Eagle and Tiger: India-U.S. Tensions and Prospects for the Future

Prime Minister Modi, President Xi, and President Putin greet each other warmly at the Shanghai Cooperation Summit (Wikimedia Commons/kremlin.ru)

In response to the punitive tariffs that the Trump Administration placed on India related to India’s purchase of Russian oil exports, Delhi is pursuing a cooperative relationship with Beijing and doubling down on its partnership with Moscow. On July 30, Trump announced a 25 percent base tariff on India; then, on Aug. 6, he signed an executive order imposing a second levy of 25 percent by Aug. 27 unless New Delhi stops purchasing oil from Moscow. Adding insult to injury, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro penned a Financial Times column condemning India for abetting Russia’s war on Ukraine as U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also excoriated India for “profiteering” from Russian oil. Indian leaders moved quickly to portray a rapprochement with Chinese Communist Party officials and communicate their determination to stay close to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi traveled to New Delhi, marking the first visit of a high-level Chinese official to the Indian capital since the two countries agreed to disengage along their Himalayan border last October. Wang met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. After Modi’s meeting with Wang, the Indian leader highlighted the “steady progress” made since the 2020 military standoff. Wang uttered platitudes about the need for India and China not to be “adversaries” but “partners” and that the two sides should “trust and support” each other. On August 31^st, the world saw images of Vladimir Putin walking a smiling Prime Minister Modi across a room in the Great Hall of the People to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the reception of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in China. Delhi’s estrangement from Washington combined with reconciliation with Beijing and sustained support for Moscow is a significant development that cuts against the long-term interests of India and the United States. The first step in preventing what would be a disastrous outcome for both countries is to review the recent history of the relationship between the two democratic nations and what is at stake.

In 2017, I had the privilege of visiting Delhi. My account of that visit and my reflections on it place this moment in India–U.S. relations in context. Consider the following from Battlegrounds, pp. 207-212:

India was a critical partner, not only in combating South Asia terrorism, but also in the competition with the Chinese Communist Party across the Indo-Pacific. India is a country with tremendous challenges and opportunities. Although it was, in the 1980s, a leader in the Non-Aligned Movement (a group of developing states not formally aligned with the Soviet or U.S. power bloc), and thus resists formal alliances, it was obvious that U.S. and Indian interests were converging. India is projected to surpass China as the most populous nation in the world by 2024. Its population is young, savings and investment rates are healthy, and its economy is growing. But the government struggles to provide social services as rapid economic growth combined with the burgeoning population is generating severe interrelated problems in energy, environment, and food and water security. From 1990 to 2020, India halved its poverty rate, but more than 365 million people remain in multidimensional poverty. India’s diversity also presents challenges to governance and to maintaining a cohesive national identity, as it is home to the largest population of Hindus (79.8 percent) and the second-largest population of Muslims (14.2 percent) in the world, as well as Christians and Sikhs. India recognizes twenty-two official languages, but approximately one hundred more are spoken, highlighting the country’s tremendous geographic and cultural diversity. But India works. And its leaders generally share U.S. and Western democratic principles, and concerns about the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign to promote its authoritarian state model. India is a country that the United States and the world needs to succeed. I hoped to learn more about how to expand our cooperation across diplomacy, economic development, security, commerce, and emerging technologies.

India is vulnerable both to Pakistan’s sustained support for terrorists and the existential threat of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The greatest latent danger may be the potential for ethnic or religious conflict. Violent interactions between Hindu nationalists and Islamic terrorists would be disastrous. When Narendra Modi became prime minister, some feared that elements within his Bharatiya Janata Party would stoke the embers of sectarian violence with Muslims. When Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state in 2002, Hindus and Muslims clashed in a series of riots after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire in a predominately Muslim area. In the ensuing orgy of violence, Hindus targeted Muslims for weeks in a mass atrocity that killed up to two thousand Indians, most of them Muslims. Some accused Modi of failing to quell the violence. Although the George W. Bush administration initially banned Modi from coming to the United States, both the Bush and Obama administrations eventually advanced the relationship with Modi and India. In February 2020, as President Trump visited India, at least thirty-eight people were killed in the worst sectarian violence in decades, evidence that sectarian tensions persist.

