Five Relationships That Carry Disproportionate Weight

India’s external strategy is built around five: the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe, China. Each was shaped by a distinct Cold War experience; each has been reworked since 1991.

• Two constants → the search for strategic autonomy, and the search for capital, technology and security partners to sustain domestic transformation.
• Two variables → the structure of the international system, and India’s own domestic capacity.
• Where the bargaining happens → not the bilaterals alone but the triangles: India–US–China, India–Russia–US, India–China–Russia.

Centres of power

Those states and groupings whose capabilities allow them to set rules, supply security or capital, and shape outcomes beyond their own region. The set is no longer confined to the West.

Features of the Present Order

India’s Place in the Emerging Order

• Devin T. Hagerty → world politics is in transition from bipolarity to a new, as yet indeterminate order; the ‘unipolar moment’ is giving way. Two futures: a new bipolarity (US and China atop the great-power hierarchy), or a re-emergence of multipolarity — historically the most common configuration — with BRICS states along with Germany, Japan and Turkey as potential poles.
• States vary on a continuum from status quo to revisionist. China’s place on it is among the liveliest debates in international affairs; its projection of a ‘peaceful rise’ expresses the aspiration to become a world power without threatening the US-led order, and to appear a responsible ‘stakeholder’.
• Robert Gilpin → as new states climb the great-power hierarchy they eventually try to alter existing rules and norms — rules created by other, now declining, great powers for their own purposes. Aspiring great powers try to reshape prevailing norms to suit their interests, which can spark instability.

Scholar readings of the five relationships

Levels of Analysis — the Working Frame

Kenneth Waltz’s three levels of analysis — individual, domestic (state), systemic — runs through this chapter, following Devin T. Hagerty (United States), Vidya Nadkarni (Russia) and Manjeet S. Pardesi (Japan, China).

Three levels — use them to structure any bilateral answer

Nature of the Relationship

The organising insight

Devin T. Hagerty: India wants to be treated like an ally of the United States without actually being an ally of the United States. It seeks the advantages and security of aligning with the world’s dominant power but wishes to avoid the complications such an alliance could bring, particularly concerning China. Indian strategic elites do not explicitly articulate this.

• Ashley J. Tellis → despite shared affinities of constitutional democracy, liberal politics and civic nationalism, the two have not enjoyed consistently warm relations since formal ties began. During the Second World War, Roosevelt reached out to the Indian nationalist movement to convey American support for independence; India’s leadership hoped for a productive relationship after swaraj. Expectations were not met — not primarily through direct conflict, but owing to divergent worldviews, disparities in national priorities, and imbalances in power capabilities, pronounced until the Cold War ended. Neither country proved critical to the vital interests of the other, though the power gap meant New Delhi would always depend more on Washington than the reverse.
• David M. Malone → the history is as complex as it is varied, distinguished by a largely unsuccessful search for common ground. Like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, both nations spent five decades construing the relationship in ways that mystified and displeased the other. Leaders on both sides called this era ‘the fifty wasted years’ or ‘the lost half-century’. Nehru, on his 1949 visit, called India and the USA ‘natural allies’ — a sentiment later repeated by PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Three phases, three labels — the standard scholarly shorthand

Estranged → Entente → Engaged. Estranged Democracies (Dennis Kux — much of the Cold War) → Entente Phase (Devin T. Hagerty — after the 2005–08 civil-nuclear breakthrough) → Engaged Democracies (David M. Malone — present — China’s rise, Russia’s resurgence, West Asian volatility, India’s post-1991 liberalisation).

During PM Modi’s 2023 visit, US President Joe Biden called the partnership among the “most consequential in the world”.

• The relationship moved from bilateral engagement to a Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership without any mutual defence obligation. India’s opposition to US positions on Russia, Iran and Syria, where they clash with Indian interests or regional peace, shows the partnership operates without subordination.
• Alliance would impose restrictions on India’s freedom of manoeuvre and contradict its long-standing non-aligned position; India demands equality, mutual respect and independent decision-making. Deep in capability, shallow in obligation — and both sides currently prefer it that way.

India’s Interests in the United States

Relations during the Cold War

• Ashley J. Tellis → structural realities placed Washington and New Delhi in antinomic positions. The U.S. was the global hegemon and protagonist of capitalism; India a weak polity facing structural challenges at home and abroad, an aspiring ‘great power’ needing a peaceful environment for development.
• Devin T. Hagerty → India was a discontented middle power with the grand strategy of non-alignment. New Delhi saw US-Soviet competition in the subcontinent as challenging its pre-eminence as the ‘natural’ successor to the British Raj and its rightful role as postcolonial South Asia’s security manager. India’s developmental burden and its status as a civilizational-state marked by Kantian pacifism pushed it to seek the advantages of alignment with stronger powers while avoiding the restrictive commitments that come with it.
• Nehru’s formulation: non-alignment ensured the freedom to choose ‘when the choices come to it’. Appadorai → Nehru held that non-alignment did not preclude preferential partnerships; India could be closer to some countries than others, provided it did not get stuck in ideological blocs.

