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1. Significance of the recent EU-India FTA and security pact

Chaesung CHUN: Okay. So, I will ask the first question. Given the very significant developments surrounding Indian foreign policy, let me ask you first about the European Union -Indian deal. So after 19 years, the European Union and India signed a major FTA and security pact agreement. Is this a direct response to Trump-era trade pressure? And does it strengthen India as a real third pole in the Indo-Pacific beyond the U.S.-led frameworks like the Quad?

Manjari MILLER: Yeah, you know, that's such a good question. As you know, it's been called the mother of all deals. So yes and no. So on one hand, the EU has tried for a very long time to be part of India's growth story, and also gain market access to essentially what has been one of the most protected markets in the world. So this has been something that the EU has hoped for for a very long time. But yes, I think President Trump's tariffs did change the game for India and how India thought about trade deals. And so what you see with this trade deal is a couple of things. There's some concrete wins on both sides, which I think is very interesting. So, for example, it's a big win for German carmakers, where you now have tariffs coming down from levels that are close to 110% to about 10%, right?

But it's not just cars, like you have other winners in the EU, big machinery, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage exporters. And then on the Indian side, There are also some big winners, which are the textiles and the apparel industry, which gives them access to the EU market, right? Chemicals and plastics, jewelry, things like that. So there's some big wins on both sides. But I think what is really interesting, and this touches on on your question about India as the third pole, right? What you see here with this deal is India's now definitely willing and trying to diversify, right? You know, you had the strategic alignment between the United States and India, And, you know, the first Trump administration, the Biden administration really, really went out on a limb to deepen cooperation with India and bring it on board as a strategic partner.

You know, there's bipartisan consensus in the United States on the importance of India as a strategic partner. But then you had President Trump come in for the second time and the game seemed to shift, right? So, I mean, if you recall, right after President Trump was sworn in, Prime Minister Modi reached out immediately. India was one of the first countries to reach out. you know, Vice President JD vance visited India almost right away, and yet it didn't seem to move the needle, and then you had the 50% tariffs imposed in India. And I think it was a big shock. So what this EU deal does is it shows that India is diversifying and it shows that India is willing now to make these trade deals, which, yes, as time goes on, you know, could end up making not just, you know, the India a pole, but also the EU, right?

Because essentially what you're seeing is that if the EU is signing these deals, it means that a lot of trade in the future is actually going to revolve around European Union regulations and rules. You know, so a move away from U.S. regulations and rules. So there's more of an EU regulatory state and much less United States impact. And so it's not just India as a pole, it's also the EU as a pole. So a truly multipolar world is what we are moving towards.

2. Has India's approach shifted from strategic autonomy to a more transactional or multi-aligned relationship with the U.S.?

Chaesung CHUN: So when I saw the news about the trade deal, I thought India and European Union, especially these days, EU is thinking twice about the survivability of NATO and try to get distance from the U.S. So India is trying to cooperate with EU to balance against some kind of pressure from the EU. President Trump, but suddenly, you know, there was a U.S. India trade deal again. So it's kind of confusing. So with Washington lowering tariffs, and India reportedly reducing Russian oil dependence, has India moved from strategy autonomy toward a more transactional alignment with the U.S.? Or these days, we talk about the concept of “multi-alignment.” So can you touch upon this?

Manjari MILLER: Yes. I am very skeptical that there is now a new trade deal between U.S. and India, right? I know that's something that you had asked me about and whether we should touch on it. But if you think about it, you know, all of the announcements about the great trade deal between the U.S. and India came from one source. And that source was President Trump on Truth Social. But if you noticed the reaction of Prime Minister Modi and Minister Goyal, they were much more circumspect. They were very circumspect about the deal and very cagey. and there have been really no details on the ground. So for example, even on Truth Social, president trump said, “Well, the tariffs are going to go from 50% to 18%.”

But 18% is higher than the tariffs that were (imposed) on India when President Trump came into office, right? So no matter what, India is still worse off than before President Trump's inauguration, right? So and then on top of that, President Trump said that, again, on Truth Social, that India has agreed to stop purchasing Russian oil. There was no comment on that from the Indian government. Not a single comment. There was no confirmation. There has been no comment from any official touching on that. And the bottom line is that we don't know that that's actually true. It may happen in a very phased out, slow way.

