A more unsettled global order

As 2025 draws to a close, it is evident that the return of Donald Trump to the White House has done more than unsettle diplomatic routines. It has altered assumptions that underpinned global politics for decades. The United States has not withdrawn from the world, but it has redefined the terms of its engagement. In doing so, it has accelerated a process of adjustment that now confronts India and the wider international system as 2026 approaches.

The Trump administration began the year with a clear and consistent premise. American power, it argued, had been stretched too far, deployed too generously, and insufficiently rewarded. Global engagement would therefore be narrowed, made conditional and assessed through a transactional lens. This approach was neither improvised nor episodic. It was implemented across development assistance, diplomacy, alliance management and multilateral engagement.

Foreign aid was among the first areas to feel the shift. USAID programmes were paused, cut back or restructured, with funding flows interrupted in several regions. While emergency humanitarian assistance was not eliminated entirely, the scale, predictability and convening role of US development support diminished sharply. At the same time, diplomatic presence was thinned in parts of the world, with the recall of envoys and a visible de-prioritisation of certain regions. Multilateral commitments were increasingly treated as negotiable, rather than as investments in systemic stability.

None of this, however. amounts to isolationism. The United States remains the world’s most powerful military and economic actor. Nor has Washington abandoned alliances or institutions wholesale. What has changed is the breadth and predictability of US leadership. Engagement is now more selective and more explicitly tied to immediate national calculations. Continuity, once taken for granted, has become contingent.

The global response over the past year has been telling. There has been no dramatic rupture, no sudden vacuum. Instead, governments have adjusted incrementally. Allies continue to work with the United States, but they hedge more carefully. Security partnerships are diversified, development finance sources broadened, and diplomatic strategies written with greater redundancy. The most consequential change has been behavioural rather than declaratory. Countries still speak of the United States as central, but plan as though volatility is structural.

This adjustment is most visible in the provision of global public goods. Reduced US leadership in development assistance has left tangible gaps, particularly in parts of Africa and fragile regions dependent on American funding for health, humanitarian and governance programmes. Other actors have moved to fill some of these gaps. China has continued its development finance activities, albeit more selectively. Gulf states have expanded their role as providers of capital and mediation. Multilateral institutions have stepped in where possible. Yet the result has been fragmentation rather than replacement. No single actor has replicated the scale or coordinating capacity once provided by Washington.

A similar pattern is emerging in climate action and global health. Without consistent US anchoring, progress is increasingly driven by coalitions of the willing, often led by Europe or regional groupings. These initiatives have produced limited advances, but they lack the coherence and reach of earlier efforts. Leadership has become thinner, and coordination more difficult, at a time when transnational challenges demand scale.

In security affairs, the change has been subtler but significant. The United States has not launched new major wars in 2025, nor has it withdrawn wholesale from existing commitments. However, its approach to alliance management and conflict has become more explicitly transactional. Burden sharing has been foregrounded, reassurance qualified, and leverage openly emphasised. For allies, this has reinforced incentives to invest more in self-reliance and to cultivate parallel partnerships. European defence coordination has deepened. In Asia, strategic engagement is widening beyond a single anchor.

India’s experience over the past year reflects both the opportunities and constraints of this evolving order. New Delhi has continued to deepen cooperation with the United States in defence, technology and critical supply chains, recognising that American capabilities and markets remain indispensable. At the same time, India has avoided over dependence. Relations with Europe, the Gulf, East Asia and the Global South have been strengthened in parallel, accelerating a strategy of diversified engagement that has been evolving for over a decade.

In this sense, strategic autonomy has proved an asset rather than an abstraction. India has retained room for manoeuvre in a more contested environment and avoided being drawn into rigid alignments. Yet this posture also carries costs. As US leadership thins, expectations of middle powers rise. India is increasingly viewed as a potential provider of regional public goods, whether in neighbourhood stabilisation, development partnerships, climate initiatives or technology governance.

Here, the limits of capacity become salient. India’s resources, institutional bandwidth and domestic priorities impose constraints on how much it can shoulder. Strategic autonomy without commensurate capability risks becoming rhetorical. Capability without restraint risks overextension. Managing this balance will be one of India’s central foreign policy challenges in 2026.

The year ahead is unlikely to bring a return to familiar certainties. US foreign policy will remain shaped by domestic political currents rather than a consensus on global stewardship. China will continue to pursue influence selectively, combining economic inducement with strategic pressure, particularly in Asia. Europe will move incrementally towards greater autonomy, but remain constrained by internal divisions and fiscal limits. The international system will be more plural, but also more transactional and less predictable.

For India, this calls for strategic discipline rather than ambition for its own sake. India cannot replace American leadership, nor should it attempt to do so. Its comparative advantage lies in selective contribution. Strengthening neighbourhood stability, investing in credible regional connectivity, and shaping norms in areas such as digital public infrastructure, climate adaptation and inclusive development are realistic and valuable avenues. Issue based coalitions, rather than bloc politics, will continue to serve India’s interests.

Equally important is inward investment. Diplomatic capacity, defence preparedness, research ecosystems and development finance tools will matter more in a world where external anchors are weaker. The lesson of 2025 is that resilience cannot be outsourced indefinitely.

For the broader world, the adjustment underway presents a mixed picture. In the short term, reduced dependence on the United States has imposed real costs, particularly on poorer and more fragile states that relied on US scale and convening power. Over time, diversification can reduce systemic risk, but only if it is accompanied by institution building and shared restraint. Absent that, dependence will not disappear, it will merely shift.

The danger is a drift towards pure transactionalism, where every relationship is conditional and every norm negotiable. Such an order would be more coercive, more unequal and more prone to miscalculation. The alternative is not a return to an earlier era, but a more distributed form of cooperation, anchored in regional institutions and pragmatic coalitions.

By the end of 2025, one conclusion is unavoidable. The world has begun adapting to an America that is no longer a given. In 2026, the challenge will be to ensure that this adaptation leads to resilience rather than disorder. For India, the task is not to choose sides, but to help shape the terms of coexistence in a more crowded and cautious international system. That, rather than nostalgia for past orders or faith in sudden resets, offers the most credible path ahead.

The writer is a commentator on foreign policy and strategic affairs.