January 16, 2026

America Must Salvage Its Relationship With India

By: Richard Fontaine and Lisa Curtis

This article was originally published on Foreign Affairs.

When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, U.S.-Indian relations were stronger than almost anyone in the twentieth century could have predicted. In the first 50 years after India gained independence in 1947, New Delhi was deeply suspicious of Washington, which it saw as an imperial power not unlike those in Europe. It repeatedly criticized the United States’ behavior and adopted a policy of nonalignment during the Cold War.

But after the Soviet Union collapsed and the millennium turned, U.S. leaders realized that India could be an important partner in countering a rising China and a valuable market for American companies, and they worked assiduously to win over Indian officials. The courtship wasn’t easy: it required repeated visits and commitments to deepening defense and technology cooperation from Democratic and Republican administrations alike, spread out over the course of 25 years, alongside outreach from increasingly like-minded Indian governments. Slowly but surely, however, India and the United States forged a tight bond, undergirded by formal military agreements and increased economic ties.

The longer the current crisis lasts, the harder it will be to restore the relationship and the more likely it is that the two countries will lose an entire generation of progress.

But now, all this progress is at great risk. The problems began with a fit of presidential pride and pique, when Trump craved and claimed credit for ending the brief May conflict between India and Pakistan. Islamabad leaped to support Trump’s account, praising the president’s “decisive diplomatic intervention” and nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize. But New Delhi—which does not accept foreign mediation in its conflict with Pakistan as a matter of principle—denied that Washington had played such a role. Trump then angered India further by hosting Pakistan’s military chief, General Syed Asim Munir, in the Oval Office less than two months after Pakistani terrorists killed 26 people in Indian-administered Kashmir and triggered the May conflict. Trump also declined to sign a trade deal with India and imposed draconian tariffs on its United States–bound exports, and in August, he called the country a “dead economy.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in turn, traveled to China—his first visit there in seven years—and appeared clasping hands with China’s and Russia’s leaders. This prompted Trump to conclude that the United States had “lost India.”


Read the full article on Foreign Affairs.

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