jerk, whimsical or completely avoidable.
“The level of destruction caused by it leaves the victim country and its people traumatized; even a resilient people like those of Vietnam took nearly two generations to steady themselves. Those in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan are still wondering why they were pulverized,” the book says.
As a result, people around the world do not say any longer, ‘In America we trust’, it says.
Dogra also says that despite its power and enormous resources, the US has often failed to get what it wants.
“In this millennium, in particular, luck has not been kind to the US while its principal adversary China, has gone from strength to strength. Simply put, the US is no longer the global despot,” he writes.
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