U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has completely overturned the global economy and the diplomatic universe. Every nation is now busy trying to cope with the latest Trumpian audacity. No country has been more surprised and more impacted by the vagaries of Trump’s foreign policy than India. Trump has not only succeeded in rendering the grand strategy of U.S. foreign policy incoherent, but he has also placed India’s grand strategy in a limbo.
In the first six months of his presidency, Trump has done several things that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago: bombing Iran, completely alienating neighbors Canada and Mexico, undermining decades-long partnerships with allies like Europe and Japan, and completely derailing the strategic partnership with India. The partnership with India, so carefully nurtured by several previous administrations, was the cornerstone of the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China.
India’s responses have not helped assuage the situation either.
An unfortunate series of developments has created a significant divide between the two former partners, and they are now taking diplomatic steps that are more likely to widen the chasm rather than bridge the divide. India is ostensibly moving closer to Russia and China, and the U.S. seems to have suddenly discovered a profound love for Pakistan and an inexplicable intolerance for India. Neither move is going to help restore the partnership that the previous administration described as “the most consequential relationship of this century.”
A lot of light has already been shed on these developments, including on the failure of India-U.S. trade talks and the sudden deterioration in the bromance between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Trump’s unpredictability is presented as the key reason for this change. But there might be a more fundamental shift taking place that cannot be explained away by invoking Trump’s mercurial nature.
I submit that Trump is signaling that the assumption that the U.S. needs India more than India needs the U.S. to deal with the rise of China is no longer valid. The U.S. has clearly downgraded the strategic importance of India and is willing to risk losing it as a potential ally against China. It appears that New Delhi has sensed this shift and has already started recalibrating its grand strategy, which for several years, especially since the Galwan encounter with China in 2020, was built around a very close strategic alignment with the United States.
India’s grand strategic goal is well known. It seeks to become a developed nation (Viksit Bharat) by 2047 and a major global power in the short run. One key element of its strategy to achieve this goal was a close economic, technological, and investment partnership with the U.S. To put it bluntly, India was planning to ride the perceived U.S. need for India all the way to Viksit Bharat.
For the past four years, the U.S. has been not only India’s biggest trading partner, but also its biggest export market and the only major partner with whom India enjoys a trade surplus. All the while, India kept its agriculture and dairy markets closed to the U.S., maintained very high tariffs on U.S.-manufactured goods like cars and medical equipment, and kept non-tariff barriers in the service sector. Despite this, the U.S. is the third-largest investor in India. If one were to discount the shady practices of treaty shopping and round-tripping via Mauritius, Singapore, and Netherlands, the U.S. becomes the largest investor in India.
Through the Quad, an informal alliance of four democracies, the U.S., India, Australia and Japan, India came much closer to the U.S. The two democracies began to cooperate in many fields, including defense startups, critical and emerging technologies, and space, even reconstituting global supply chains in the fields of semiconductors and its derivatives. The peak of this diplomatic courtship was on display when Modi visited Washington for a highly hyped state visit in 2023.
India, in its own way, contributed to advancing U.S. interests by undermining non-Western alliances of which it is a part, namely BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). India diminished SCO when it was its chair in 2023 by making its annual summit a virtual event. The Indian prime minister then skipped the summit in 2024, and when the SCO issued a statement condemning the U.S. and Israel for attacking one of its members, Iran, India broke away to stand with Israel — an action that would have pleased both Tel Aviv and Washington, but not key members of the SCO, Russia and China. India also broke with BRICS on the issue of de-dollarization and a potential BRICS currency when Trump expressed his displeasure with the idea.
In a simulation of a BRICS summit in one of my classes, a student who was assigned the role of India’s prime minister, asked me seriously, “So, I basically act as America’s mole in the BRICS and subvert its goals, right?” Even teenagers whose study of world affairs is limited did not miss the reality that, while India advertised itself as the “voice of the Global South,” in international forums it often voted with the Global North.
Modi’s unwillingness to give Trump any credit for the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in the month of May, or open Indian markets for U.S. exports, especially in the agriculture and dairy sectors, may have broken the relationship. In a few angry strokes, Trump has completely upended this critical relationship. Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on India, the highest in the world, which includes a 25 percent penalty for buying Russian oil. He has now halted all trade negotiations.
India’s response to these Trump provocations, which could merely be a negotiating tactic, appears to be a complete rebooting of India’s grand strategy. India is turning its back on the United States and rushing to revive a stale idea that sounds powerful when articulated but is impossible to implement— the RIC, a vision of a grand alliance between non-Western powers Russia, India, and China.
What is India seeking to achieve with this pivot to the RIC? Strike fear in Washington, leading to immediate policy reversals by Trump? Even if that does happen, will India then abandon the resuscitation of the RIC and return to what Modi described in his own inimitable style as MAGA plus MIGA equal MEGA? Make America Great Again, plus Make India Great Again, equals mega partnership and prosperity.
Is New Delhi under the illusion that China and Russia have zero concerns about India after observing it cozy up to the U.S. and the Quad for several years? Has Russia not noticed that India has steadily moved away from buying Russian weapon systems and has started shopping from France, Israel and the U.S.?
Grand visions and grand strategies do not emerge from reactionary instincts. They need to be based on a deep understanding of the existing global order, the drivers of change in the international system, and relative power of one’s own nation with regards to other powers and domestic values.
Blaming Donald Trump alone for the deterioration of India-U.S. relations and abandoning the partnership so carefully nurtured by both nations will be a big mistake. India first needs to understand what its contribution was to this failure. Is there a problem with the message or with the messenger?
Until there is a critical self-reflection by the Indian policy community to fully understand what went wrong, rushing to act on a new grand strategy will be a colossal disaster.