But so far, there's been nothing from any Indian official, any statement, nothing that shows that that is actually correct. So, yes, there's been a thing of, “Oh, now the United States has a trade deal with India.” But the details are so thin. And the comments have all been from President Trump's Truth Social feed, right, as well as the USTR. And there's been almost nothing from the Indian side. So I'm a little cautious before I call it a trade deal.

3. Have President Trump's announcements influenced India's cooperation with the EU or its stance on Russian oil imports?

Chaesung CHUN: Great. Very interesting. So as of February 2026, President Trump has been criticized domestically and also from the allies. So do you think that then President Trump's announcement influenced the move by the Indian government to cooperate with the EU or does he intend to facilitate the negotiation process of the Ukraine war by asking India to stop import of Russian oil?

Manjari MILLER: Yeah, I think it is, particularly with this president. And, you know, in this term, I think it is very difficult to predict why he does what he does. But I will say that I think that the EU signing that deals with India was definitely an impetus. I mean, it is a big deal. Essentially, what it shows is that India, which historically has not been excited about trade deals, is now enthusiastic to sign trade deals. That's a big shift, right? And India is a large market. And if India is willing to sign a deal with the EU with a much more legally binding pact, what that then shows is that India is now structuring its trade towards the EU and away from the United States. Now, this don't necessarily have an immediate effect.

But in the long run, it is absolutely going to, you know, have an effect in about a decade, right. So what you're seeing is pushback on India's part, not just on strategic autonomy, but an indication that you can't just push India around. And so therefore, you had the straight deal in India, Russia, so that, I think, sent a very strong signal to President Trump. And I do think that had something to do with his decision to, you know, to announce it.

Chaesung CHUN: Very interesting. You said “strategic signal” to President Trump. These days, you know, European leaders are visiting Beijing and that might also put some pressure on President Trump. So even though USA is number one, was the strongest country in the world, the act or move by allies and strategy partners can put some pressure on the decisions and thinking of President Trump. I think that's very insightful.

Manjari MILLER: I think with the EU particularly, it's a big deal because the EU's rules and regulations are so different from the United States, right? So, for example, if you take something like, you know, health and safety. Health and safety regulations that come from the EU around products is very, very different from the United States, whether that's on food, on cosmetics, what have you. So what that means is that if you're essentially crafting a product for a certain market and then you follow all the rules and regulations of that market, then that becomes your primary market, right? So when India signs a trade deal with the EU and it's now gearing its products towards the EU market in 10 years, that means those are the rules and regulations that it's going to be bound by and not as much the United States, right? It's basically sidelining the United States, and so I think that will have an impact. And you can see that in the different trade deals that are cropping up.

4. Does India's reluctance to fully commit to any bloc limit its leadership, or does its strategic ambiguity actually enhance its influence?

Chaesung CHUN: From a longer perspective, you've published great articles and books about Indian foreign policy, especially strategic narrative. So India is often called as a reticent rising power, strong capabilities, but not full commitment to a specific bloc, especially the Western bloc. Does that restrain or weaken India's leadership role? Or actually, is it that strategic ambiguity actually its main source of leverage?

Manjari MILLER: That's, you know, that's a great question. I think it's both, you know, because in some ways it limits India's ability to shape the international order, right? It limits its ability in leadership because it's not cementing these partnerships with any one bloc, right? On the other hand, it gives India a lot of flexibility with other countries, right? It gives it a lot of leverage. So in some ways, it's both a handicap and a strength, right? Right. It's really both. And you can see this again, you know, when it came into play with the United States. I mean, it's on one hand, it's because of India's strategic autonomy that India was able to purchase Russian oil and the Biden administration let it slide, right. And then the Trump administration came in and cracked down on it. But then again, India decided to flex strategic autonomy and move towards the EU. So it's both a handicap and a strength.

5. How can we theoretically explain the U.S. applying different strategic logics in various regions, and what does this mean for the international order?

Chaesung CHUN: Okay, great. Now let's move to a more comprehensive view about the changing world orders. There was a national security strategy published at the end of last year and also the National Defense Strategy. So there are so many interpretations about U.S. grand strategic changes. And now, for me, the U.S. appears to apply different logics, different rules in different regions. For example, assertive sphere of influence logic in the western hemisphere, but the U.S. does not seem to recognize the Chinese sphere of influence in the Pacific and very limited sphere of influence in Eastern Europe by Russia. So how can we explain this theoretically? You know, if we apply 20th century's IR theory to this U.S. Grand Strategy, it's very hard to explain. So do you have any view about the U.S., you know, architecture?

