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US-India Ties: Does Trump Have a Grand Strategy?

Since the dawn of the 21st century, the US strategy has been to woo India and to build it up as a counterweight to rising China in the Indo-Pacific region. Most beltway analysts agree with this policy. However, the current Trump administration has taken significant actions, such as the imposition of 50% tariffs on India's exports to the US, that appear to defy this conventional wisdom widely shared in the West. Does President Trump have a grand strategy guiding these actions? George Friedman, the founder of Geopolitical Futures, believes the answer is Yes.

George Friedman

George Friedman is an American futurologist, political scientist, and writer. He writes about international relations. He is the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures. Prior to founding Geopolitical Futures, he was chairman of the publishing company Stratfor

In a recent podcast, Friedman said "India is not an essential country from the American standpoint". "They (Indians) are a useful ally, but precisely not indispensable and in fact, not really able to give us what we want", he added. "They do participate in the quad, but their naval force is not significantly needed. The quad being an alliance basically against China at sea. And simultaneously, it was discovered that their economic capacity is far below what we need. So it was not that they were dispensable, but at the same time, it was not something that we had to take into account greatly".

Getting tough with the Indians also allowed the US to "signal to the Chinese that we’re not going to be going to war with them, which they worried about India and to the Russians that we really are going to impose tariffs".

In answer to a question as to whether the Indians might feel the US is using them as "a tool as it tries to reach deals with Russia and China", Friedman said: "this is the problem of weaker nations trying to play games with very strong nations. They get used".

What Friedman has articulated runs counter to a quarter century of the US policy of boosting India to check China. Even some of India's friends in Washington are starting to acknowledge that India is no match to China. Ashley Tellis, a strongly pro-India analyst in the United States, recently wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine titled "India's Great Power Delusions". Here is an excerpt from it:

"Although India has grown in economic strength over the last two decades, it is not growing fast enough to balance China, let alone the United States, even in the long term. It will become a great power, in terms of relative GDP, by midcentury, but not a superpower. In military terms, it is the most significant conventional power in South Asia, but here, too, its advantages over its local rival are not enormous: in fighting in May, Pakistan used Chinese-supplied defense systems to shoot down Indian aircraft. With China on one side and an adversarial Pakistan on the other, India must always fear the prospect of an unpalatable two-front war. Meanwhile, at home, the country is shedding one of its main sources of strength—its liberal democracy—by embracing Hindu nationalism. This evolution could undermine India’s rise by intensifying communal tensions and exacerbating problems with its neighbors, forcing it to redirect security resources inward to the detriment of outward power projection. The country’s illiberal pivot further undermines the rules-based international order that has served it so well".

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Comment by Riaz Haq on October 24, 2025 at 9:28am: Trump Created Chance for Pakistan's Diplomatic Tsunami

by Robert Manning

Stimson Center Washington DC

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/23/pakistan-diplomacy-india-trump...

However, Pakistan’s deepening Gulf ties may risk ensnaring the country in regional conflicts such as Yemen’s civil war or in a peace stabilization force if Trump’s plan for the Gaza Strip is realized. The Saudis—major oil suppliers to India who have their own strategic partnership with New Delhi—may have some tough choices in a future India-Pakistan confrontation.

Some argue that the defense pact is more of a formalization of long-standing Saudi-Pakistani military and economic ties than a seismic event—and suggest that it may be a form of extended deterrence, with a Sunni Muslim nuclear weapon breaking Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly. In his 2024 book War, American journalist Bob Woodward quotes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman telling a U.S. senator, “I don’t need uranium to make a bomb. I will just buy one from Pakistan.”

A Saudi-Pakistani joint statement used NATO-like language to describe the agreement, stating “that any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both.” How either the Saudis or Pakistanis respond to any given security threat has not yet been tested.

Saudi-Pakistani defense ties stretch back to the 1970s. Pakistani commandos helped the Saudis quell a terrorist attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, and the Pakistani military now has some 2,000 troops in Saudi Arabia training and advising Saudi troops. Pakistan, meanwhile, needs Saudi money. Riyadh has extended and rolled over loans—$3 billion last December—and reportedly finalized approval for a long-discussed $10 billion oil refinery in Gwadar, adding to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project.

