To be a more effective partner, the United States should recognize India’s sphere of influence in South Asia.
Recent remarks by the Trump administration on Operation Sindoor—India’s military response to a ghastly state-sponsored terrorist attack on Hindu tourists in the Kashmir valley—have struck a raw nerve in New Delhi. President Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for facilitating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, even offering to mediate in Kashmir. He hinted at using trade as a coercive lever to resolve the crisis. At the same time, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick accused India of “rubb[ing] America the wrong way” by purchasing Russian defense equipment and implicitly backing de-dollarization through its membership in BRICS.
Trump’s repeated remarks have revived old anxieties in India being equated with a China-aligned Pakistan. What began as an Indian counter-terror operation escalated into retaliation on Pakistani airbases after Pakistan struck India’s military and civilian assets—yet the White House framed it as a Kashmir crisis. Lutnick’s comments reflect the outdated frameworks through which US policymakers often view India.
For the record, India has incrementally reduced its dependence on Russian arms over the past decade, and its external affairs minister has openly dismissed the idea of de-dollarization. Furthermore, the involvement of the Trump family in a cryptocurrency deal in Pakistan suggests that vested interests supersede strategic rationale in America’s dealings in the region.
Trump or Lutnick is not the issue here. The Biden administration has also spent considerable energy lecturing India on religious freedom and democracy while giving Pakistan a free pass on its persecution of Hindu minorities. Washington was critical of India’s purchases of Russian oil even when Europe continued to do the same. Differences between any two countries are inevitable, but in the case of the United States and India, they have played out in public, creating ugly optics and overshadowing progress in ties.
For too long, Washington has missed the forest for the trees. The pattern is familiar across administrations: the United States speaks of supporting India’s rise as a regional stabilizer in the Indo-Pacific to balance China, then reverts to Cold War habits—prioritizing Europe, balancing within South Asia, and posturing over values. A serious rethink of America’s India policy is long overdue.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Strip away the sugarcoated rhetoric, and few phrases better capture the essence of the US-India relationship. Touted as one of America’s “most important bilateral relationships,” this alignment—between a great power and a rising power to check a revisionist rival—is natural in today’s international system. It is so natural that even China sees India as a strategic appendage to the United States. Yet, the relationship remains marred by mutual hesitations, outdated frameworks, and transactional impulses.
Instead of placing the blame solely on the failures of US foreign policy, it is worth asking: why does the United States hesitate to cede regional space in the Indian subcontinent to its resident power? Four arguments—rooted in the realist canon of international relations—help explain this reluctance.
1) The spheres of influence argument: The US footprint in the region is shrinking, especially after its withdrawal from Afghanistan. India, for its part, seeks to assert its own Monroe Doctrine in South Asia—no interference by external major powers in the subcontinent. This contradiction keeps the United States invested in the region and checks India’s dominance.
2) The capabilities argument: Washington doubts India’s ability to balance China credibly. Still perceived as a slow-moving elephant, India’s economy is only a fifth the size of China’s. With a continent-oriented security outlook, it is distracted by persistent security challenges on its western front. The colonial-era bureaucracy does not help.
3) The uncertainty argument: The United States remains wary of India’s long-term trajectory. Washington enabled Beijing’s rise through decades of global economic integration, technology transfers, and careful accommodation of its post-Tiananmen interests, including those related to Taiwan and internal political reforms. It does not want to repeat the playbook with India, fearing the cultivation of a democratic rival by 2050.
4) The fear of abandonment argument: India, being a non-treaty ally, is not seen as a reliable partner in preserving US power in the Indo-Pacific, particularly in any maritime contingency in East Asia involving Taiwan or the South China Sea.
While these concerns hold theoretical merit, none withstand the scrutiny of evidence or current geopolitical realities to justify the continuation of Washington’s outdated South Asia policy. As the Indo-Pacific emerges as the central theater of US strategic interests, America must build a durable coalition of allies and partners to counterbalance China. This imperative is more pressing given that China is far from isolated—it enjoys a network of dependable partners, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. It holds an advantage over the United States in Southeast Asia and actively challenges India’s position within its own neighborhood.
Some Republicans have argued for deprioritizing certain regions to redirect resources toward managing the China challenge. If serious arguments can be made in Washington about deprioritizing Europe, why not cede the subcontinent as India’s natural sphere of influence? If the United States can court Russia over Ukraine, why can’t it isolate Pakistan? South Asia is among the least critical regions for the United States—very little trade flows through the Indian Ocean, and unlike during the Cold War, there is no pressing need to cultivate Pakistan as a launchpad to counter Soviet influence in Afghanistan.
Today, supporting Pakistan would only bolster China’s position in the region. By ceding space to India, the United States can effectively buck-pass the task of regional balancing. It is both strategic and prudent to facilitate India’s uncontested position in the subcontinent and minimize the flow of US resources in the region, especially to Pakistan.
