{"id":32105,"date":"2026-07-01T07:52:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/india-should-stop-panicking-about-trump-foreign-policy\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T07:52:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:52:06","slug":"india-should-stop-panicking-about-trump-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/india-should-stop-panicking-about-trump-foreign-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"India Should Stop Panicking About Trump \u2013 Foreign Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What Mark Twain once <\/span>said<\/a> about Richard Wagner\u2019s music\u2014\u201cmuch better than it sounds\u201d\u2014applies equally to the state of India-U.S. relations. But if you follow the public discourse in New Delhi, you might be forgiven for thinking that the partnership is coming apart.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s post-Cold War ties with the United States have been pronounced to be in crisis with remarkable regularity. This time, the triggers are real enough. A stream of threats and insults<\/a> from U.S. President Donald Trump; his false claim<\/a> that he brokered an India-Pakistan cease-fire last year; <\/span>the U.S. war against Iran<\/span>, including Washington\u2019s reluctance to show any contrition for the killing of Indian sailors<\/span> in the Gulf of Oman; U.S. support for Pakistan\u2019s role as a peacemaker<\/span> in the Middle East; the quiet abandonment of the Indo-Pacific nomenclature<\/span> that Trump himself had championed in his first term; and his<\/span> talk of a \u201cG-2\u201d condominium between the United States and China. Together, these have created a sense in New Delhi that the relationship is now at a crossroads<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The mood is in stark contrast to 2024, when Indian public<\/span> opinion was broadly rooting for Trump\u2019s return to the White House. Then, prayers for his election victory<\/a> were being held in some quarters, and there was widespread expectation that another Trump term would surely prove better than the Biden administration years.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s abrasive treatment<\/span> of India following his 2025 inauguration did much to sour that goodwill. Since U.S. Ambassador Sergio Gor\u2019s arrival in New Delhi early this year, things have quieted somewhat, but the resentment lingers. New issues keep churning public resentment. Trump\u2019s popularity ratings have fallen in India as they have across most of the world, although they have not collapsed in the way they have in Europe. The most recent Pew Research Center survey<\/a><\/span>, conducted in early 2026, put Indian confidence in Trump at 39 percent, down from 51 percent in the previous year\u2019s poll.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem is the emotionalism that drives India\u2019s public debate over foreign policy in general and the relationship with the United States in particular. No country dominates contemporary India\u2019s mind space more than the United States. Even at the height of left-wing politics in the 1970s, the Soviet Union never loomed as large. For all the elite talk of \u201cmultialignment,\u201d Russia and China<\/span> carry no popular resonance with the Indian middle class. Moscow has become steadily less salient<\/span> in economic and political terms, and the challenges posed by Beijing have not diminished\u2014they have only multiplied<\/span> as China\u2019s inexorable rise continues.<\/p>\n

Yet the more important that the India-U.S. relationship has become, the more frequently it has appeared to be in crisis. As cooperation has expanded from narrow diplomatic engagement to encompass defense, trade, technology, energy, education, and intelligence, the opportunities for disagreement have multiplied accordingly.<\/p>\n

Mature strategic partnerships generate friction precisely because they touch so many interests simultaneously. Washington\u2019s closest allies in Europe and East Asia have long quarreled with it over trade, technology, burden-sharing, and military interventions without anyone concluding that their partnerships are collapsing. India and the United States have reached a similar stage in their relationship. The Indian foreign-policy elite, however, still has a steep learning curve to climb.<\/p>\n

For much of the Cold War, India and the United States stood on opposite sides of the geopolitical divide. Pakistan was Washington\u2019s principal partner in South Asia, while India moved steadily closer to the Soviet Union. The Soviet collapse and India\u2019s economic reforms began to alter that equation. The dialogue following India\u2019s nuclear tests in 1998, the civil nuclear initiative of 2005, the rise of the Indo-Pacific security paradigm, expanding defense cooperation, growing bilateral trade (along with India\u2019s mounting surplus), and deepening technological collaboration have steadily increased the weight of the partnership. The trend line of the past quarter century is unmistakable: Every crisis has been followed by an expansion rather than a contraction of strategic engagement.<\/p>\n

That history offers an important perspective on the turbulence surrounding the Trump administration. There is little doubt that Trump\u2019s style has complicated the management of the partnership. His instinct for public confrontation, transactional diplomacy, and willingness to unsettle partners have eaten into the reservoir of goodwill accumulated over two decades.<\/p>\n

Yet positive feelings for the United States have diminished without disappearing. In mid-June, a road beside the U.S. consulate in Hyderabad was renamed \u201cDonald Trump Avenue\u201d by the Telangana government to<\/span> mark the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence. The contrast with a previous era is instructive: In 1969, a street in Kolkata was renamed Ho Chi Minh Sarani precisely because the U.S. Consulate was located on it\u2014an act of left-wing defiance that captured the anti-American temper of that time. Hyderabad\u2019s gesture suggests how far the political temperature has shifted.<\/p>\n

Even as India\u2019s irritation with Trump has grown, it has gone out of its way to deepen engagement with the U.S. government and policies. In October, India and the United States signed<\/a><\/span> a 10-year defense framework agreement, the most ambitious yet in a series of defense agreements that stretches back to 2005. India has joined Washington\u2019s technology initiatives, including Pax Silica\u2014the U.S.-led coalition intended to secure semiconductor supply chains<\/span> and critical minerals\u2014and signed the India-U.S. AI Opportunity Partnership<\/a><\/span> in February. Maritime coordination in the Indian Ocean continues to deepen.<\/p>\n

Yet India\u2019s foreign-policy elite oscillates between anxieties about entrapment and abandonment, seemingly unable to settle on a steadier disposition toward the United States.<\/p>\n