Yet the most remarkable result of shrewd Pakistani diplomacy—in the Richard Nixon-to-China category—is the resurrection of atrophied U.S.-Pakistan ties, diminished since the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, while also fracturing the U.S.-India connection. India fears that Trump’s Pakistan shift is upending 25 years of careful cultivation and trust-building of distinct U.S.-India ties. Before this administration, India had increasingly been viewed in Washington—with strong bipartisan support—as a key partner, a counterweight to China, a pillar of what was then the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy.

Islamabad’s new entente with Washington depended on a serendipitous chain of events that began in March, when Pakistani intelligence helped the U.S. capture the Islamic State-Khorasan operative responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing at Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. soldiers in August 2021. The U.S. Centcom commander, Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, praised Islamabad’s “phenomenal cooperation” in counterterrorism following the operation.

Against that backdrop, a testy phone call between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi precipitated a rift in U.S.-India ties, creating an opening for Pakistan. In his quest for a Nobel Peace Prize Trump claimed credit in May for the cease-fire that followed clashes between Islamabad and New Delhi, saying that he had “solved” the most intense Indo-Pakistan conflict in 30 years. He followed that with an offer to mediate in the Kashmir dispute, crossing India’s firm red line against third-party mediation.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 24, 2025 at 9:28am: Trump Created Chance for Pakistan's Diplomatic Tsunami

by Robert Manning

Stimson Center Washington DC

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/23/pakistan-diplomacy-india-trump...

That led to a heated phone call with an irate Modi, who had invested heavily in what he believed was a personal relationship with Trump. Modi argued that the cease-fire was achieved by India and Pakistan’s efforts, not the president’s, incensing Trump. At the same time, Pakistani officials lavished praise on Trump for the cease-fire, welcomed him to mediate in Kashmir, and nominated him for the Nobel Prize.

Not coincidentally, Trump then imposed 50 percent tariffs on India for buying discounted Russian oil (a policy that the United States had previously encouraged and Trump and senior U.S. officials began trash-talking India. In late July, Trump said that India, which grew at 6.5 percent in 2024, was a”dead economy”, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent repeatedly attacked India for “profiteering” from Russian oil.

The bitterness toward India created chances for Pakistan. That helps explain a two-hour lunch between Pakistani army chief Asim Munir and Trump in June as well as several Trump meetings with Sharif at the United Nations, the White House, and at the recent Gaza peace conference in Egypt.

At the same time, it pushed New Delhi, usually wary of China’s rise, closer to Beijing. Modi, flaunting his strategic autonomy, was in China last month clasping hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin and making plans to boost economic ties.

Pakistan also got a highly favorable trade package out of Trump. Sharif dangled two prizes that the White House is obsessed with: U.S. rights to develop what Trump says are massive oil reserves (Pakistan imports 80 percent of its oil) and rights to critical minerals, for which a U.S. firm has announced a $500 million investment. Remarkably, Islamabad retains its status as a “major non-NATO ally” of the United States while thickening ties to all three major powers simultaneously.

But these triumphs may not be sustainable. For starters, Pakistan’s shiny promises of a crypto deal, oil, and critical minerals to the United States may be mostly a mirage. With regard to oil, there may be no massive reserves. ExxonMobil and other oil firms have explored Pakistani oil, come up dry, and left, and even Pakistani energy officials doubt such large-scale commercially recoverable resources.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 24, 2025 at 9:29am: Trump Created Chance for Pakistan's Diplomatic Tsunami

by Robert Manning

Stimson Center Washington DC

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/23/pakistan-diplomacy-india-trump...

There is no question that Pakistan has substantial critical minerals, but most are located in Balochistan, the site of intensifying terrorist attacks on government targets that have given China pause. U.S. mining operations will be problematic at best. Then there is Pakistan’s adroit multialignment with Moscow and Beijing. How will that fare as great-power competition intensifies? What will be the fate of U.S.-Pakistani warmth if some of these vulnerabilities fail to realize the promise of the new entente?

