The 21st century is supposed to mark the dawn of the Asian Century. With China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan emerging as dominant manufacturing hubs, the global economic gravity had visibly shifted eastward. A more balanced world multipolar in essence and anchored in Asian productivity seemed not just desirable but inevitable. Yet, the very powers that once hailed globalization are now orchestrating its reversal. What we are witnessing is a concerted strategy by the United States and its allies to derail the rise of Asia through a complex mix of tariffs, conflict engineering, proxy wars, and financial coercion. This is not just strategic competition it is economic sabotage wrapped in diplomacy, and warfare repackaged as regional de-stabilization.
At the heart of this sabotage lies Washington’s deep insecurity over the structural decline of its economic empire. The U.S. economy, built on perpetual deficits and propped up by the artificial privilege of the dollar as a global reserve currency, is increasingly incapable of sustaining its hegemony through productivity or innovation alone. Instead, chaos and conflict have become tools to restructure supply chains, break regional stability, and compel manufacturing to relocate not to trusted allies, but back to American soil. This is the essence of Re-shoring and Near-shoring, a desperate attempt to rebuild domestic industrial capacity by burning down global ones. The Indo-Pacific has become the designated theatre for this scorched-earth policy.
From Iran in the west to the Philippines in the east, a “ring of fire” is steadily being lit by American strategic planners. Iran has been plunged into economic turmoil through sanctions and proxy war operations. Pakistan, the perennial agent of regional instability, is once again receiving quiet nods and funding flows from Washington, despite or perhaps because of its active destabilization efforts of India through cross-border terror and hybrid drone warfare. In Bangladesh, the recent political crisis and shadowy coup dynamics bear the fingerprints of engineered disruption aimed at unsettling a critical South Asian economy linked to global manufacturing value chains. Myanmar remains a hotbed of conflict, with overlapping ethnic wars, drug trafficking, and arms smuggling enabled by regional and extra-regional actors. All these crises are not unconnected they are parts of a single geostrategic blueprint designed to delay Asia’s rise.
India sits at the centre of this storm. As a civilizational state with deep cultural and economic roots, it has long pursued autonomy in global affairs. But its increasing strategic clarity demonstrated through its refusal to toe Western lines on trade, agriculture, pharma, or data sovereignty has made it a target of dual containment. On one side is the ideological and military axis of China, Pakistan, and Turkey. On the other is the financial and diplomatic machinery of Washington and Brussels. Together, these powers are seeking to deny India the status of an independent pole in a multipolar world.
Turkey’s growing involvement in South Asia is both ideological and tactical. Under President Erdogan, Ankara has projected itself as a pan-Islamist revivalist power. It has offered ideological legitimacy to Pakistan’s radicalisation project and extended military cooperation in the form of drones, repair of F-16s, and co-production agreements. The supply of Turkish Bayraktar and Yiha-class drones to Pakistan, their joint testing near Indian airspace, and training programs for Pakistani operators have already laid the foundation for a future hybrid air war strategy. Hama’s presence in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, through various terror outfits like Jaish E Mohammad (JeM), adds another layer to its kinetic collaboration. This is not just alliance-building it is strategic religious war wrapped strategically for geopolitical gains.
China, of course, remains the spine of this anti-India triangle. From arming Pakistan’s missile systems and naval assets to constructing strategic highways through sovereign Indian territory under CPEC, Beijing has tied Islamabad into a dependency that combines economic leverage with military patronage. Chinese satellites aid Pakistani ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) missions. Chinese radar-jammers and drone-swarm tactics are now being studied by Pakistani forces in preparation for possible future skirmishes. The axis is no longer hypothetical it is operational.
India’s answer has not been to submit or retreat. It has embarked on an aggressive indigenization of defence systems from Tejas fighter jets and BrahMos missiles to AI-based surveillance and Air Defence systems. The recent acquisition of Rafale-M from France further strengthens its naval strike capabilities. But these strategic moves have triggered unease in the American military-industrial complex. The U.S. delay in delivering GE F414 engines for India’s Tejas Mk-2 aircraft, despite previously announced cooperation, reflects Washington’s discomfort with India’s refusal to become a pliant ally.
