Moeed Yusuf
Washington’s South Asia policy is adrift. Since roughly the turn of the century, U.S. leaders have seen India as a democratic counterweight to China and sought to position New Delhi in a wider competition with Beijing. At the same time, U.S. officials have grown disillusioned with Pakistan, once an ally during the Cold War, and see Islamabad as an unreliable partner when it comes to combating terrorism in the region. They are also displeased with Pakistan’s growing closeness to China, which has become a key source of infrastructure investment and military equipment for Islamabad.
The United States bet on India, but that bet has not paid off. After two decades, India remains both unwilling and unable to align itself fully with U.S. preferences in the region and beyond. This year, the relationship between the two countries began to fray. New Delhi’s quixotic quest for multipolarity in the international system—that is, a world not structured around the hegemony of a single superpower or the competition of two great powers—has rankled Washington. And it has now earned India the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump. Citing ongoing Indian purchases of Russian oil, Trump raised tariffs on imports from India to 50 percent in August, the highest rate he has imposed on any country. To make matters worse, New Delhi reacted by signaling its intent to strengthen ties with Beijing, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China for very public and amicable meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At the same time, relations between the United States and India’s neighbor and adversary Pakistan have experienced a surprising thaw. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has warmed to Pakistan’s military. In March, he praised Pakistan for its arrest of an Islamic State operative suspected of involvement in a 2021 bombing in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. soldiers. Then, in May, he claimed to have brought an end to a four-day military clash between India and Pakistan that had threatened to escalate dangerously. “We stopped a nuclear conflict,” Trump declared. “I think it could have been a bad nuclear war.” He has repeatedly claimed credit for preventing a catastrophe ever since; Pakistani officials even nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. India, which rejects outside attempts to mediate its disputes with Pakistan, has denied that any such intervention took place. According to reporting by The New York Times, Trump asked Modi in June to echo Pakistani leaders and nominate him for the Nobel prize. Modi refused, and the two have not spoken since.
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