It is certainly possible that the souring with India could be a Trump bargaining tactic intended to gain leverage for a trade deal still quietly being negotiated. Trump appeared to extend an olive branch recently, plaintively saying that he “will always be friends with Modi” and that the United States and India share “a very special relationship.” And Trump said that during a phone call on Oct. 15, Modi pledged to stop buying Russian oil, though India denied it.

None of the fundamentals of the strategic logic driving U.S. policy toward India have changed: Strategic competition with China continues to drive Washington’s national security and industrial policies. This will be true however the current trade war—and a possible meeting between Trump and Xi—turns out. The idea of India as a counterweight to China and an economic and technology partner has not lost its allure for Washington, though Indian anger and resentment at the humiliating snubs will linger.

Pakistan’s diplomacy raises a host of questions about whether South Asia’s geopolitics are more fluid than they had previously seemed or whether polarization in the region is continuing. How will Iran, which publicly welcomed the defense pact, react to these new circumstances? Will the accord bolster or erode the fledgling Saudi-Iranian detente?

And not least, how will China respond to the new dynamics? So far, it has doubled downon its ties to Pakistan while welcoming chances to make nice with New Delhi. For all the promise of Pakistan’s diplomacy, India and China have not resolved underlying territorial and other disputes, India-Pakistan tensions remain high, and the Middle East, is—well—still the scorpion-and-the-frog Middle East, where endless cycles of revenge and missed opportunities are endemic.

But whether it lasts or not, Pakistan’s diplomatic offensive deserves due credit. It has bolstered its strategic posture, diversifying both its support and commitments while injecting more uncertainty into the geopolitics of South and Southwest Asia.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 24, 2025 at 9:29am: ‘No wars with Pakistan’, Trump tells Modi amid trade dialogue - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

https://www.dawn.com/news/1950675

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has stated that he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a phone call where they discussed having “no wars with Pakistan,” amid ongoing negotiations for a trade deal aimed at mending strained ties between the two countries, Dawn.com reported Relations between the US and India plummeted in August when Trump raised tariffs on Indian exports to 50 per cent and US officials accused India of financing Russia’s war in Ukraine by buying Moscow’s discounted oil.

However, participating in a Diwali celebration at the White House on Tuesday, President Trump said he had a “great conversation” with Modi over the phone.

“We talked about trade — we talked about a lot of things, but mostly the world of trade, he’s very interested in that. Although we did talk a little while ago about let’s have no wars with Pakistan,” he said.

Comment by Riaz Haq on Friday: Sushant Singh
@SushantSin
"Modi’s response to this crisis is to avoid rooms where Trump might be present. This strategy of evasion cannot hold.

...India needs its prime minister to show up, to defend its interests, to negotiate from whatever strength remains, and to stop pretending..."

My piece
@ttindia

https://x.com/SushantSin/status/1984093541463945394

----------------

India needs its prime minister to show up, to defend its interests, to negotiate from whatever strength remains, and to stop pretending that domestic political theatre can substitute for international engagement

https://www.telegraphindia.com/amp/opinion/strategic-absence-narend...

Sushant Singh
Published 31.10.25, 05:54 AM
Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered the world a curious spectacle last week. He informed the Malaysian prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, that he would skip the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur because Diwali celebrations were still ongoing in India. The problem with this explanation is simple and embarrassing. Diwali, which fell on October 20 this year, had concluded with Bhai Dooj on October 23. By the time the ASEAN Summit convened on October 26, the festival had been over for three days. The excuse was not just flimsy but transparently dishonest, the kind of diplomatic fiction that insults the intelligence of both domestic and international audiences.

