It has become the stuff of legend: when the Nixon administration deployed the U.S. Seventh Fleet to support Pakistan during the 1971 war with India, the Soviet Union responded by dispatching a nuclear-armed naval fleet to confront the American and British warships in the Bay of Bengal.
India was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) but as U.S. support for Pakistan during the Cold War solidified, India, despite its non-aligned stance, tilted towards the U.S.S.R. Though the global landscape has changed dramatically since, memories of that time when the U.S.S.R. was India’s most powerful ally, Bollywood songs echoed behind the Iron Curtain, and the U.S. treated India with disdain and scepticism still run deep in the Indian psyche.
Now the Cold War is long over, the Soviet Union is no more, and India and the United States have steadily reshaped their once-distant and uneasy relationship into a strategic partnership driven by a shared concern about an increasingly assertive China.
Today, as part of BRICS, India is in a sticky situation when it comes to balancing its relations with BRICS members China and Russia on the one hand, and a deepening, yet complicated, partnership with the United States on the other.
Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister and the driving force behind the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s three successive election victories since 2014, has thus navigated a delicate foreign policy path.
While he has significantly deepened defence cooperation and strengthened economic and diplomatic ties with the United States — including active participation in multilateral forums like the Quad (India, U.S., Japan, Australia) — he has also been careful to preserve India’s strategic autonomy, stopping short of aligning too closely with Washington.
India’s enduring ties with Russia have always been a point of friction with Washington, and tensions escalated when New Delhi refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and abstained from key U.N. resolutions criticising Moscow.
Still, with India increasingly wary of China’s aggressive moves along their Himalayan border — and Washington locked in a high-stakes rivalry with Beijing for global influence — both nations have pushed forward with their partnership.
But a series of events this year — driven by President Donald Trump’s erratic and abrasive behaviour on the global stage — has rolled back steady progress in U.S.–India relations since President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed the U.S.–India Civil Nuclear Agreement in 2008.
In May, the Trump claimed credit for ending a deadly four-day skirmish in April between India and Pakistan — nuclear armed neighbors — which erupted in the weeks after New Delhi accused Pakistan of harboring terrorist groups that carry out attacks in India-administered Kashmir.
In the April incident, Hindu tourists were targeted and 26 civilians were killed. In response, India launched a retaliatory strike, destroying terrorist bases inside Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The U.S. claiming credit for easing tensions between India and Pakistan and then hosting Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir was galling for India and a blow to Modi, both diplomatically and personally.
It undercut his carefully cultivated strongman image at home, where projecting control over national security and regional dominance is central to his political brand.
This was followed by Trump labelling India the “tariff king,” denouncing its trade barriers as “strenuous and obnoxious,” and accusing New Delhi of profiting from discounted Russian oil. New Delhi hit back, pointing out that the European Union and the U.S. also trade with Russia.
US Tariffs
The Trump administration slapped U.S. tariffs of 50 percent on Indian goods, including a 25 percent penalty for continued trade and defence transactions with Russia. No such action was taken against China, the largest buyer of Russian oil.
That it came from Trump made the blow all the more personal for Modi. Beyond his strongman persona, Modi — along with his party and its media apparatus — has carefully cultivated the image of a global statesman for his domestic base.
As one voter told me ahead of the 2019 general election, “Modi calls the U.S. presidents and tells them what to do.”
Among Modi’s hardline right-wing base in India, a particularly fervent faction exists with a bizarre fascination for Trump, admiring his authoritarian style and strongman politics.
During his visit to Houston in 2019, where he drew a massive, rockstar-like crowd, Modi crossed a diplomatic red line by publicly endorsing Trump’s re-election, an unusual move for a foreign leader on foreign soil.
The series of snubs has given fuel to political opponents and critics, who have mocked Modi’s penchant for highly choreographed public displays as more performative than substantive.
All of this came to a head during the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, held in Tianjin on Sunday and Monday this week. Modi attended, marking his first visit to China in seven years since the border standoff, and his first meeting with President Xi Jinping in four years.
India’s compliant mainstream media, which is happy to uncritically echo the establishment’s narrative and push it on the public without independent scrutiny, feverishly broadcast images of Modi meeting with Xi and President Vladimir Putin (in attendance at the summit alongside leaders from Pakistan, Iran, Belarus, and four Central Asian nations), framing the moment as India asserting independence, snubbing the U.S. and ushering in a new world order.
Meanwhile, Modi’s critics took a sharply different view, accusing him of abandoning a fractured U.S. relationship, showing weakness in engaging China on critical disputes, and returning home diplomatically isolated even as Pakistan seemed to strengthen ties with both Washington and Beijing despite the terrorist attack in Kashmir for which India wants to hold it accountable.
Speaking of peace and cooperation between India and China, Xi said, “It is vital to be friends, a good neighbour, and the Dragon and the Elephant to come together.” The Xi-Modi meeting was described as warm by Western media, leading Trump’x trade adviser Peter Navarro to say on social media: “It is a shame to see Modi getting in bed with Xi Jinping and Putin. I’m not sure what he’s thinking.”
Yet even as Prime Minister Modi thanks China for the “successful organisation of this summit,” the Himalayan border dispute that claimed the lives of 20 Indian soldiers in a 2020 clash with Chinese troops remains unresolved five years on. (China has not confirmed the number of dead soldiers on its side. Estimates vary from four to 42.)
The deadly Galwan Valley fighting, the most serious Himalayan border confrontation in decades was followed by a diplomatic freeze as well as several punitive steps by India including the banning of 58 Chinese apps including TikTok and curbing Chinese investments.
It is India’s position that Chinese troops covertly crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and entered India, but faced with a militarily superior neighbour, New Delhi has had no choice but to be constrained and reactive in its response.
China-India Tensions Remain
The unresolved border dispute remains an important and persisting reason for concern in India. China has controlled Aksai Chin since the 1962 war (that is the 38,000 sq km of land that India claims.)
Another major reason for Indian concern is that China supports Pakistan, which India says was behind April’s terrorist attack in Kashmir as well as other attacks. During the four day conflict, China repeatedly gave Pakistan useful intelligence.
China had also repeatedly blocked India’s attempt for the U.N. Security Council to designate Masood Azhar, the leader of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), a global terrorist. JeM claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack that killed more than 40 soldiers in India-administered Kashmir — one of the deadliest attacks in the region — in February 2019. China blocked India in the Security Council again in March and only withdrew its opposition in May.
Trade Imbalance
Trade between India and China is also heavily skewed in China’s favour. India’s trade deficit — calculated as the difference between imports and exports — has expanded from $1.1 billion in 2003-04 to $99.2 billion in 2024-25. China accounted for around 35 percent of India’s total trade imbalance, which stood at $283 billion last fiscal. The deficit was $85.1 billion in 2023-24.
This sense of India being the underdog dates back to 1962, when China launched an unexpected attack across the Himalayan border, despite Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s optimistic slogan, “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai” (meaning “Indians and Chinese are brothers.”)
After decisively defeating India, China unilaterally withdrew, but left behind a legacy of mistrust and strategic vulnerability that continues to shape India’s approach to China. At the summit this week Xi and Modi made a show
India may have faced setbacks in its relationship with Trump-era America, but given these unresolved issues it might be unwise to pivot hastily toward China.
Source: Consortium News.