Manjari MILLER: Yeah, again, a really interesting question. So I tell my students this all the time, that just because a theory is interesting and compelling and has held for a while doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws, right? And I think that's what you see with power transition theory. So power transition theory is so much centered on the challenger to the system. So if you look at power transition theory, it suggests that no matter how we conceive of the international system, you always have a great power. And then eventually there's a challenge to that great power. And the challenger is a dissatisfied rising power. The challenge is dissatisfied with how power is distributed in the international system. It's dissatisfied with how public goods are distributed. And therefore, you have conflict with the great power, and therefore, you have war.

Now, what this does is this doesn't leave room, as you just pointed out, to talk about, well, what happens when the great power changes the rules of the game? Right. What happens when it's not the challenger that's breaking the national order, but it's the great power? And I think what's particularly interesting in the United States case is that the United States crafted this order, the liberal international order, after World War II with the help of allies and partners. And what you see here is now a move away from the liberal international order. And I don't want to say that this is just about the Trump administration. The Biden administration, too, Moved away from the liberal international order, right? So it's not just the Trump administration that has decided to weaken the liberal international order. Under the Biden administration, national security advisor Jake Sullivan talked about the rules-based order.

But, you know, when you talked about diversifying supply chains and Friendshoring that's essentially a move into these little groups and blocks and a move away from the widespread multilateral cooperation that was the bedrock of the liberal international order. So it's both the Biden and the Trump administration that have done that. And I don't think hard transition theory has has a good explanation for that. And I think there's another part of it, which is that I'm going to add to this to say that there's another thing that I think requires explanation and so forth for the students out there or young junior faculty who are interested. I think one of the outcomes of the great power actually breaking the order that it created is fragmentation, right? And so what you're seeing now is fragmentation into, I think, what you yourself have talked about as conflicting orders, right? And the fragmentation, interestingly, is coming not necessarily from the countries that we see as revisionist, but countries that are partners and allies, right? Because these partners and allies now feel betrayed by the United States or are uncertain of the United States and are therefore scrambling to carve up the order. And it's an open question whether they're going to maintain it or whether you're going to have multiple orders come up in response to the United States actions. And I really don't think there are any excellent international relations theories out there that have an explanation for some of the phenomena that we are seeing in real time today.

6. What key factors or variables do you think will shape the future international order amid recent U.S. foreign policy experiments and global fragmentation?

Chaesung CHUN: Great. I think your point about that the hegemonic power could be revisionist in terms of power transition is a very good point. So the last question is about the future international order. We don't know yet, but President Trump's experiment with very different options of foreign policy such as tariff protectionist, sometimes people call neo-isolationist, sometimes people say offshore balance and restraint, all those things. There might be some correction because there might be some bad results as we see already. And so after the midterm election, we don't know the results of the election (yet), but if you look at the history of U.S. domestic politics after the midterm election, there was a change of the course of foreign policy reflecting American people's viewpoints.

And then there might be one or two years, new president, which can set a new domain for the American foreign policy. We don't know yet what will emerge after all these experiments. So can we talk about the major components or variables that will make the future international order? That's very hard, but we will maintain this fragmentation or can we build a new type of more, you know, cooperative international order?

Manjari MILLER: Yeah, well, I like to be optimistic and think we can. I think there are a few things at play here. I think the first is, it's it'll be interesting to see whether Trumpism outlasts President Trump. This is his last term. So, you know, can Trumpism survive without President Trump? And that's an open question. I don't think anybody knows the answer to that. You know, whether it's, as I said, you know, when we talked about the Biden administration, they had also moved away from the rules based order, right? But to what extent President Trump's successor and how fast and how intensely they will continue his policies remains to be seen. So we don't know that. So I think that's one variable. The other variable that we don't really mention, because I think President Trump and the United States consume so much airspace, right? Particularly President Trump is so larger than life.

And I think that consumes a lot of time and energy and coverage. But it's interesting because if you look at China, China hasn't really articulated the clear Chinese vision of order. I don't see that emanating from the CCP. And with China as well, there are a lot of factors that are unknown. I mean, one of the things that is on the table right now is you've seen the purges that have happened with the Chinese military. And so it'd be interesting to see going forward how China thinks of the international order, because for a large part of its rise in the 1990s, in the early 2000s even, I would argue that China was not revising the rules-based order. China was utilizing the rules-based order to rise.