The alliance architecture that damaged ties

Ashley J. Tellis → the non-alignment associational model made sense from India’s viewpoint but could not persuade the United States at the peak of Cold War rivalry. Washington wanted India inside the capitalist alliance; India’s frequent criticism of the U.S. on international issues made harmony untenable. US admission of Pakistan into anti-Soviet alliances imposed heightened defence burdens on New Delhi when it could least afford them. US support for Pakistan and rapprochement with China became the most acute irritant, and a principal reason ties never reached the epitome of friendship.

Other Cold War irritants

• India saw the U.S. as the ‘heir’ to British imperialism rather than a champion of post-colonial states — a perception strongest under the Eisenhower administration.
• Nehru’s socialist outlook — attraction to the Soviet planned command economy, dislike of the capitalist model he associated with colonialism.
• Pokhran-I (1974) — the first nuclear explosion outside the NPT framework, souring ties for over thirty years.

Aneek Chatterjee → the U.S., despite sharing liberal democracy with India, followed a different discourse of pulls and pressures during the Cold War, driven by national interest. It had no hesitation in aligning with Pakistan, ruled for long spells by military dictatorships, and later with communist China. From Jawaharlal Nehru to Chandra Shekhar, no Indian Prime Minister of the Cold War era succeeded in building intimate relations with the United States. Major areas of difference — US zeal to contain communism; India’s rejection of bloc-building; American branding of India as a Soviet supporter and Indian perception of American hegemony; US funding of Pakistan; the non-proliferation regime, which India condemned as unfair and unequal; and the mismatch between Indian socialism and the American market economy.

Relations after the End of the Cold War

• India had to reorient foreign policy away from Nehruvian roots toward a posture compatible with the Western world order. The disintegration of the USSR removed the security umbrella; the balance of payments crisis and domestic upheaval made restructuring unavoidable.
• Devin T. Hagerty → the upward trajectory began when Rajiv Gandhi explored new cooperation with the United States in late 1984. With the global revolution in information technology, India needed electronics, computer software and telecommunications — areas where America vastly outperformed the Soviet Union. Washington had its own reasons: the Reagan administration was eager to drive wedges between Moscow and its allies.
• India dovetailed its reform agenda with the Clinton administration’s grand strategy of ‘engagement and enlargement’, helped by the political clout of a growing and prosperous Indo-American community.
• Devin T. Hagerty → military collaboration began with the 1995 ‘Agreed Minute on Defence Relations’; between 1995 and 1998 came joint naval exercises, an air force pilot exchange programme and cooperative military training. US IMET funding for India doubled over the same years.
• Aneek Chatterjee → “opposing foreign policy objectives and national interest continued to keep the two democracies apart even after the end of the Cold War”. The 1998 tests and India’s refusal to sign the NPT and CTBT allowed the U.S. to stay away; human rights became a disturbing area during the Rao period.
• De-hyphenation of India and Pakistan was the decisive shift — drivers included the Kargil misadventure of 1999, the military coup, Pakistan’s patronage of the Taliban, and evidence of nuclear leakage to North Korea. Clinton’s 2000 visit signalled a regional orientation away from the Cold War alliance with Pakistan.

Relations in the Twenty-First Century

• After 9/11, India offered air bases, refuelling and maintenance support, overflight rights, intelligence cooperation and port facilities. Washington hesitated because it needed Pakistan for Operation Enduring Freedom, but the offer showed Cold War habits of mind were fading. Ashley J. Tellis → since the early twenty-first century, security relations have matured beyond the inhibitions of the Cold War.
• NSSP (2004) eased restrictions on India’s access to US technology in four areas — dual-use items, civilian nuclear applications, civilian space cooperation, ballistic missile defence.
• The 2005 ten-year security agreement covered planned collaboration in multilateral operations, expansion of two-way defence trade, technology transfer and co-production, and missile defence. Purchases followed — USS Trenton, six C-130J Hercules, P-8I Poseidon. The crowning achievement was the civil nuclear deal and the NSG waiver, making it legal for American firms to supply nuclear technology, fuel, reactors and equipment — India the only country outside the NPT with nuclear capabilities permitted to participate in nuclear commerce, with at least eight facilities kept outside safeguards for military purposes.

‘It is now official. It is the policy of the United States to help India to become a major world power in the 21st century.’

David Mulford, 2005

Entente, not alliance — Devin T. Hagerty

By 2009 relations had blossomed into an entente. Compared to alliances, ententes are relatively informal, frequently not articulated in treaties, and leave partners greater flexibility about support in specific instances of threat or aggression.

