Few bilateral relationships have inspired as much geopolitical optimism and delivered as much strategic frustration as the India-US partnership. However, 2025 is witnessing the rupture of an uneasy equilibrium. Trade negotiations seem to be collapsing. Tariffs are back. Mutual trust, carefully built over two decades, has eroded in a matter of months.
However, this moment of rupture is also a moment of clarity. The failed talks and public acrimony have exposed a truth too often glossed over in diplomatic communiqués: India’s foreign policy today is driven less by Western alignment or global liberalism and more by domestic political imperatives — economic, ideological, and electoral.
If the US wants to revive its partnership with India, it must start by understanding that India’s proximity to Russia is not a geopolitical position, but a domestic lifeline.
Energy security is political survival
Much of Washington’s frustration stems from India’s continued energy trade with Russia despite global sanctions and Western pressure. However, treating this as a defiance of “shared values” or strategic inconsistency is to completely misunderstand the political economy of energy in India.
Since 2022, when Gulf energy flows were redirected toward Europe in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war, India has been priced out of its traditional suppliers. Russian oil, offered at discounts of up to $30 per barrel relative to Brent crude, became not just attractive, but essential. By FY 2024-25, India was importing 1.7 million barrels per day of Russian crude oil.
This is not a temporary solution. It is an embedded component of India’s inflation management strategy, manufacturing competitiveness, and current account stability. Cheap energy keeps Indian factories humming and households afloat.
As the most prominent economy in the Global South, India’s demand for affordable and stable fuel is non-negotiable. To abandon the supply of Russian oil under moral or diplomatic pressure from Washington would be politically disastrous. Any government, especially one that has been re-elected with a decisive mandate, would see such a move as a betrayal of core domestic interests.
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The Modi doctrine
However, energy economics is only one part of the equation. India’s broader foreign policy stance under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is increasingly shaped by domestic ideology.
The BJP’s political vision blends Hindu nationalism and economic sovereignty. As a result, its foreign policy leans less on multilateral idealism and more on bilateral leverage, decolonial vocabulary, and a firm refusal to be lectured.
This unapologetic posture resonates deeply with Indian citizens who expect their government to defend national sovereignty rather than negotiate it away. In the Indian imagination, standing up to perceived Western hypocrisy signifies strength. When the US criticises India’s Russian oil imports, but continues to import about $1.3 billion worth of Russian fertilisers, or buys over 500,000 troy ounces of palladium from Moscow in just five months, the double standard becomes a potent political argument.
Modi’s emphasis on strategic autonomy is not a theoretical principle; it is a crowd–pleaser. For the Modi government, true foreign policy success means advancing India’s interests on Indian terms and strengthening domestic resilience while standing firm on the global stage.
When talks with the US stall over unfair demands, it is not a diplomatic failure; it is India drawing a principled line in the sand.
The misreading in Washington
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought with it a renewed surge of economic nationalism and transactional diplomacy. Under his second-term doctrine, tariffs have been reimposed on Indian steel and aluminium, India’s digital sovereignty measures have been labelled as protectionism, and New Delhi’s energy ties with Moscow have drawn sharp rebukes. However, this pressure is proving to be counterproductive.
Why? Washington continues to misread India as a swing-state ally to be pressured into alignment, rather than what it now is: a politically self-assured power whose foreign policy is shaped by the domestic imperatives of the BJP and its voter base.
This strategic blind spot is deepened by American contradictions in its foreign policy. While condemning India’s Russian oil purchases, the US continues to import Russian nuclear materials — like palladium — and fertilisers. While demanding Indian market access, Trump’s administration maintains its own protective tariffs and massive subsidies under the banner of “America first.” While insisting on shared values, US foreign policy remains deeply entangled in domestic populism and electoral posturing.
For Indian policymakers, the message is unambiguous: the so-called rules-based order applies selectively. Blindly aligning with others while they ignore the very rules they advocate is a political risk India is no longer willing to take.
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Can the relationship be recalibrated?
Yes, but only if both sides accept the domestic logic that now governs the India-US partnership. From the Indian side, the message is this: Modi cannot abandon Russian oil, dilute the Make in India initiative, or compromise on data sovereignty to revive a trade deal. Not when cheap energy, employment, and nationalist signalling are vital to their political base.
From the US side, the recognition must be that India will not behave like a treaty ally. It will hedge, push back, and assert. This does not mean that the partnership is dead — but it is not unconditional.
The task ahead is to design a relationship that can absorb divergence without descending into a state of dysfunction.
A partnership that learns to breathe
Despite the current freeze, the strategic case for US-India cooperation remains robust: climate collaboration, critical minerals, AI, semiconductor supply chains, maritime security, and countering China. However, none of this can move forward on the assumption that shared values alone will suffice.
The US-India relationship must evolve into a mature partnership that accepts selective convergence, managed divergence, and deep political decision-making on both sides. The alternative is disappointment in design.
Understanding power through politics
The collapse of the India-US trade talks was not a failure of diplomacy; it was a failure to read politics — Indian politics, American politics, and the sharp edges where they collide.
Going forward, if Washington wants deeper cooperation, it must start by recognising this: the boundaries of India’s external alignment are no longer drawn in Geneva or Foggy Bottom; they are drawn in ballot boxes, budget speeches, and street-level economic realities.
The future of US-India ties runs not through shared values but through a shared understanding of each other’s political truths.
Shishir Priyadarshi is President and Bidisha Bhattacharya is a senior research consultant at Chintan Research Foundation (CRF). Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)
As if crude oil was cheap before Ukraine war. Russia is giving cheap oil because of sanction imposed by the USA. If India wants cheap oil then there’s nobody except Mr Donald Trump who can deliver by his promise to his voters and policy of ‘drill-baby-drill. Russia will not sell it’s oil one dollar cheaper if there are no sanction. As for Indian strength, we see every day from the news from Bangladesh. Late Mrs Indiraji freed Bangladesh from Pakistan, TODAY we lost it to Pakistan again.
If Russia ( earlier the Soviet Union ) was the glue that bound Europe and USA together for eighty years, now renewed as President Trump feels disappointed by President Putin’s intransigence, China is what made India and USA “ natural allies “. Indo – Pacific. Quad. Both sides are revising their assessments of what the other brings to the table. AUKUS was a concrete undermining of Quad. Now Philippines. India has seen its always difficult relationship with China veering into conflict over the last five years. Pakistan is not in the same league as China, but America’s outreach to it against the backdrop of Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor hurts. 2. This is an extraordinary moment in a relationship both countries had nurtured for three decades.
India keeps repeating the same mistakes that keeps it poor. We are addicted to socialism, poverty, and backwardness while the free-market countries thrive and prosper.