Trade disputes have become more visible, but bilateral commerce has continued to expand. Talks on an interim trade deal are ongoing. U.S. companies remain among the largest investors in India\u2019s digital economy and advanced manufacturing. Indian firms continue to deepen their presence in the American market. The H-1B visa channel remains contested in American politics<\/span>, but U.S. technology companies\u2019 dependence on Indian engineering talent is structural and unlikely to unwind quickly. Some 5 million Americans of Indian origin now connect the two societies through business, universities, scientific research, and increasingly through politics. The relationship rests on a far broader social foundation than at any previous point in its history.<\/p>\n

Part of the anxiety also reflects a sense of entitlement within the Indian foreign-policy elite. Just like the clich\u00e9 that many <\/span>Indian engineering graduates<\/span> believe they have<\/span> a right to work in the United States, the Indian middle class seems to assume that a close strategic partnership should automatically translate into unrestricted access to the United States\u2019 most advanced technologies. When export controls delay cooperation in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, or defense production, disappointment quickly hardens into accusations that Washington is an unreliable partner.<\/p>\n

This misreads U.S. technology policy. The United States has always exercised restraint on the transfer of advanced capabilities, even to its closest allies. Washington now guards cutting-edge technologies far more closely than it did in the era of globalization. Japan, Australia, South Korea, Britain, and other leading European allies confront similar restrictions. India is neither uniquely disadvantaged nor uniquely privileged.<\/p>\n

The more important question is not whether India receives unrestricted technology transfers but whether it becomes an indispensable partner in developing and producing frontier capabilities. That requires sustained investment in India\u2019s own innovation ecosystem, stronger research universities, deeper industrial capacity, and partnerships that move beyond the traditional buyer-seller relationship. The measure of success for India should be technology co-development, not technology transfer.<\/p>\n

Pakistan\u2019s recent diplomatic visibility<\/span> during the Iran crisis has generated another wave of concern in India. Islamabad\u2019s role in facilitating contacts between Washington and Tehran has inevitably revived speculation about a Pakistani return to the center of U.S. strategy in South Asia. But history counsels caution. During the Cold War and the so-called war on terrorism, Pakistan was a front-line state in the U.S. strategic calculus. Today\u2019s circumstances are fundamentally different. Washington may continue to find Pakistan useful in managing specific crises involving Afghanistan, Iran, or parts of the Islamic world.<\/p>\n

Tactical relevance, however, is not the same as strategic centrality. By every durable measure\u2014economic weight, technological capability, demographic scale, market potential, diaspora influence, and geopolitical significance\u2014India\u2019s weight in the U.S. worldview far exceeds Pakistan\u2019s. This is easily obscured in New Delhi by the intensity of hostility toward Islamabad, but the underlying asymmetry is real. Although the United States may periodically need Pakistan, its long-term strategic investment in South Asia is overwhelmingly centered on India.<\/p>\n

The larger strategic question concerns China. Recent developments have triggered exaggerated conclusions in the Indian debate. Trump\u2019s occasional suggestions of a grand bargain with Beijing have revived fears of a G-2. At the same time, India\u2019s cautious efforts to stabilize relations with China\u2014such as renewed engagement through the BRICS grouping<\/span> and quieter public rhetoric after years of confrontation\u2014have prompted speculation that New Delhi is drifting away from Washington.<\/p>\n

These readings mistake tactical adjustments for strategic transformation. Neither the United States nor India can escape the structural realities created by China\u2019s rise. For Washington, periodic stabilization efforts with Beijing cannot dissolve fundamental differences over technological leadership, trade, military power, Taiwan, maritime order, and the future balance of power in Asia. Every recent U.S. administration has struggled to arrive at a sustainable China strategy. The political emphases shift from one presidency to the next\u2014as they clearly have under Trump\u2014but the underlying rivalry endures.<\/p>\n

India confronts a different but equally durable set of contradictions. Participation in BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation cannot resolve the <\/span>boundary dispute<\/span>, Chinese military pressure along the Himalayas, Beijing\u2019s strategic partnership with Pakistan, or the widening power asymmetry between the two Asian giants. Nor can a limited diplomatic thaw fundamentally alter India\u2019s interest in preserving a favorable balance of power in Asia.<\/p>\n

This is why the logic of India-U.S. strategic cooperation is likely to outlast periodic fluctuations in either country\u2019s policy toward China. Neither a G-2 between Washington and Beijing nor a reset between New Delhi and Beijing can eliminate the structural interests that draw India and the United States together.<\/p>\n

The precise forms of cooperation will shift: One administration may emphasize the Quad<\/span>, another bilateral defense ties; some periods will prioritize supply chains and advanced technology, others maritime security or intelligence. Trump\u2019s second term has already altered the vocabulary of U.S. strategy, softened the Indo-Pacific rhetoric, and pursued selective engagement with Beijing. These are tactical adjustments, not departures from the deeper strategic logic.<\/p>\n

Both India and the United States seek an Asian balance in which no single power dominates the continent. They may disagree about approach, sequencing, or priorities, and they will often pursue parallel rather than identical policies. But their respective competitions with Chinese power remain strong enough to sustain long-term strategic cooperation.<\/p>\n

The real achievement of the past quarter century is not that India and the United States have eliminated their differences. It is that they have learned to prevent those differences from overwhelming the relationship. The partnership has acquired sufficient institutional depth, economic interdependence, technological cooperation, and societal connectivity to absorb repeated shocks. It has become resilient not because the two countries always agree, but because both increasingly recognize that they have far more to lose from estrangement than from disagreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Mark Twain once said about Richard Wagner\u2019s music\u2014\u201cmuch better than it sounds\u201d\u2014applies equally to the state of India-U.S. relations. But if you follow the public discourse in New Delhi, you might be forgiven for thinking that the partnership is coming apart. 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