World affairs has, of late, entered an age of transactional diplomacy. Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, inter-state relations have increasingly been shaped by immediate quid pro quos, hard bargaining, and strict reciprocity rather than enduring commitments. Yet the more striking, and far less appreciated, reality is that many strategic partnerships have not only endured but remained resilient through periods of friction, including the one between India and the United States.
Their durability points to a broader reality. In an increasingly uncertain and anarchic international system, trust remains a quietly effective operating principle of international relations, appearing with striking frequency in joint statements and official speeches. But this is not the trust born of goodwill alone. Rather, it is forged through credible commitments, institutionalised cooperation, sustained functional linkages, and mutually beneficial exchanges that give states enduring reasons to stay the course. As wars, geopolitical rivalry, and tariff disputes unsettle even the closest of partners, trust emerges not as a moral virtue or a luxury reserved for periods of stability, but as a strategic asset painstakingly built through repeated cooperation amid conflict, uncertainty, and hedging.
Trust should not be judged as an esoteric concept in international relations but one best understood through a realist lens — less an ethical aspiration than a strategic instrument of statecraft. Investing in trust is therefore a matter of rational calculation, not normative sentiment. As trust increasingly becomes the language of partnerships, the primary takeaway is clear. Trust endures only when states have compelling reasons and concrete incentives to cooperate, and when trusted partnerships consistently generate tangible strategic and material returns.
Trust is built, not borrowed
India’s foreign policy is replete with partnerships that reflect a more material and realist conception of trust. The India-Japan strategic partnership demonstrates that trust is forged less through rhetoric than through sustained cooperation in defence, economic security, technology, and people-to-people exchanges. In an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, institutionalised mechanisms — including regular 2+2 dialogues, the JAIMEX naval exercise, maritime security initiatives, defence-industrial collaboration, and partnerships in semiconductors, critical minerals, and clean energy — have created enduring strategic stakes for both countries.
Reinforced by expanding Japanese investment and growing bilateral trade, this trajectory reflects the vision articulated in the 16th India-Japan Annual Summit Joint Statement, “Advancing a Partnership of Strategic Convergence and Trust for Shared Growth, Prosperity and Resilience”, highlighting that durable trust is anchored in shared capabilities, resilient supply chains, long-term investment, and institutional continuity rather than political declarations alone.
Moreover, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent tour of Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand underscored the same underlying logic across three distinct bilateral relationships, each embedded within India’s broader search for trusted partners in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific. Rather than relying on symbolic declarations of strategic convergence, these partnerships are being anchored in practical cooperation across defence, maritime security, critical minerals, resilient supply chains, clean energy, technology, and trade.
India and Indonesia expanded collaboration in critical minerals, maritime security, and defence-industrial cooperation, including closer coordination through the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) hosted by the Indian Navy. India and Australia institutionalised new defence and maritime mechanisms while deepening partnerships in critical minerals, cyber technologies, and civil nuclear energy. India and New Zealand elevated ties to a Strategic Partnership, concluded a landmark Free Trade Agreement, and coupled deeper economic integration with cooperation in agriculture, clean energy, skills, and maritime security. Together, these relationships demonstrate that trust is sustained not by diplomatic vocabulary alone but by institutionalised cooperation, material incentives, and expanding economic interdependence that give each side a lasting stake in the partnership.
The conclusion of negotiations for the India-EU Free Trade Agreement marks the creation of one of the world’s largest free trade areas. Together with the expanding India-EU Trade and Technology Council, it demonstrates how trust is built through economic integration, technology cooperation, resilient supply chains, and sustained policy coordination. By embedding cooperation in legally binding trade commitments, both sides have created durable incentives that make continued partnership strategically and economically rewarding. This foundation is reinforced through structured collaboration on semiconductors, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, clean technologies, and digital governance.
Similarly, India’s partnership with Russia demonstrates that trust can endure when sustained by continuing strategic relevance, even amid shifting geopolitical circumstances. Defence cooperation, civilian nuclear collaboration, and energy security continue to generate tangible mutual benefits, while expanding trade and connectivity reinforce the relationship’s pragmatic foundations. Even as India deepens ties with the West and its Indo-Pacific partners, its engagement with Russia reflects a realist calculation that maintaining dependable channels for defence, energy, and strategic flexibility best serves its national interests.
The India-US relationship illustrates this logic most vividly because it is also the most complex. Despite recurring frictions over tariffs, market access, and difficult trade negotiations, the partnership has proved effectively resilient. A relationship sustained only by political goodwill or abstract convergence would have buckled under such disputes. Instead, it has endured because both sides have built a dense architecture of mutually beneficial cooperation that makes strategic estrangement increasingly costly.
The launch of the India-US COMPACT (Catalyzing Opportunities for Military Partnership, Accelerated Commerce & Technology) in February 2025 embodied this logic: a results-driven framework to translate trust into tangible outcomes through deeper defence cooperation, advanced technology partnerships, resilient supply chains and expanded trade. Even as trade disputes persisted, strategic engagement never paused. During their May 2026 meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar reiterated advances on cooperation on counterterrorism, energy security, maritime security, and an early bilateral trade agreement. Clearly, durable trust in international politics rests less on political chemistry than on institutionalised cooperation and converging material interests. Functional interdependence creates powerful incentives to manage disagreements rather than jeopardise a partnership that has become too strategically valuable to fail.
Also read: Logistics is the new frontier of weaponised interdependence. China has the upper hand
Realism is not cynicism
Such examples, while not exhaustive, reveal a broader pattern in India’s foreign policy and, more generally, in how states behave in an increasingly competitive international system. Realism does not dismiss cooperation and argues that cooperation endures only when it is anchored in durable national interests. In an anarchic and increasingly transactional world, order depends on credible commitments. States must believe that today’s agreements will be honoured tomorrow; otherwise, every bargain remains fragile. Trust, therefore, is not an act of faith but the product of commitments that are repeatedly honoured.
This is why regularity and resilience matter. Trust deepens when cooperation becomes routine across defence, trade, technology, energy, and security. Military exercises, investment, supply chains, logistics agreements, connectivity projects, and crisis-management mechanisms create tangible incentives to stay the course, raising the costs of defection and increasing the benefits of continued engagement. States, in other words, do not trust first and cooperate later. They cooperate repeatedly until trust becomes a rational outcome. Credible commitments, shared gains, and institutionalised cooperation lend real substance to trust. Without these foundations, appeals to trust remain diplomatic rhetoric, easy to proclaim, but just as easy to abandon.
Monish Tourangbam is a Fellow at the Chintan Research Foundation (CRF), New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)