This follows a similar pattern from earlier this month when Modi skipped the Gaza peace summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, sending instead a junior minister to an event attended by heads of State. The result was telling. While world leaders gathered in Egypt, the Pakistan prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, stood beside Donald Trump, lavishing praise on the American president, nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump, clearly delighted, called the tribute “really beautiful” and joked that he could go home satisfied. Modi, in the meantime, was nowhere to be seen, his absence reducing India’s representation to a junior minister lost in a sea of global heavyweights.

The pattern is unmistakable. In West Asia, India was absent from a crucial peace summit. In Southeast Asia, Modi chose virtual participation over physical presence. What connects these absences is not scheduling conflicts or festival commitments but something far more troubling for a nation that claims to be a rising global power. Modi is running away from multilateral engagements because he fears being in the same room as Trump.

The consequences extend beyond missed photo opportunities. In West Asia, where India has carefully cultivated relationships with both Israel and the Arab world, Modi’s failure to attend the Sharm El-Sheikh summit meant India had no meaningful voice in shaping post-conflict arrangements in Gaza. In Southeast Asia, a region critical to India’s Act East policy and its broader Indo-Pacific strategy, Modi’s virtual attendance relegates India to a peripheral player. When leaders make the effort to show up, they signal commitment. When they dial in from home, they signal irrelevance.

The most consequential casualty of Modi’s avoidance strategy may be the Quad. India is scheduled to host the Quad summit this year. Yet there is no date set for this gathering and the likelihood of it happening grows dimmer by the day. Not that such an opportunity will necessarily arise. Under Trump 2.0, the Indo-Pacific has been systematically deprioritised. When the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, met Trump at the White House on October 20, the Quad was not even mentioned. The grouping that was supposed to be the cornerstone of regional security architecture has been reduced to an afterthought in Trump’s strategic thinking.

Comment by Riaz Haq on Friday: India needs its prime minister to show up, to defend its interests, to negotiate from whatever strength remains, and to stop pretending that domestic political theatre can substitute for international engagement

https://www.telegraphindia.com/amp/opinion/strategic-absence-narend...

Sushant Singh

This represents a fundamental shift in American priorities. Trump has made it clear that he seeks friendly relations with China. He speaks openly of deals and accommodation, of putting trade and transactions ahead of ideological competition. On Taiwan, he has downplayed the risk of conflict, saying he does not believe China wants to invade the island nation, refusing to rule out discussions about Taiwan’s status as part of broader negotiations with Beijing.

If the strategic competition with China is no longer the organising principle of American foreign policy, then India’s utility to the United States of America diminishes dramatically. The past quarter century has been characterised by what can only be described as American benevolence toward India’s rise. From the nuclear deal under George W. Bush to defence technology transfers and intelligence-sharing that accelerated under Barack Obama and continued into Trump’s first term, the US treated India as a strategic asset worth cultivating. That era of strategic altruism appears to be ending.

Into this vacuum has stepped Pakistan, newly resurgent in Trump’s affections. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, speaking to reporters en route to Doha on October 26, was explicit about Washington’s intentions to expand its strategic relationship with Pakistan. His praise for Pakistan’s cooperation and his framing of the relationship as vital to regional stability would have been unthinkable just two years ago. The Trump administration has dramatically reduced tariffs on Pakistan from 29% to 19%, while India faces punishing 50% tariffs.

Modi’s Pakistan policy has rendered him vulnerable at precisely the wrong moment. His refusal to engage Islamabad in any meaningful dialogue, his reliance solely on military responses to deal with the troublesome neighbour, and his elevation of Pakistan to a domestic political punching bag have left him with no cards to play as the US rebuilds ties with Rawalpindi. Modi has repeatedly rejected Trump’s claims of having brokered the ceasefire. Sharif, by contrast, has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize twice for delivering the India-Pakistan ceasefire. Modi may be factually correct, but in Trump’s Washington, flattery matters more than facts. Unfortunately, it also hurts India’s interests.

The consequences are already visible in Trump’s policy toward India. He is selectively targeting India for buying crude oil from Russia and imposing sanctions on the two largest Russian oil companies. These sanctions come with the explicit threat of secondary sanctions, meaning Indian companies that continue purchasing Russian oil could be cut off from the Western financial system. This is economic coercion of a kind not seen in the bilateral relationship for decades.