• Harsh V. Pant → a unique constellation of factors changed the relationship — systemic (end of the Cold War, unipolarity, the rise of China); domestic (opening of the Indian economy, structural adjustment); political (change of government, with the BJP’s pro-West approach and slighter commitment to non-alignment).
• Devin T. Hagerty on the second level → after Obama took office in 2008 there was a strong perception in India that he might be less committed to the entente than President Bush — Democratic presidents historically pressed harder on Kashmir and proliferation, Republicans were more pragmatic. Obama’s early Asia policy prioritised US-China relations, and in South Asia, Pakistan, owing to the Afghan war.
• Devin T. Hagerty → ‘strategic autonomy’ remains a key determinant. India has appreciated since 1962 the necessity of powerful friends against China, yet colonial history instils caution about alliances that might jeopardise hard-won sovereignty. By default New Delhi engages in what may be characterised as ‘neo-nonalignment’ — a grand strategy of exclusion.
• C. Raja Mohan → after the 2010 review of Afghan policy, the U.S. shifted focus back to India, reaffirming the Bush commitment to support India’s ascent to great-power status and recognising India as a central player in the future administration of Asia.

Rebalance to Asia

• Not a foreign policy or military doctrine but a grand-strategic concept, identifying broad US strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific and guiding diplomatic, economic and defence priorities.
• Not fundamentally new — a restoration of the high priority accorded to the Asia-Pacific since 1941, when the U.S. maintained forward engagement through the Second World War and the Cold War.
• Announced in 2011 as a hedging strategy driven by China’s growing power, rhetorical arrogance during the US financial crisis, and assertion of claims in the South China Sea.
• Hillary Clinton in New Delhi urged her hosts ‘not just to look East, but to engage East and act East as well’.
• Leon Panetta → defence trade should move beyond the buyer-seller relationship to substantial co-production and eventually high-technology joint research and development.

Relations in the Modi Years

Kashish Parpiani and Harsh V. Pant

Under PM Narendra Modi, India has moved from its historical fixation with ‘strategic autonomy’ — a ghost of its non-aligned past — to ‘strategic alignment’. Autonomy has been redefined “as an objective that is attainable through strengthened partnerships instead of avoiding partnerships.” The shift reflects pragmatism and realism based on ‘enlightened self-interest’. India therefore has no hesitation in finding common ground with China to defend globalisation against America First protectionism, while embracing the United States on other issues.

The doctrinal move that most 15-markers now turn on

• Growing convergence on a “free and open” Indo-Pacific, with consensus in India’s strategic community that the U.S. is India’s “most important partner”. The alignment also has realpolitik relevance: even amid relative economic decline, the United States is positioned to dominate militarily.
• 2014 — Modi’s vision statement, ‘chalein saath saath, forward together we go’.
• Jan 2015 — Obama’s visit adopts the Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean Region, the first joint articulation of regional challenges.
• 2016 — address to Congress; relations have overcome the “hesitations of history”.
• 2017 — Modi’s visit covers Afghanistan, North Korea, West Asia, Pakistan, the Indo-Pacific, export control regimes, the UNSC, cyberspace, reaffirmation of Major Defence Partner status, and US observer membership of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium.
• Biden years — Biden opposed sanctions after 1998, urged their removal in 2001, and helped seal the nuclear deal in 2008. As President he upgraded the Quad to summit level and launched I2U2 (India, Israel, UAE, United States). A framework on critical and emerging technologies followed the July 2022 joint statement.
• 2022 — the U.S. National Defense Strategy recognises the importance of partnership with India. India does not join US condemnation or sanctions on Russia; the U.S. shows understanding of India’s compulsions and expresses interest in being ‘partner of choice’ in virtually any field.
• Feb 2023 — Air India–Boeing deal for over 200 American-made aircraft. Sept 2023 — the U.S. response to the Canadian allegations against India is restrained despite Canada being a critical ally. Oct 2023 onward — the Israel-Hamas conflict may delay the proposed Middle East-India transport corridor and I2U2 initiatives.
• Nov 2023 2+2 — countering China through military and non-military tools; strengthening India’s military; reducing technological dependence on China; trade, clean energy, higher education and health; the long-run viability of India’s Russia ties.
• Gautam Chikermane → Modi inherited a US$2 trillion economy and strategic goodwill from nuclear cooperation, and used both. This convergence of size, strategy and policy has been timely for the U.S. as it seeks a partner of trust, disengages from Pakistan and de-risks from China.

Trump 2.0 — Tariffs, Repair and the Hemispheric Turn

Within months of 2025 Washington placed a cumulative 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods, part of it a penalty for buying Russian oil, and claimed a mediating role in the India–Pakistan clash of May 2025. The question that runs through the episode: a passing crisis that multi-alignment could absorb, or a strain on strategic autonomy itself?

Tariff escalation and India’s restraint

• Legal basis — the penalty invoked IEEPA and a “national emergency” first declared in EO 14066 (2022). EO 14329 found India “directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil.”
• India’s rebuttal — the MEA (6 August 2025) called the tariffs “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable” and framed oil imports as energy security for 1.4 billion people. India did not retaliate, and issued no further statement after the second tariff round.

The February 2026 settlement — contested and unfinished

• 2 Feb 2026 — Trump and Modi announced a framework for an Interim Agreement; the reciprocal rate was cut to 18% from the 50% peak, and India signalled intent to buy $500 billion of US goods over five years. An executive order of 6 February 2026 removed the Russian-oil penalty, effective 7 February.
• The Joint Statement carried no explicit Indian commitment on Russian oil, even as Washington claimed one.
• 20 Feb 2026 — the US Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA “reciprocal” tariff authority. On 24 February the US imposed a temporary 10% blanket tariff on all partners for 150 days, expiring 24 July 2026. As of mid-2026 the interim pact remained unsigned. Modi and Trump met at the G7 in France on 17 June 2026, their first meeting in over a year.