Before my visit, Prime Minister Modi had allayed fears that he would pursue a Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) agenda. But during his second term, those fears seemed justified. In 2019, he scrapped the semiautonomous status of the Muslim-majority territories of Jammu and Kashmir. Then a Supreme Court verdict allowed Hindus to rebuild a temple at the site of the Ayodhya mosque, Babri Masjid, which had been destroyed by Hindu zealots in 1992. At the end of the year, massive protests followed the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act, which allows people from neighboring countries of all faiths except Muslims to gain Indian citizenship.

Still, these events had not yet occurred, and as we started our descent into Delhi, Lisa Curtis reviewed with me the recent history of strengthening U.S.-Indian relations. George W. Bush prioritized improved relations with India, removing all remaining sanctions initially imposed on India after a 1998 nuclear test. In 2005, the two countries had signed an agreement to expand defense relations, and in 2008 the United States led an initiative within the Nuclear Suppliers Group to allow India access to civil nuclear cooperation, despite the fact that it remained a nonsignatory to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. A formal defense relationship and a nuclear cooperation initiative followed. The Obama administration expanded cooperation in defense, cybersecurity, and energy security. I looked forward to working with India’s national security advisor, Ajit Doval, and then-Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to maximize the potential in our relationship. I would be meeting Doval and his team for dinner and Jaishankar for breakfast, after which I would drive to the prime minister’s residence to meet with Modi.

It was easy to tell that Doval’s background was in intelligence. With his head tilted slightly to the right, he would speak in a hushed voice even about the most innocuous subjects. Jaishankar, by contrast, was a polished diplomat who delivered succinct analyses and tactful, indirect recommendations for how the United States might be more effective in South Asia and across the Indo-Pacific region. Jaishankar and Doval saw up close how China was developing exclusionary areas of primacy. The China threat was shifting India’s attitude toward greater multinational cooperation. For example, the Japan-India relationship grew stronger as China attempted to intimidate Japan with maritime militias in the Senkaku Islands and to control shipping routes through the Indian Ocean with facilities in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. India’s leaders saw China’s One Belt, One Road initiative as a one-way street that would disadvantage them. Still, India, due to the legacy of leading the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War, was reluctant to give the impression of entering a formal alliance.

It was inevitable that our discussions would turn to the clear and present danger from ISI-supported jihadist terrorists. Events from 2008 are seared in the memory of Indians, not only those of the global financial crisis, but even more the devastating terrorist attacks that exposed the regional and global dimensions of the threat from Pakistan. Ten attackers from LET carried out a series of coordinated shooting and bombing attacks from Wednesday, November 26, until Saturday, November 29, 2008, most prominently at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai. At least 164 civilians were killed, including 6 American citizens; more than 300 people were wounded. The sole surviving attacker, a Pakistani citizen, revealed that he and his accomplices were members of LET, came from Pakistan, and were controlled from Pakistan. These painful wounds were reopened when, in 2015, Pakistan released from jail (on bail) the ringleader of the Mumbai attacks, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi. He promptly disappeared, further highlighting Pakistan’s support for terrorists.

I could tell that Doval and Jaishankar were worried about the United States’ ability to implement a consistent foreign policy in South Asia. At every turn in our conversations, they made the case for the United States to remain engaged in the region. The 2008 financial crisis and President Barack Obama’s desire to disengage from overseas commitments to focus on “nation building here at home,” a goal that resonated with the majority of the American public, left Indian leaders doubtful about whether the United States would still pursue an active foreign policy. President Trump’s campaign rhetoric did not allay their concerns. India, a country shaped by its independence from colonialism and historically critical of U.S. interventions abroad, had become most fearful of U.S. disengagement at the moment when both Chinese aggression and jihadist terrorism were growing. Jaishankar and Doval believed that U.S. disengagement would embolden both threats.