On the capability front, India stands out among US allies and partners as the only country capable of maintaining regional balance and preventing China and its proxies from dominating South Asia and the Indian Ocean. During Operation Sindoor, India crippled Pakistan’s air defenses and missile systems—most of them supplied by China. Prior to that, it held firm against tens of thousands of Chinese troops during a four-year Himalayan standoff from 2020 to 2024. Its recent battlefield experience against China and Chinese systems surpasses that of any other US partner. Economically, India has consistently grown at a rate above 6 percent since the pandemic and is expected to sustain this growth.
The international system is indeed anarchic, and today’s partners can become tomorrow’s rivals. But can a powerful India turn into a strategic adversary of the United States? This is highly unlikely, given the current power asymmetry. The Indian economy is one-eighth of the United States’ and is comparatively far from dynamic in terms of innovation. Geography itself—bounded by the Himalayas to the north and the Indian Ocean to the south—sets clear limits on India’s strategic footprint, which will never exceed beyond the Indian Ocean region.
At best, it will act as a stabilizing force in the Middle East, thanks to its close ties with the Arab world and Israel, and counter China’s influence in Southeast Asia. India’s post-independence geopolitical thought is shaped by the British-era Curzonian grand strategy of dominating the subcontinent and the outlying regions to its east and west. Even the Hindu nationalists are grounded by these constraints.
Finally, the most important US concern: will a powerful India act against China when push comes to shove in East Asia? India need not commit to US objectives in such contingencies; it simply needs to exist as a strong, secure countervailing power—a potential threat to China. While India may not project maritime power directly in Taiwan or the South China Sea, it can deny Beijing escalation dominance in any crisis against the United States by controlling China’s vital energy lanes in the Indian Ocean. It will reduce US reliance on Southeast Asia, which often hedges its bets with China.
Only India’s dominant position in the subcontinent can create a favorable balance to contest China in Asia. If India remains entangled in regional conflicts, it will never become the maritime balancer the United States needs in the Asian Rimland. A Sino-Indian friendship remains nearly impossible, given the rivalry over boundary disputes, status in Asia, and deep-rooted civilizational competition. The Nehruvian era’s brief flirtation with an axis toward China stands as a rare aberration to the traditional Kautilyan thinking that sees neighbors (ari) as natural adversaries and offshore powers (udasina) as neutral balancers.
If none of the realist concerns hold in today’s international system, we are back to square one: what truly plagues the US-India relations? The root of the problem lies deep within the civilizational and cultural differences of both countries. The United States, grounded in Judeo-Christian civilization and Enlightenment idealism, frames its strategic culture around universal democratic values and a clear good-versus-evil binary. In this worldview, liberal democracy is the ideal form of government, and states are categorized strictly as allies or adversaries.
This framework is ill-suited to building a lasting strategic relationship with the two behemoth non-Abrahamic civilizations—China and India. It failed with China during the Cold War as the United States worked with Beijing without signing an alliance treaty or pushing for liberal democracy. Similarly, the imposition of alliances and political values will not be effective in India either. The United States must, therefore, resist the urge to interpret every Indian action—whether in the subcontinent or domestic politics—through an ally-adversary lens or the norms of Westernized liberal democracy.
What, then, should define the foundation of the US-India relationship? From India’s perspective, the answer is clear: maintaining a credible balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, where India is—and will remain—a key player and near-peer competitor to China. This calls for the United States to support, rather than undercut, India’s regional influence by bolstering its technological, economic, and military capabilities. Washington must decide where India fits within its strategic priorities. The relationship is undoubtedly consequential—but only if it serves the long-term interests of both nations.
For any US policy toward India to be truly effective, it must rest on three fundamental realities. First, India seeks a close partnership but not a subordinate alliance. Second, India and the United States do not share common civilizational values despite rhetoric about the ties between “the world’s oldest and the world’s largest democracies.” India is unlikely to evolve into a Western-style liberal democracy, although its political culture remains rooted in resilient, indigenous traditions of pluralism and self-reflection. Third, South Asia—more accurately, the Indian subcontinent—is India’s natural sphere of influence. Attempting to contest New Delhi in its own backyard will only constrain the partnership’s potential.
About the Authors: Ambuj Sahu and Arun Sahgal
Ambuj Sahu is a PhD candidate at Indiana University Bloomington and writes about India’s foreign policy interests in the Indo-Pacific. Follow him on X at @DarthThunderous.
Arun Sahgal, PhD, Brigadier (Retd.), is the Director of the Forum for Strategic Initiatives, a Delhi-based thinktank. He was the founding Director of the Office of Net Assessment, Integrated Defense Staff (IDS), Ministry of Defense of India.
Image: Viper-Zero / Shutterstock.com.