The hemispheric turn — NSS 2025

• The National Security Strategy (December 2025) named the Western Hemisphere the top priority and America’s “strategic rear”, reviving the Monroe Doctrine through a “Trump Corollary”; US actions over Venezuela and Greenland followed.
• India was named four times — against seven in 2022 and eight in 2017 — described as a Quad partner for balancing China. The 2026 National Defense Strategy made no mention of India or the Quad.
• India’s diversification — a trade agreement with the United Kingdom (July 2025); an FTA with the European Union announced (January 2026) alongside a security and defence partnership with the EU; Modi at the SCO summit (September 2025); Putin in Delhi (December 2025); and a renewed ten-year India–US defence framework (October 2025).

The argument — autonomy eroded or vindicated?

“India’s response to Trump 2.0 has been characterized less by strategic rupture than by tactical adjustment.”

Milan Vaishnav (ed.), Carnegie Endowment

“The key lesson for India from the recent downturn in relations with the United States is that it needs to develop a more proactive rather than passive approach towards its strategic autonomy.”

Chietigj Bajpaee

Areas of Cooperation

Economic

• The U.S. is India’s top trading partner at $130bn in goods; India is Washington’s eighth largest partner. Exports to the U.S. rose 2.81% to USD 78.31 billion in 2022-23 against USD 76.18 billion in 2021-22; imports grew about 16% to USD 50.24 billion.
• In 2020-21 the U.S. was India’s largest export destination and second-largest trading partner. India holds a trade surplus with the United States, a distinction held by few countries, and is the sixth-largest supplier of services imports, near 5% of US services imports.
• Bilateral goods and services trade grew more than 10% per annum over two years to USD 142 billion in 2018. US direct investment about USD 44.5 billion; Indian FDI in the U.S. about USD 18 billion.
• Trade surplus of $28 billion in 2022-23; a declared trade target of $500 billion; agreement on a transitional approach to the Equalization Levy.

Political, geopolitical and multilateral

• Close cooperation in the UN, G-20, ASEAN Regional Forum, IMF, World Bank and WTO; US support for a permanent UNSC seat and for NSG membership.
• QUAD with Australia and Japan; India among twelve countries in IPEF, joining the Overarching Agreement and Pillars 3 (Clean Economy) and 4 (Fair Economy) in 2024.
• Hotline between the PMO and the White House (2015). India a member of IORA, the U.S. a dialogue partner. The U.S. joined the International Solar Alliance in 2021 and India’s Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative.
• Blue Dot Network certification of sustainable, transparent infrastructure as an alternative to the BRI; Minerals Security Partnership for critical mineral supply chains.
• Joint condemnation of cross-border terrorism, with calls for Pakistan to act against groups on its territory.

Defence and security

• Defence Policy Group (1995) upgraded to the New Defence Framework Agreement (2005); a 10-year framework signed 2005 and renewed 2015; Joint Declaration on Defence Cooperation 2013.
• Major Defence Partner designation (2016); STA-1 status (2018), India the third Asian country to receive licence-free access to space and defence technology; support for entry into the MTCR (2016), Wassenaar Arrangement (2017) and Australia Group (2018).
• Exercises — Yudh Abhyas, Vajra Prahar, Red Flag, Cope India, Tarkash, Tiger Triumph, Blue Flag; Malabar with the navies since 1992, Japan a permanent participant from 2015; multilateral RIMPAC. India conducts more bilateral exercises with the U.S. than with any other country. The U.S. renamed its Pacific Command USINDOPACOM.
• Acquisitions — aggregate defence acquisition crossed US$ 16 billion; defence trade climbed from under USD 1 billion in 2008 to over USD 25 billion by mid-2025, including C-17s, C-130Js, Apaches and Chinooks; the US$ 3bn MQ-9B Predator deal (2023), to be assembled in India under ‘Make in India’.
• DTTI (2012) for co-development and co-production; negotiations begun on a Reciprocal Defence Procurement agreement and a Security of Supply arrangement.
• India joined the US-led Combined Maritime Forces as an associate partner (2023); launched INDUS-X (2023) linking defence start-ups; and began the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) (2023) covering AI, quantum, space, telecom and semiconductors.
• The Indian Navy and US Naval Forces Central Command are deepening maritime cooperation in the Western Indian Ocean, where Chinese presence at Gwadar and Djibouti concerns India. Cybersecurity — the India-U.S. Cyber Framework (2016); Cyber Security Dialogue and Joint Working Group on ICT.