India would be critical to the outside-in aspect of the South Asia strategy, and I told them that the United States would support an enhanced leadership role for India in the region and beyond. India was influential in multinational fora such as the Brazil–Russia–India–China–South Africa association BRICS and would soon join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan. Indian leaders could use long-standing relationships with Russian leaders to persuade President Putin to act in his country’s interest and stop supporting Taliban groups, and instead support the Afghan government. And perhaps, together with Russia, India might help convince China to pressure Pakistan to crack down on terrorist organizations. Terrorists already threatened Russia and China directly and could impede China’s ambitious infrastructure projects in Pakistan and across Central Asia. Moreover, India might join the United States to prevail upon Gulf States such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia to cut off terrorist financing and make their considerable assistance to Pakistan contingent on its no longer serving as a nexus for jihadist terrorists.

On the final day of our trip, Lisa Curtis; MaryKay Carlson, the U.S. chargé d’affaires and deputy chief of mission in New Delhi; and I traveled to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the prime minister’s official residence, where we met with Modi. He gave us a warm welcome. It was clear that deepening and expanding that relationship should remain a priority for both nations. He expressed concern over China’s increasingly aggressive efforts to extend its influence at India’s expense and over its growing military presence in the region. He was very supportive of the Trump administration’s embrace of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific policy and suggested that the United States, India, Japan, and like-minded partners emphasize the concept’s inclusiveness and make clear that it is not meant to exclude any nation. At the end of the meeting, the prime minister put his hands on my shoulders and gave me a blessing. I was happy for any help I could get as our team headed back to Washington.

National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster shakes hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 18, 2017 (Prime Minister’s Office / Government of India)

In August 2021, India watched with profound disappointment America’s disastrous self-defeat and deadly withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan. Concluding that America was a reliable partner in South Asian security and facing two hostile, nuclear-armed states on its borders (i.e. China and Pakistan), Indian leaders determined that they needed Moscow more than ever as a hedge against Beijing and Islamabad. In At War with Ourselves, p.122, I observed that

The deepening partnership between the world’s largest and the world’s oldest democracies seemed logical, but India is fearful both of entrapment into competitions from which it would prefer to abstain and abandonment based on the short American attention span and ambivalence over South Asia. Those “schizophrenic” anxieties and the legacy of India’s leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War had led to hedging behavior, especially with Russia, an important source of arms and oil for India.

Trump’s rapid shift from a friendly relationship with Modi to coercive actions have confounded and disappointed Indian leaders. Yet, the long-term prospects for India-U.S. relations remain strong. It is likely that Prime Minister Modi and his team will realize that they are making a bad bet on China and that a weakening Russia can offer Delhi very little beyond cheap energy. India, as the world’s largest democracy, and China, as the world’s largest communist dictatorship, have differing visions of political order in Asia and beyond. China wants and expects servile relationships with its neighbors and is engaged in various forms of economic and cognitive warfare to advance its interests at the expense of other nations. India and China have a border dispute on which they have made little progress, and the asymmetries in their economic and military capabilities are glaring and getting worse. And the failure of Russian military equipment combined with Moscow’s desperate effort to sustain its war on Ukraine accentuate the need for Delhi to reduce its military’s dependence on Russian arms and ammunition.

The principal irritants in the Washington–Delhi relationship are severe, but temporary. It is in the economic interests of both nations to resolve trade disputes. Displacing at least a portion of Russian oil and gas with other sources, including from the United States would enhance Indian energy security. There is plenty of room for reinvigorating work done in recent years to strengthen defense and economic cooperation between India and the United States, especially if India begins to wean itself from dependence on Russian arms. And, if it is true that the proximate cause for recent tensions was Trump’s anger over Delhi’s repeated public statements that he played an inconsequential role in defusing the India-Pakistan crisis in May, that anger will subside. Modi’s vexation over Trump’s favorable statements about Pakistan made after the June 18, 2025 visit of Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir to the White House will also fade over time. In contrast to Modi downplaying Trump’s role in mediating a cease fire, Munir had advocated for Trump to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. But Trump’s advisors have an opportunity to place Munir’s obsequiousness in context of Islamabad’s decades-long record of deceiving U.S. political and military leaders and emphasize aspects of China’s ever-deepening partnership with Pakistan. Despite the images of comity between Modi, Putin, and Xi in Beijing, it is not time to bet against the India-U.S. relationship.