In the meantime, the much-touted trade deal remains in limbo. Indian exporters are already suffering under the weight of punitive tariffs. In Surat, the global centre for diamond cutting and polishing, factories are operating at reduced capacity and workers have been placed on forced leave. The Diamond Workers Union estimates that 800,000 to 1,000,000 diamond workers in Gujarat face an uncertain future. In Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu’s textile hub, factories are shuttering production lines and workers fear mass layoffs. These are not abstract economic statistics but real human suffering measured in lost livelihoods and broken families.

Comment by Riaz Haq on Friday: India needs its prime minister to show up, to defend its interests, to negotiate from whatever strength remains, and to stop pretending that domestic political theatre can substitute for international engagement

https://www.telegraphindia.com/amp/opinion/strategic-absence-narend...

Sushant Singh

Even if a trade deal is eventually signed, it will not reverse the damage already done. Once American buyers have found alternative suppliers in Vietnam, Bangladesh, or elsewhere, Indian exporters will struggle to win them back. Markets, once lost, are not easily reclaimed. A trade deal might address immediate economic friction, but it will neither transform Trump’s geopolitical vision, which is driving his fundamental indifference to India’s ambitions, nor will it satisfy his quixotic quest for a Nobel Prize.

This unravelling exposes the central mythology of Modi’s tenure. For a decade, Modi’s ministers and the godi media have insisted that the force of Modi’s personality drives India’s foreign policy success. Modi’s domestic political appeal rested on the narrative that he had singlehandedly transformed India into a major global player, that his personal relationships with world leaders translated into huge national advantage, that India commanded respect on the world stage only because of him.

Trump 2.0 has revealed this to be fiction. Personality matters far less than power, and relationships mean nothing without strategic alignment. Modi’s much-publicised bromance with Trump during the first term, complete with the ‘Howdy Modi’ and ‘Namaste Trump’ spectacles, earned India exactly nothing when circumstances changed.

India finds itself in an impossible position. Modi is diminishing politically at home as the hollowness of his foreign policy claims becomes apparent. Indian workers and businesses are suffering due to Trump’s economic coercion. India is struggling to maintain relevance in both its immediate neighbourhood and the broader international system. Modi’s response to this crisis is to avoid rooms where Trump might be present.

This strategy of evasion cannot hold. Every summit Modi skips is another opportunity lost, another relationship weakened, another signal sent that India is retreating from the world stage. The great irony is that Modi’s fear of personal embarrassment is guaranteeing national degradation.

India needs its prime minister to show up, to defend its interests, to negotiate from whatever strength remains, and to stop pretending that domestic political theatre can substitute for international engagement. The question is whether Modi possesses the courage to do so. On current evidence, the answer seems to be no.

Sushant Singh is lecturer at Yale University

Comment by Riaz Haq on Saturday: Sushant Singh
@SushantSin
G-2 is India's longstanding nightmare and to see it coming from Trump must be very painful for Modi, his self-proclaimed good friend.

https://x.com/SushantSin/status/1984097505009692956

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Trump-Xi bonhomie and reference to G-2 may impact India and Quad
Premium
External Affairs Ministry non-committal on outcome of U.S.-China summit in South Korea; experts warn of ripple effects in region; as a result of the talks, the U.S. has reduced tariffs on China to 47%, making India (and Brazil) at 50%, the highest tariffed country

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/trump-xi-bonhomie-reference-...

The summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea ended with several outcomes for bilateral ties between the two countries, but also sent ripple effects to India. As a result of the talks, the U.S. has reduced tariffs on China to 47%, making India (and Brazil) at 50%, the highest tariffed country. More than the specific outcomes, including a one-year truce on trade tariffs and export restrictions on rare earth minerals, however, experts said the characterisation by both leaders of the U.S.-China “G-2” or grouping of the two biggest global powers, may have the bigger impact, especially for the region.

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