Science, technology and space

• IUSSTF (2000); India-US Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement (2005); Indo-U.S. Science & Technology Joint Commission.
• India contributed $250 million to the Thirty-Meter Telescope Project in Hawaii; IndiGO with the U.S. LIGO Laboratory.
• Micron Technology to invest up to $825m in a semiconductor assembly and test facility; Lam Research to train 60,000 Indian engineers.
• Space — first U.S.-manufactured sounding rocket launched from Thumba in 1963; the first four INSAT satellites built by U.S. industry; two NASA instruments on Chandrayaan-1; Joint Working Group on Civil Space Cooperation; Mars Orbiter Mission collaboration; NISAR; Raytheon’s role in GAGAN; India’s signing of the Artemis Accords.
• Joint production of F414 jet engines by General Electric in India; AI-enabled cancer and diabetes research with the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Energy, climate, civil nuclear

• U.S.-India Energy Dialogue (2005) with six working groups; the Strategic Energy Partnership (2018) and the Natural Gas Task Force (2018). India began importing US crude in 2017 and LNG in 2018; crude and LNG imports valued at about USD 6.7 billion.
• The 40-year ban on American oil exports lifted in December 2015; India’s first cargo of 1.6 million barrels arrived in 2017. Reliance, Essar and GAIL invested about USD 5 billion in US shale assets.
• PACE and the Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center; Climate Change Working Group; Joint Working Group on Hydrofluorocarbon; U.S.-India Partnership for Climate Resilience; U.S.-India Climate Fellowship Program; both members of the ISA.
• Civil nuclear — agreement signed October 2008; a Civil Nuclear Energy Working Group on R&D has met ten times; Westinghouse in discussion with NPCIL for six AP-1000 reactors at Kovvada. Implementation had stalled in the Indian Parliament over nuclear liability: the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 was incompatible with global practice, which directs liability to plant operators rather than suppliers. The impasse was resolved only in January 2015, when Obama and Modi announced that all remaining issues stood settled — domestic legislative politics delaying a systemic-level bargain by half a decade.

Higher education and people-to-people

• IIT Kanpur established with nine American universities and USAID (1962); Fulbright-Nehru fellowships with joint funding since 2008, nearly 200 awards annually — the largest US Fulbright Scholar Program in the world.
• About 130,000 Indian students pursuing advanced degrees; more than 200,000 across courses. Higher Education Dialogue; community colleges for skill development; Technology Enabled Learning and MOOCs; GIAN, hosting up to 1000 American academics a year.
• Negotiations for a Cultural Property Agreement to prevent trafficking of cultural artefacts.

The Four Foundational Agreements

The ladder of interoperability — eighteen years, four agreements. GSOMIA · 2002 (information security) → LEMOA · 2016 (logistics exchange) → COMCASA · 2018 (secure communications) → BECA · 2020 (geospatial data)

“BECA is expected to elevate the India-US strategic/defence partnership to an unprecedented mega level. It is one of the agreements that the US usually signs with its closest partners as it allows the interoperability of armed forces and the exchange of classified sensitive information.”

Harris Bilal Malik

• Timing → signed at the third 2+2 Dialogue with Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper, a week before the US election — an unambiguous political signal that the defence partnership had come of age (Rakesh Sood).
• Limits → Manoj Sinha: the U.S. is not obliged to provide geospatial data in every circumstance and is unlikely to assist in any venture relating to Pakistan; obligingness on China may not survive a change of administration. Abhijnan Rej: significant obstacles remain to seamless interoperability; India’s appetite for Russian weapon systems is a sticking point from Washington’s perspective.
• Assessment → BECA raises capability and interoperability without creating an alliance obligation — which suits India’s preference for entente over alliance.

Areas of Concern and Contestation

Lingering trust issues

Devin T. Hagerty → Indian strategic elites remain sceptical of US bona fides. Even while acknowledging US support for India’s great-power aspirations and its UNSC bid, the perception of Washington as a historically unpredictable partner cannot be entirely dispelled —

Indian scientists and technocrats who rose during years of technology denial advise vigilance against dependence on Washington for sophisticated weaponry and nuclear fuel. The Khobragade affair showed residual mutual tone-deafness: Washington and New Delhi have not mastered the language of partners who expect occasional conflicts within a permanently stable relationship.

Trade and economic frictions

• Alyssa Ayres → bilateral trade deficits, previously not a top US concern, became a major focus under the Trump administration. In 2019, India, with a goods deficit of $23.3 billion, was the eleventh largest for the U.S.
• 2018 tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium; India’s refusal to remove 20% tariffs on ICT products delayed the trade deal; challenges at the WTO on both sides; US complaints about customs clearance procedures.
• GSP withdrawal covering around 2,000 items worth $6.3 billion; India retaliated with tariffs on 28 US products.
• Data localisation — the RBI circular mandating in-country storage of payment data with unrestricted central bank access, aimed at MasterCard, Visa, American Express, PayPal, Facebook and Google. India opted out of the Osaka Track on the digital economy, fearing erosion of consensus-based decision-making and of policy flexibility for digital industrialisation.
• Services — Indian competitiveness against US market-access barriers such as limits on foreign ownership and local presence requirements; from India’s side, temporary visa policy and worker visa fees; India seeks a totalization agreement.
• Agriculture — long-standing and among the hardest to resolve. The U.S. exported around $1.5 billion of agricultural products to India in 2018 and imported $2.7 billion. US dairy exports are obstructed by India’s requirement that dairy products come from cows fed a vegetarian diet throughout life.
• Investment and IPR — the USTR objects to ‘Make in India’ and Atmanirbhar Bharat; US experts cite a restrictive FDI regime, opaque sectoral policy, high tariffs, limited state-level decision-making authority and exit barriers. India remains on the Priority Watch List; both are outside CPTPP and RCEP.
• Immigration and visas — during the Trump years immigration became a political lightning rod, with an across-the-board decline in international student enrolment. Indians were 17.9% of foreign students in 2017-18, second only to Chinese nationals, contributing US$7.5 billion. India is the largest user of H-1B visas (67.4% of FY14 issuances) and among the largest users of L1 (28.2%). Denials rose under “Buy American and Hire American”, with lower issuance of H-4 visas. Visa appointment waits average about 472 days for business or tourist categories.

