US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau had said at the Raisina Dialogue on Geopolitics and Geo-Economics in New Delhi that India should understand that Washington would not repeat the mistakes it made with China two decades ago.
In June, the US Department of Defense announced that the US Indo-Pacific Command would officially revert to its former name, the US Pacific Command. Senior Congress leader and former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor viewed the decision as another nail in the coffin of the Quad grouping.
The Quad had been viewed as a grouping aimed at countering China, but US President Donald Trump has largely neglected it during his second term. Trump has also imposed heavy tariffs on India and, unlike previous US administrations, has ignored the argument that India is essential for countering China.
Indrani Bagchi, CEO of the Delhi-based Ananta Centre, said the main selling point in the US relationship with India had been that India was necessary to compete with China.
According to Bagchi, Trump has weakened that selling point because he believes the United States does not want to confront China or, if it does, that it will not receive help from India. Former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also believes that Trump’s policies are pushing close US partners away.
On July 10, Blinken wrote on X that when allies lose trust in the United States, they do not simply wait for Washington to change its position. They change themselves, build new partnerships and look for other options for leadership. He said that once such decisions are made, reversing them is not easy.
Blinken also wrote that America’s adversaries and competitors understand this. He said Russia had long tried to create divisions in the trans-Atlantic alliance and that when democratic countries become less capable of acting together, China benefits. According to Blinken, every question raised about US credibility creates an opportunity for those seeking a weaker and more divided West.
Nearly seven years after his last visit, Xi Jinping is now travelling to India, and several analysts are viewing the trip as a sign of New Delhi’s changing strategy.
Xi will attend the BRICS summit being held in New Delhi on September 12 and 13. Brazil, Russia, India and China were the founding countries of the grouping, which later included South Africa. BRICS now has 10 full-time members.
The visit will be Xi Jinping’s first trip to India since 2019. In 2019, Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi held their second informal meeting in Chennai as part of a series of informal interactions between the two leaders. The following year, deadly clashes took place along the border, and tensions between the two countries continued to rise.
That makes Xi’s India visit a closely watched development.
Dylan Loh, an associate professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told Bloomberg that the recent reduction in tensions between India and China should be viewed as practical “risk management” rather than a major strategic reset. He said both sides understand that an unstable border is beneficial to neither, but deep strategic distrust remains and is unlikely to disappear in the near future.
In 2023, Xi Jinping did not attend the G20 summit in New Delhi.
The process of rebalancing relations between the two countries began with a meeting between Modi and Xi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, in 2024.
India is said to be unhappy with the policies of US President Trump and, in this situation, cannot afford to antagonise the other major power, China.
India had earlier argued that trust in relations with China could not be restored until tensions along the border were resolved. But it now appears that New Delhi is no longer standing as firmly by that condition.
Recently, former Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said India’s relationship with China cannot be restricted to the border dispute.
Indrani Bagchi said the main selling point of the US relationship with India had always been that India was necessary to compete with China. She said previous US administrations believed India should be strengthened so that China’s growing power could be balanced, but she did not believe India followed that logic.
Bagchi said Trump believes India is not necessary for the United States because Washington can deal with China on its own. She said India had also begun reducing what she described as its earlier over-investment in the United States.
Bagchi said the time had come for India to move beyond America’s selling point. She said she did not believe India had benefited from the rivalry between the United States and China. According to her, whatever India received from the United States, it purchased, while India remains a natural balancing country in relation to China. She said Trump may be rejecting that understanding, but India’s importance in relation to China would not disappear.
The 2025 US National Security Strategy provides evidence of a decisive shift in how Washington views its role in the world and what it expects from other countries.
India does appear in this narrative, although not in the way many might expect. The document does not describe India as the guide of the Indo-Pacific or as the foundation of a new balance of power in Asia.
Instead, it says Washington intends to improve its “trade relations with India” so that New Delhi can be more deeply integrated into its Indo-Pacific agenda and so that the rise of any one competing country can be prevented.
The United States wants its partners to support its broader effort to limit China’s industrial and technological influence. But Indian production, from electronics and pharmaceuticals to batteries and solar equipment, remains heavily dependent on Chinese inputs.
The US National Security Strategy, however, does not fully acknowledge this structural dependence.
Shri Ram Chaulia, Dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs and author of “Friends: India’s Closest Strategic Partners”, said India cannot become an irrational tool of the US campaign against China.
Speaking to BBC Hindi, Chaulia said the United States cannot fight China alone in Asia and would need India, Japan and Australia. He also said that differences between India and China would not disappear despite Xi Jinping’s Delhi visit. According to him, China is openly strengthening Pakistan militarily and Pakistan is using Chinese weapons against India. He said that if the United States wants to make Asia multipolar, it cannot do so without India.
Chaulia said the United States would continue offshore balancing in the Indo-Pacific. This means Washington would not maintain its full strength everywhere itself, but would continue supporting regional powers and local countries from behind.
Landau’s statement is also being viewed as an indication that the United States now sees India not only as a strategic partner but also as a potential economic and technological competitor whose rise may need to be controlled rather than fully enabled.
Strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney wrote in the Japan Times on July 13 this year that for nearly 25 years, US policy had encouraged the growth of India’s economic, military and technological strength because a stronger India was considered necessary to balance China in Asia.
That policy included deep defence ties, a civilian nuclear agreement, technology partnerships and an emphasis on shared democratic values.
Chellaney argues that this consensus is now being replaced by a transactional, business-oriented approach from the United States. Washington still wants India to play a role in balancing China, but appears less willing to help India become powerful enough in infrastructure, technology or global markets.
Chellaney believes India’s importance in the broader US strategy appears to be gradually declining. According to him, India is emerging as a strategically useful but economically and technologically constrained partner.
About The Author
Comment List