So if you look at the Belt and Road Initiative, if you look at the AIIB, these don't go against the principles of the rules-based order, right? The consequence of it was that China was slowly using those rules to cement its own power, but they didn't fundamentally contravene how we think about the rules-based order in terms of economic cooperation, in terms of multilateral cooperation, in terms of multilateral institutions. So I haven't seen anything, and I'd be very interested to get your take on this as well. I haven't seen anything where President Xi and China or anybody in China has laid out what the alternative, what the Chinese path or the Chinese alternative to a liberal international order would be, beyond the fact that it wouldn't be liberal. I'll put that on the table. I think that's one unknown.

I think finally, the third thing, and this is not an unknown, I think this is what we can definitely say is that where we are today is in a state of flux, right? We're really seeing flux in real time. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this is a risky period in world politics, right? Because you're really transitioning from a bipolar world to a, you know, what Samuel Huntington called a union multipolar world. And now we're really entering an era perhaps where of multi-polarity with all of this in flux, with the liberal international order being broken by the United States, with China not having articulated an international order, and with partners and allies trying to figure out their role in all of it. So I think the one thing we can say with certainty is that not only are we in a period of flux, but it's a risky period. And I'm interested to see what comes next.

7. Do middle powers have the capacity to shape a new international order, especially through cooperation?

Chaesung CHUN: Great. Last question. Really last question is about, you talked about the absence of the alternatives to international order. China has been proposing an international order, but it is not very new and not very elaborate. I think the real point is China is ready to take the role of a hegemon, which can provide all the necessary international public goods, which is really a hard job that should require Chinese domestic people's consensus and also recognition by international society. But the demand of the international public goods are enormous, thinking about all the problems that international society now have. So there are arguments about middle power coalition, like nine countries cooperation can maybe propose some kind of alternative to great power politics.

These days we talk about great power concert, specifically influenced the condominium of great powers, which is not very beneficial to South Korea or some other middle powers after Prime Minister Carney's great address. So we talk about your Carney doctrine, but some people say that it's a good thing, it's very ideal, but do middle powers really have the policy measures to construct a new international order? So as you are studying middle power cooperation very much, can you add something about that?

Manjari MILLER: Yeah, so I think that middle powers can't do it by themselves, right? So I think this is why acting in concert is really important. And I do think that Prime Minister Carney's speech at Davos was very important in that regard, because it was a “call to arms,” if you will, for corporation and for middle powers to chart a path together. I think what's interesting about it, so again, if we go back to the international relations theory literature, middle powers is not a very well-defined concept, right? Who's the middle power? And so, you know, who do you think of as a middle power? And traditionally, it's been countries that self-define as middle powers, right? So Canada is a middle power because it calls itself a middle power, and it's this mid-sized country. And Australia is a middle power because it says it's a middle power, also a middle-sized country. But it's not really territorially independent, right? I mean, you also have countries that are smaller that punch above their weight in international relations. So South Korea is one. Singapore is one.

Singapore is a small state that punches above its weight. And so what would be interesting to me is to see a focus on middle powers that's not just focused on the Western partners of the United States, which is traditionally what middle powers have kind of self-defined as, right? And to see what that looks like when you take into account, truly take into account partnerships between middle powers that are not just in Europe, but also in Asia and perhaps even in Africa, right? Latin America and Brazil. So, you know, so I think that would be game-changing. I think that would truly be game changing. And you can see steps towards that. I mean, we started this conversation with the India-EU deal. I think of India as a middle power, right?

And so there, what you're seeing is something happening because you have these partners and allies getting together and moving away from, you know, trade rules and regulations, a trade that's dominated by the rules and regulations of the United States towards something else, right? And I think that can affect a difference. So you're right, middle powers by themselves, a single middle power by itself doesn't have the clout, but those partnerships, I do think they have a lot of potential and a lot of clout, particularly if you start defining middle powers beyond the West.

Chaesung CHUN: Okay, I think this is the end of the interview. Great. Thank you very much.

Manjari MILLER: Thank you so much.  ■ 

■ Manjari MILLER is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Toronto.

■ Edited by Sangjun LEE, EAI Research Associate
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