Defence and technology hurdles

• Breakthrough on end-use monitoring (July 2009) opened Indian modernisation programmes to US firms; most Indian defence organisations were removed from the ‘Entity List’ in 2011; DTTI followed in 2012.
• Setbacks: India rejected Boeing and Lockheed-Martin fighters in favour of the French Dassault Rafale; US firms complained of slow, delay-prone Indian assessment; Ambassador Timothy J. Roemer complained about the absence of a ‘two-way street’.
• Samir Lalwani → “Indian participants tended to view American concerns as cover for a narrow, self-interested effort to boost US arms sales without regard for optimal Indian defense-planning.”
• Interoperability concerns arising from Russian platforms; American fear that plugging a Russian air defence system into an Indian network carrying US hardware would let Moscow identify features of US platforms.
• Manoj Sinha → the U.S. is under no obligation to supply technology under GSOMIA; at the end of the day the U.S. is the giver and India the receiver.

Other concerns

• RS Yadav, in India’s Foreign Policy: Post-Cold War Years, flags the S-400 purchase and CAATSA, mutual WTO non-compliance charges, and Indian price restrictions on imported medical devices, alongside the IPR regime as a trade restriction.
• Ashok Malik identifies further roadblocks: protectionism in the U.S.; divergent readings of Iran and West Asia, where India treats Iran as the link to Central Asia and Afghanistan while the U.S. treats it as a destabilising influence; the recurring American temptation of a compact with China, seen in Clinton’s post-Pokhran remarks, Obama’s G2 talk and Trump’s early overtures; and American obsession with Russia at a time when India’s economic engagement with Moscow is limited.
• M. K. Narayanan → the China-Russia-Pakistan nexus and a hardline Iran under Ebrahim Raisi all worked to India’s disadvantage. Concerns voiced by some US politicians on human rights in Kashmir risk internationalising the issue.

India, the United States and China

• David M. Malone → a growing India, a declining Pakistan and an increasingly powerful China combined to motivate the entente. One feature of the new American South Asia policy was the conceptual decoupling of India and Pakistan; China, not Pakistan, gradually emerged as the third party in the relationship.

‘when the first and second-ranked powers fight, the first often ardently courts the third.’

Ashutosh Varshney, on ‘a new triangle’

• Shared concerns — China’s rapid growth, heavy investment in military capabilities, and progress in artificial intelligence and 5G telecommunications.
• Condoleezza Rice, well before the rebalance, argued the U.S. should pay closer attention to India as ‘an element in China’s calculation’. The Bush administration recalibrated South Asia policy, counting India among the ‘major powers’ with Russia and China, and grooming India to support the U.S. against a rising China, in censuring Iran, and as a partner in controlling the Indian Ocean.
• Hillary Clinton in Hanoi (July 2010) → “the United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea.”
• Technology hedging — both banned Huawei, a company with suspected links to the PLA, protecting domestic 5G capability; Western companies moved out of China toward other Asian countries including India; the U.S. tightened market access for China after realising that increased trade had strengthened Beijing’s hand, an area where India had already banned Chinese companies and apps.
• Partnership for Quality Infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific. America’s national security strategy under Biden reaffirmed China as its greatest threat.
• Shivshankar Menon → there has been a conviction that a true India-US strategic partnership serves India’s national interests in the changed geopolitical situation; though neither states it explicitly, China’s ascent has been a significant motivating factor.
• Doctrinal overlap — India’s Act East and SAGAR against America’s ARIA and FOIP; a declassified 2018 US Indo-Pacific strategy paper called for India to become “a net security provider”.
• Harsh V. Pant → India is “key to US efforts to preserve a stable balance in the Indo-Pacific”, yet may keep the “principled distance” that safeguards strategic autonomy. Limits of ‘natural’ convergence: India’s ties with Russia and Iran, the S-400 and CAATSA, trade and visa frictions, and Indian insistence on strategic autonomy.
• Residual worry in India that Washington does not share its concern over Chinese irredentism in the Himalayas and splits attention toward Russia.

