Indian politics in the post-1947 era, political scientist Rajni Kothari observed in the 1970s, was a “single-dominant party system". Barring exceptions, the Indian National Congress called the shots for decades and formed shifting regional alliances. Since 2014, the BJP has also electorally followed this “Congress system"—as a central party with shifting regional alliances.

In geopolitics, the US is also following this Indian flavour. After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, it briefly tasted unipolarity; but the subsequent emergence of China and India, and multiple interest and pressure groups, such as the Group of Eight/Seven, the European Union, BRICS, WTO, etc., gradually shifted focus to bipolarity and then multipolarity.

After the USSR’s collapse, “Communist" China reversed the Mikhail Gorbachev formulation of politico-economic rejuvenation: while state-controlling politics as before, Beijing chose perestroika (reconstruction) over glasnost (openness) so as to bring back the Dragon’s lost glory. When he rolled out the $1.3 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, President Xi Jinping emulated Qin Shi Huang (259 BC–210 BC), founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of China. Gradually, the US–China bipolarity returned briefly; in November 2025, for example, US President Donald Trump told Xi Jinping about the ‘return of G-2.’

In fact, the 21st century is a post-ideological era. No country remained untouchable and became a potential customer—until it became a challenger. To re-establish its unipolarity, the US has discovered Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) formulation.

But power comes with a cost, and debt sneaks in like termites.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, for example, its external debt in convertible currencies was around $66 billion. In 2025, China’s non-financial debt is more than 300 per cent of GDP; its national debt is estimated at $20 trillion in 2025. India’s total government debt is projected at $2.4 trillion by March 2026.

In contrast, the US’s debt has swollen to $38 trillion in gross federal debt; its external debt totals over $25 trillion, with foreign entities—China, Japan, and the UK—holding significant portions of Treasury securities. The US runs large current........

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