India, Nov. 23 -- US President Donald Trump's post on Truth Social ahead of his October 30 meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea - "THE G2 WILL BE CONVENING SHORTLY!" - revived chatter of a US-China duet to manage global affairs. The theatre was unmistakably Trumpian, but the substance that followed was tactical and reversible: Modest tariff adjustments, reversal of escalated export controls, resumed Chinese purchases of US agricultural products, suspension of some planned actions for one year, reopened military hotlines, narrowly scoped regulatory dialogues, and reciprocal visits in 2026. These measures were useful de-escalation, but they did not constitute the architecture of a duopoly or co-governance. Yet the perception of a "G2 overlay" may carry significant implications for India. The shorthand "G2" denotes a Group of Two, in which the US and China act as joint stewards of global governance. The label was floated most prominently in 2009 by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Fred Bergsten as a prescription for crisis management during the global financial crisis. Over time, the shorthand expanded to imagine two powers setting rules, managing crises, and, in troubling versions, dividing spheres of influence. It has remained an inchoate idea. Trump's rhetorical flourish does not change that fact. For all its buzz, a durable G2 remains elusive. Any initiative to take G2 beyond rhetoric into co-governance or spheres of influence runs into four obstinate realities. First, the difference between symbolism and substance. Busan was a theatre with tactical de-escalation, not institutionalised co-rule. Understandings reached are de-risking band-aids, easily ripped off when politics shift. Second, strategic competition between the US and China will persist. Even though Trump is currently downplaying the rivalry, Beijing's assessment of the US-led West seeking "all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China" has not changed. This was reflected in the "Explanation" of the Chinese Communist Party's Fourth Plenum decisions released two days before Busan. Third, power today is not a tidy bipolar split. India, Japan, the EU, Asean and others actively resist binary arrangements or spheres carved at their expense. Their agency, along with the role of corporates, non-State players and minilaterals, raises the cost of any attempted duopoly. Even if the US and China wanted to "co-lead," they would face pushback in trade, technology, and security. Finally, China's ambivalence matters. Beijing publicly champions multipolarity, but privately Chinese scholars argue that in Asia-Pacific there is no peer to the US and China, making a "multipolar Asia" unfeasible. This explains the allure of bilateralism. Yet China's leadership has avoided the "G2" label, preferring flexible arrangements. Moreover, China does not yet have either the capacity or inclination to be a major net security provider. It wishes to "dislodge" the US from its perch as the pre-eminent power in Asia-Pacific but is not yet ready to "replace" it. At its core, the G2 idea acknowledges the duo's dominance in economic scale, military projection and technological prowess. There is a seductive possibility - a "G2 overlay". Even without formal institutions, if Washington and Beijing give the impression of tacitly coordinating responses, their combined weight could create a pervasive influence shaping decision-making. For Washington, bilateralism offers quick wins: Fog-clearing in the Taiwan Strait, and supply chain salve amid election year jitters. Beijing, ever pragmatic, reaps regulatory openings and economic oxygen without the domestic sting of overt concessions. The temptation to centralise decisions in a twosome becomes stronger in moments of systemic stress. Repeated tactical collusion can harden into habit and narrow policy space for others. India must contend with emerging ground realities. Busan confirms that China has become markedly stronger since Xi and Trump last met in 2019, and that the balance of power is perceived as edging towards Beijing. There is a pervasive view in China that it has stared down Washington and managed escalation dominance more effectively, even as the US claims short-run victory. On balance, US concessions enhance Chinese market penetration, while Beijing yields short-term relief without eroding its long-term industrial advantage or policy autonomy. India must also face the fact that the positive trajectory of its strategic partnership with the US has been radically disturbed. Trump's ambivalence towards China as a strategic rival and towards India's role in the US's Indo-Pacific strategy is a major complication. Trump's 2017 National Security Strategy explicitly labelled China a "strategic competitor". In his second term, however, his administration emphasises transactional deals, presses allies to raise defence spending, and focuses less on strategic framing. For India, Trump's ambivalence on China, slights to India, and the missing pivot to the Indo-Pacific risk sidelining New Delhi's role. Despite the thaw, India-China relations will remain fraught, and even limited Sino-US collaboration will create uncertainty. This "G2 overlay" is not architecture; it is atmosphere, a shadow play that constrains choices. If Sino-US engagement is deployed to address systemic challenges, India could find itself reacting to bargains it did not help shape. India must pursue clear imperatives. First, it must sharpen diplomatic signalling and make it clear to partners and rivals alike that it values open regional architectures, not spheres carved by others; that it will cooperate issue-by-issue where interests converge but will resist exclusionary bargains; and that it will robustly defend its core autonomies - land borders, vital interests in its periphery, developmental goals, and the capacity to choose partners. Simultaneously, India must deepen institutional options by accelerating engagements across continents - with Africa, the EU, Asean, IBSA, G20, Brics+ and new middle-power coordination channels that can set standards and offer alternatives to bilateral rule-making. Aspirations of emerging as a leading power can wait while the country focuses on building capacities. Realpolitik matters, but foreign policy cannot be principle-agnostic. India's reluctance to take positions on issues like Gaza has depleted its equity in the Global South, where China has made advances. Second, India must harden economic resilience through dual de-risking. Both Washington and Beijing are pursuing industrial policies and weaponising interdependence. New Delhi, therefore, needs to reduce vulnerabilities to both sets of pressure. This requires diversifying suppliers, investing in frontier technologies, localising critical inputs, and fashioning interoperable standards that preserve access without forcing alignment. A continuing strategic tilt toward the US may be desirable, provided Washington reciprocates, but it must be embedded in a new, hard-nosed equilibrium in which the litmus test is how far it helps build India's indigenous capabilities - economic, military and technological. That tilt can be a defensible deterrent posture, but it must not ossify into binary alignment that closes off diplomatic and commercial options. At the same time, it would be naive to seek answers to difficulties with the US in an elusive detente with China or a Russia-India-China troika. India can borrow a few pages from China's playbook, though Beijing's tools cannot be crafted quickly. This will involve pursuing the long game of developing domestic capabilities, reducing dependencies, diversifying economic linkages and forging leverage of its own to avoid recurrence of the current predicament. Finally, India's rise must be anchored in its neighbourhood and not transcend it as a policy choice. We are not at the threshold of a formalised or substantive duopoly. The more likely trajectory is managed US-China competition, punctuated by episodic cooperation with other major and middle powers, regional institutions, non-State players and "the rest" ensuring that governance remains contested, plural and messy. Navigating this uncertain terrain calls for correct assessment of trends and steady strategic choices, avoiding knee-jerk reactions....