India, Russia and the United States

• With Western sanctions on Russia, Sino-Russian relations have moved from enmity to détente and now entente.
• Manoj Joshi → India does not, and cannot, view deepening Sino-Russian relations as a zero-sum game. It engages both bilaterally and through the RIC grouping, the SCO and BRICS. Owing to the power imbalance, Russia frequently views India as a mechanism for balancing China.
• Sanctions after the annexation of Crimea (2014) and the invasion of Ukraine (2022) pushed Russia toward Chinese trade and investment. Russian investment in China is about $1 billion; Chinese investment in Russia is about ten times greater. China has extended economic influence westward into the Central Asian states through the SCO and the Belt and Road Initiative.
• Manoj Joshi → Russia created the Eurasian Economic Union as a defensive perimeter against Chinese pressure in the former Soviet space, yet China’s economic weight gives Beijing the upper hand in any EEU-China relationship.
• The civil nuclear deal made China uneasy; New Delhi has built substantial military ties with Washington while stopping short of alliance or full endorsement of American Indo-Pacific formulations.
• The Ukraine crisis places New Delhi in an awkward midpoint between Russia, a longstanding politico-military legacy partner, and the West, a growing partner in a multipolar context. It has revived debate about what non-alignment, repackaged as ‘strategic autonomy’, really means.
• Dual pressure — from Russia as traditional ally and from the U.S. as Quad partner. India’s economic interests lie largely with the U.S. and Europe; sentiment cannot substitute for interest calculation.

India, the United States and Afghanistan

• Devin T. Hagerty → the withdrawal of US and NATO forces was the most important regional security issue preoccupying Indian strategic elites, with potential follow-on effects on the north-western subcontinent. India feared that, as after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, the vacuum would produce the Taliban and terrorism — fears borne out in 2021.
• M. K. Narayanan → Biden’s decision to fix a withdrawal date regardless of conditions inside Afghanistan facilitated the Taliban takeover. The “horses for courses” mantra in US foreign policy significantly affects India’s strategic and security interests; the hasty withdrawal raised doubts about American credibility.
• Brahma Chellaney → the exit told American allies that they count on US support when they most need it at their peril; the withdrawal compromised India’s security.
• The Af-Pak framing re-hyphenated the subcontinent at a time when India valued de-hyphenation, and rested on American dependence on Pakistan for Operation Enduring Freedom. India’s response was to invest heavily in Afghan reconstruction and to seek land access to Central Asia through Iran and Afghanistan. India and Russia had earlier converged in supporting the Northern Alliance, which became the core of the US-backed resistance forces.
• Consequences for India — a strategic setback and a near-term triumph for the Taliban’s chief backer, Pakistan; damage to India’s heavy investments; and jeopardy to the long-standing goal of land access to Central Asia through a port and railway line via Iran and Afghanistan.

Views of Scholars — the United States

Theoretical Perspectives — India–US

Policy Suggestions — India–US

• Devin T. Hagerty on the post-2008 malaise: the 2009 change of administration, Obama’s early focus on China and ‘Af-Pak’, India’s reluctance to compromise strategic autonomy, the policy exhaustion of the Manmohan Singh government, the long passage of the nuclear deal from agreement to execution, bureaucratic delays in arms sales, the rejection of American combat aircraft bids, and the Khobragade affair.
• Hillary Clinton → less need for dramatic breakthroughs, more need for steady, focused cooperation to address differences and advance shared interests — daily, weekly and monthly collaboration that is not glamorous but strategically important.
• C. Raja Mohan → never stop negotiating and keep making deals, small or big; be ready to compromise, since India’s opening bid tends to remain its final position while Americans split the difference and move on; strengthen economic capability and end protectionism; diversify trade options, including by finalising the BTIA with the EU.
• Create a platform for aspirational bilateral economic conversation — revive the long-delayed U.S.-India Commercial Dialogue or the underperforming U.S.-India CEO Forum. Reinvigorate engagement between Parliament and Congress; regular contact builds personal bonds that survive changes of government.
• The U.S. should announce a formal waiver of potential CAATSA sanctions over the S-400 and accommodate India’s core policy of strategic autonomy and multi-alignment; India in turn should be cautious about steps that tangibly deepen strategic ties with Russia. Address the visa appointment backlog.
• Teresita Schaffer and Howard Schaffer (India at a Global High Table) → current strategic realities create strong imperatives for closer relations, yet India conducts foreign policy in a manner that is preachy and prickly — it lacks strategic culture, is known for exceptionalism, and does not always understand its own benefits. There is therefore a limit to which the U.S. can rely on India.

The creative tension at the heart of it

India needs US technology, markets and support to transform itself; the U.S. finds a stronger, more active India useful. India remains an awkward partner because its West Asian interests differ and its stage of development generates economic demands that strain American preferences. For India to function as a “swing state” in the Indo-Pacific, friction had to be minimised and the regional arms balance adjusted — and India’s purchases of Russian oil mitigated the economic impact of the Ukraine war, while the defiant S-400 deal may have raised India’s influence in the global arms market, where it is the largest buyer.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue

A mechanism facilitating dialogue between four major democracies of the Indo-Pacific — Australia, Japan, India, the United States — on regional security. It believes in openness, freedom of movement and respect for the rules-based international order.