President Donald Trump’s return to the political spotlight has only intensified these tensions. Despite his previous rhetorical friendship with India, Trump has now openly asked Apple to scale back or stop manufacturing expansion in India. This aligns with his “America First” economic worldview, but it also signals frustration with India’s unwillingness to compromise on key issues like agriculture subsidies (MSP), pharmaceutical patent laws, and digital regulation. India’s defence of its strategic sectors is now being interpreted not as policy prudence, but as economic rebellion. And Washington doesn’t tolerate rebellion well.
Adding fuel to the fire is America’s sudden benevolence toward Pakistan. India’s unprecedented Operation Sindoor which disabled 11 Pakistani airbases and exposed critical vulnerabilities the U.S. turned the other way and helped Islamabad secure IMF bailouts, signaled a revival of military aid, and remained conspicuously silent on Pakistan’s drone operations over Indian territory. Such behaviour cannot be dismissed as geopolitical coincidence. It reflects a pattern i.e. reward the chaos-maker, punish the stabilizer.
But this is not limited to South Asia. Washington’s Indo-Pacific containment strategy now extends from South Korea to Vietnam, from Taiwan to the Strait of Malacca. Trade tariffs, semiconductor wars, and currency manipulation campaigns are all being wielded as economic weapons to disrupt Asia’s manufacturing dominance. While U.S. policymakers speak of “Ally-shoring,” their actual actions favour “Re-shoring” and “Near-shoring” i.e. bringing supply chains back to Americas or to tightly controlled zones like Mexico or Canada. The idea is not to build resilient global supply chains but to re-nationalize them using the wreckage of Asian interdependence. To achieve this, conflicts are not a byproduct they are a method.
This is why the Indo-Pacific is increasingly being made unstable. In the name of containing China, the U.S. is ready to undermine even its nominal allies. Every country is being nudged to pick sides not for collective security, but for American primacy. India, with its sheer scale, is the biggest roadblock to this strategy. It is too large to be bribed, too independent to be coerced, and too capable to be ignored. Its refusal to join Western sanctions on Russia, its independent trade pacts with the UAE and Australia, and its resistance to Big Tech overreach have irritated Washington. Hence, the pressure in form of delay of the jet engines, spreading international media propaganda & enabling a more dangerous Pakistan. All these actions reflect one goal that is slow India down and stunt its growth as a rising power.
But India’s resolve remains firm. Operation Sindoor is not just a military strike it is a doctrine. It is a message that India will defend its red lines, economically and militarily. Its rejection of unequal trade deals, its insistence on protecting domestic innovation, and its commitment to indigenous defence manufacturing all flow from the same source i.e. strategic sovereignty.
Back in 2016, in our book The New Global Order, I had written that a China-Pakistan-Turkey axis would eventually converge, posing a long-term threat to India’s security and Asia’s stability. That warning has come true. What I had also predicted in my book The Great Reset in 2022, was evolving Cold War 2.0 or Bi-polarity between US & China and restructuring of the global supply chains. We had predicted that in aftermath of Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 the world would get divided into two poles and ultimately countries like India, Russia, UAE and the Gulf Arab states would play critical role in making it a multi-polar global order by trading with both the blocs of USA as well as China. As more chaos is seeded from Pakistan to Myanmar, from Iran to Bangladesh the more it becomes clear that the American empire, running on a hollowed-out dollar system, is buying time through conflict.
Western powers like America are using financial, digital, and military tools to suppress this multipolarity. The question is: will Asia recognize the game before it’s too late? The Asian Century is inevitable but not guaranteed. It must be fought for against imperial nostalgia from the West and ideological warfare from the hegemonic alliance in the East. India, standing at the crossroads of both, must lead this resistance. A self-reliant, resilient, and strategically autonomous India is the antidote to chaos. धर्मो रक्षति रक्षितः ! This timeless line encapsulates India’s civilizational duty by upholding dharma (righteousness, order, sovereignty), one ensures both personal and national survival even amidst geopolitical chaos. It serves as a profound reminder that in defending its autonomy and multipolar future, India is not just securing borders or trade, but safeguarding an eternal principle of righteousness.
Author Bio
Navroop Singh is an Intellectual Property Attorney in New Delhi and a geopolitical analyst with the ‘Niti Shastra’ platform. He has co-authored three books and writes on foreign policy, law, history, and public affairs.
