US President Donald Trump’s recent praise of his Indian counterpart and positive words for the US-India partnership notwithstanding, relations between the two countries remain on a downward trajectory. Indians seem hurt and upset, mainly because they did not see it coming. When Richard Nixon tilted toward Pakistan in the 1971 war, his anti-India views were well known. Trump, on the other hand, was viewed as favourably disposed to India and Indians.
New Delhi appeared to be in a strong position when Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Trump within the first month after the inauguration of the US President’s second term. India seemed to have a head start in trade negotiations, the two countries seemed strategically aligned on China, the Russia factor appeared manageable, and US-Pakistan relations were still on shaky ground.
Eight months later, the picture has drastically changed. India is the target of the highest tariffs imposed on an American partner. Four years after being forced to withdraw from Afghanistan because of Pakistani betrayal, the US is improving ties with Pakistan. India’s ties with Russia, which were deemed a minor irritant, have become a central issue. And the Quad and Indo-Pacific strategy, which were supposed to make India America’s ‘partner for the twenty-first century’, appear now to be in doldrums.
Trump is an unconventional president and is neither known for consistency nor well-thought-out plans. He could easily take a U-turn and go back to his previous stance of seeing India as an indispensable global partner. But Indian policymaking is far more structured. Once exposed to the vagaries of a mercurial President’s temperament, India is likely to be careful in deciding how far it wishes to go in being a US partner moving forward.
Misaligned interests
Although public rhetoric and the media blame the downward spiral on trade issues and some stress in personal relations between the current Indian and American leaders, ties between the two countries have some inbuilt stress points. The two countries have differing histories and geographies, as well as divergent interests. The evolution of relations over the last three and a half decades defied this divergence and should never have been taken for granted.
The policies of the previous five successive US administrations were driven by the strategic assumption that India’s rise was in America’s interests. India was expected to act as a counterweight to China’s rise as the alternative Asian power. But India did little to fulfil that expectation, falling behind in modernising its military and maintaining control or even pre-eminence in its region.
Indians saw the partnership with the US as written in stone and assumed that an expanding economy automatically conferred on India great power status that would make it America’s partner of choice. For all the various formats of bilateral dialogue, the India-US relationship never developed an institutional framework that could have prevented a free fall under circumstances like the current ones.
Indian economy and democracy
The closer US-India ties of the last three decades have rested upon three broad pegs. First among these are the people-to-people relationship and the notion of shared values, especially a shared belief in democracy. The second is the commercial dimension, reflected in enhanced bilateral trade. The third relates to defense and strategic cooperation.
Before Indians assume that Trump’s temperament is the only reason for the current crisis in relations, they should pause to consider that each peg of the relationship has faced challenges in recent years. They are just coming to a head now.
The value-based dimension sustained the relationship during the worst years of the Cold War. But liberal Americans have been concerned about India’s democratic backsliding, while conservative Americans have taken offense at what they see as restrictions on religious freedom manifested in actions against Christian missionaries.
Incidents, such as allegations of Indian security services being involved in murder for hire on US soil of dissidents deemed terrorism supporters, have also not helped. Moreover, the assumption that the large Indian diaspora in the US could make up for any deficiencies in relations at the government-to-government level has also not panned out. Indian-Americans may be one of the wealthiest and best educated minorities in the US, but they have yet to build concomitant clout within the broader system.
Considering the size and potential of the Indian economy, the weakest leg of this relationship has always been the commercial one. US-India commercial ties have grown from $ 6 billion in 1990 to $190 billion in 2024. But to Americans, India remains a protectionist, inward-oriented, trade skeptic economy. Unlike China did in the 1980s and 1990s, India rarely woos foreign companies and expects them to work within the heavily regulated system.
India never built the sinews of support across the American corporate ecosystem. The hope of access to the large Indian consumer market was always a draw that conflicted with reality. In the end, corporate America shrugged its shoulders and accepted that it would never make the kinds of profits it once did in China. Indians never understood the disappointment of US businesses as they congratulated themselves on India’s economic achievements. For Americans, these accomplishments fell way behind their anticipation.
Finally, American plans in the realm of defense and security also fell short, even though India and the US are more closely aligned in the defense realm than during the Cold War. The partnership involving military exercises, information sharing, logistics coordination, and defense sales grew too slowly.
Defence purchases costing $24 billion from the US sound big to Indians but are abysmally low when compared to purchases by American allies in Europe, the Middle East, or Asia. Without a security alliance, the bonds between the two militaries lack sufficient gravitas. Again, hope outpaced reality. Projects –such as joint building of the next generation aircraft carriers – never took off. Interoperability of military equipment remained a distant dream.
It is true that cooperation between the two countries in the tech realm—both civilian and defense—has deepened in recent years. But friendshoring and tech transfer were reflective of strategic altruism, which is now flailing. Just as the protectionist impulses under Trump 1.0 continued under the Biden administration, so the desire to onshore (and build in America) will outlast Trump 2.0.
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Rehyphenation of ties
American global strategy has often conflicted with India’s regional interests, going back to the Cold War. But India and the US did not let American ties with Pakistan and India’s relations with the erstwhile Soviet Union result in a breakdown in bilateral ties. These relationships are currently casting a shadow on the India-US relationship, not seen in many years.
India was given an exception under the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) to enable it to continue business with Russia. The US expected to slowly wean away India from Russia. Even after the 2022 Ukraine war, India’s ties with Russia were accepted, albeit reluctantly. That no longer seems to be the case. The Trump administration, for purposes of its global strategy, appears willing to push India to apply pressure on Russia.
Similarly, American presidents since the 1990s have tried to insulate US relations with Pakistan from its partnership with India. But the emerging relations between Trump and the Pakistan army chief, Asim Munir, coupled with talk of stronger economic relations between the two countries and offers of mediation between India and Pakistan, could bring back the hyphen in US-India-Pakistan relations—something deemed undesirable by India’s leadership.
As American allies in Europe and Asia look for ways to adjust and adapt to the current Trump administration, India is looking for ways to weather the storm. Formal US allies can find some comfort in security treaties and economic bonds going back decades. India, which does not have such arrangements with the US, will probably revert to its default mode of multi-alignment.
India played up its presence at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), including the first bilateral meeting between Modi and President Xi Jinping in seven years. But the Indian PM’s decision to skip the BRICS plus virtual summit hosted by Brazil means that India still wants to hedge and maintain its partnership with the US without giving in to Trump’s demands.
On the economic front, India will alleviate economic stress by signing trade agreements with other countries and boosting domestic consumption. New Delhi prefers American investment and technology, so its end goal will be to ensure that the commercial and tech relationship is back on track. India will likely continue with defense purchases from the US while reiterating its policy of diversification by purchasing from France, Russia, and Japan, in addition to indigenisation.
Years of negotiations have taught foreign interlocutors that the way to convince India is never to coerce. As a civilisational State and a post-colonial country, any attempts to force India always backfire. Unlike most American allies, India views itself as an equal not a junior partner of the US. But the current US administration’s public negotiating style will only make it tougher to resolve issues.
Aparna Pande is Director of the Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia at the Hudson Institute, Washington D.C. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)