From a tsunami relief group to a leaders’ summit. 2004 (Indian Ocean Tsunami ‘core group’ — over 200,000 dead across 14 countries) → 2006–07 (Abe’s ‘arc of freedom and prosperity’; ‘confluence of the two seas’) → 2007 (First ‘initial Quad’ meeting, ASEAN Regional Forum, Manila) → 2021–22 (First in-person dialogue; summit level; Tokyo Summit initiatives)

• Origins — India, Japan, the United States and Australia formed a tsunami ‘core group’ and began sending relief. Former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran noted that ‘India’s full capabilities came as a surprise to the world’, highlighting India’s strength, leadership abilities and commitment to the Indo-Pacific. The humanitarian mission ended in mid-January 2005, but a new seedling had emerged.
• Function — there is a feeling that the Quad is an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative, or a mechanism aimed at containing China, a defensive mechanism to reduce Chinese influence in Asia. China’s continued militarisation of the South China Sea compels members to intensify defence cooperation, while the BRI encounters growing backlash and observers question its fiscal sustainability. The Trump administration identified China as a “revisionist” power in its National Security Strategy, which says China seeks to replace the United States in the Indo-Pacific and reorder the region in its favour. “Decoupling” became a new foreign policy buzzword — shorthand for the American commitment, through taxes, tariffs and other punitive measures, to disentangle its companies and their technologies from Chinese supply chains.
• Value for India (Harsh V. Pant) — through the Quad, India can counterbalance China’s growing presence, including the BRI’s port facilities in neighbouring countries that give rise to a sense of encirclement. With the Quad, India can rise above middle-power status and project influence beyond the Indo-Pacific. Act East and the Extended Neighbourhood policy boost engagement. Bilateral relations with ‘like-minded’ countries can be strengthened through information sharing agreements, arms exchange agreements and defence ties. Economically, the Quad makes India a preferred destination for investment, especially after COVID-19; in the post-pandemic order India is seen as a significant player because of ‘Vaccine Maitri’. The Quad has the potential to boost India’s pharmaceutical prowess and assert its leadership through economic cooperation, shared democratic values and strong defence ties.
• Chinese response — Beijing equates the Quad with AUKUS as cliques strengthening the US Indo-Pacific strategy and threatening the Maritime Silk Road. Russian response — Sergey Lavrov calls it an “Asian NATO”.
• Limits — Harsh V. Pant warns that coalition arrangements are not seamless and that India must simultaneously manage BRICS, the Quad and other groupings. The Quad remains deliberately non-aligned, which suits India’s strategic autonomy and Japan’s pacifist constitution — balance without entanglement, its value lying precisely in being a coalition rather than an alliance.

Where the Quad stands now

Public goods, or a balancing coalition?

• S. L. Narasimhan → no member officially calls the Quad a security grouping; its only security-linked work covers cybersecurity and maritime security, both non-traditional. Two views compete on formalising it — a counterbalance to China, or like-minded states serving regional development. The second holds among members, so the Quad stays informal.
• Sayantan Haldar → the grouping has a real maritime record that a narrow, militarised lens misjudges; it is “not a military alliance nor a security bloc” but a partnership delivering maritime security as a global good.
• Chietigj Bajpaee → identifies a gradual de-securitisation of the Quad in traditional security; as AUKUS and the Squad take on harder maritime tasks, India risks becoming “a second-tier member” of the regional security order.
• The “weak link” charge → Australia, Japan and the United States are treaty allies, India is not; India has a contested land border with China and has declined freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea. Against that: logistics agreements signed, BrahMos sold to the Philippines, and the 2016 South China Sea arbitral award backed.
• Kelly Grieco → the limits are structural, not simply a Trump effect — India’s insistence on autonomy caps how far the Quad can align, while Japan and Australia press for a harder security focus; the pledge of 1.2 billion vaccine doses fell short of 800 million. Akriti Vasudeva Kalyankar reads the same moment as a “streamlined and focused” Quad that may deliver better.

“The Quad has consistently been better at announcing initiatives than delivering results.”

Kelly Grieco, 27 May 2026

“We strongly oppose any destabilizing or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion.”

The Wilmington Declaration, 21 September 2024

Growing Relations with the United States

• From post-Cold War suspicion to close cooperation — the US is among India’s largest trade and investment partners.
• Maritime and defence anchor: the Malabar exercise grew from bilateral to a quadrilateral with Japan and Australia; the QUAD and the institutional 2+2 dialogue.
• The India–US Civil Nuclear Agreement reshaped the strategic equation (India gave up the IPI pipeline for it).

India’s Indo-Pacific concept

SAGAR — “Security and Growth for All in the Region” — and the Indo-Pacific Oceans’ Initiative (IPOI, 2019), built on seven pillars, anchored on “Act East” and “Act West.”

The partnership coexists with strategic autonomy: India rejected US mediation on Kashmir and refused to criticise Russia over Ukraine, becoming the second-largest importer of Russian oil. The wider web runs through Japan, Vietnam, Australia and France, with ASEAN centrality at its core.