July 22, 2008, marked a milestone moment in India’s history and its journey toward a seat at the global high table. Amid heated political opposition to the India-U.S. civil nuclear deal, then-Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh courageously put his government on the line to advance the deal, an initiative he viewed as vital to India’s future.
By a narrow margin, Singh’s government survived a parliamentary no-confidence vote. “This will send a message to the world at large that India’s head and heart is sound, that India is prepared to take its rightful place in the comity of nations,” declared a relieved Singh, who deftly defied domestic skeptics to advance an initiative he knew would advance India’s strategic interests.
Today, India faces renewed skepticism at home about the United States’ reliability as a strategic partner. In the aftermath of the Pahalgam terrorist attack in April, and the ensuing India-Pakistan military clashes, a series of missteps, miscommunications, and bruised egos culminated in the Trump administration imposing a 50 percent tariff against India: a 25 percent reciprocal tariff plus a 25 percent additional penalty for its purchases of Russian oil. The tariff tiff, and related public barbs, resulted in a profound crisis of confidence in India-U.S. ties.
There is now, thanks to the appointment of Sergio Gor as the new U.S. ambassador to India, a nascent opening toward a repair and reset in the relationship. This is welcome news, but the two sides are not out of the woods yet.
In the face of mercurial U.S. policies, sustaining this opening and rebuilding resiliency will require patience, careful diplomacy, and a fair amount of luck. New Delhi should no longer expect Washington to play the role of demandeur in the relationship. It will need to shoulder greater responsibility in steering the relationship, and much like Singh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will need to stand up to domestic critics to reiterate the case that a long-term partnership with the United States remains in India’s core interests. More importantly, Indian policymakers will need to adopt a flexible approach toward Washington over the next three years that can allow it to seize new opportunities for convergence while safeguarding against future disruptions and disagreements.
Rightsizing the Narrative
Unsurprisingly, the present headwinds have revived U.S. skeptics within India’s strategic community. While some criticism of U.S. policies is warranted, the recent crisis does not merit a crusade against the idea of the United States as a credible long-term strategic partner.
Over the past 25 years, no country has done more to strengthen India’s economic and security interests than the United States, even with occasional downturns in bilateral ties. U.S. companies and knowledge partners have helped catalyze India’s economic and digital transformation. U.S. military cooperation and information sharing has better enabled the Indian military to counter adversaries along the Himalayan frontier and in the Indian Ocean. And through its intelligence sharing efforts, the United States has done more to save the lives of Indian citizens from terrorist attacks than any of India’s other foreign partners.
No doubt, the United States has also benefited from this partnership in a myriad of ways, but it has traditionally brought more to the table given its economic and security heft. For New Delhi, the need to invest in its partnership with the United States is not a matter of altruism but is grounded in a clear-eyed view that the relationship advances Indian interests. No amount of strategic hedging with Russia, the European Union, or others can serve as a substitute for the U.S. partnership. Articulating this narrative – even when it is politically unpopular – serves as an important signal, particularly at a time when the powers in Washington place a premium on gratitude.
Carrots and Champions
It is no secret that U.S. President Donald Trump places an outsized emphasis on commercial diplomacy and investments with American trading partners. Other countries have, to varying degrees of success, attempted to use deals as a trade tool, but this tactic should not be merely viewed through the prism of placating a transactional Washington. Rather, commercial diplomacy, if done right, can create wins for both countries.
India has plenty of arrows in its quiver: defense and civil aviation purchases, ethanol imports, purchases of U.S. natural gas and crude, nuclear power deals, critical minerals exploration, investments in AI infrastructure, pharmaceutical manufacturing – the list goes on. While it will require unconventional diplomacy on India’s part, these investments can be packaged and presented in a way that allows Trump a public diplomacy “win” for a trade deal, all while deepening economic linkages, particularly at the subnational level, that will pay dividends for years to come.
New Delhi and Washington have historically relied on policy champions and problem solvers to move the ball in the relationship. Gor provides South Block a direct channel to the White House. While his additional title of regional envoy has generated some angst in New Delhi, Gor’s interest in Central Asia provides Indian officials with an opening to catalyze regional cooperation, be it in critical minerals, energy, or infrastructure. Creative problem-solving requires two to tango, and assigning Gor a central, senior interlocutor who can serve as a steward for the U.S. relationship on the Indian side would be a prudent move for New Delhi to consider.
But Gor alone will not be a miracle-worker. Beyond the administration, India must do more to invest in its relationships with other centers of influence, on the Hill, at the state level, and with American industry. This cannot be done through a passive approach. More than ever before, India will need to take the lead in generating new ideas for engagement.
For example, how can India more effectively leverage key U.S. states and governors to advance bilateral ties? Here India can take a leaf from Japan’s playbook. Starting in the early 1980s, Japan and North Carolina began a series of trade and cultural exchanges that have culminated in Japan becoming the largest investor in the state, yielding over 30,000 jobs and decades of goodwill. Between the United States and India, subnational engagement has been episodic at best. Standing up a regular engagement mechanism – such as a new India-U.S. Governors-Chief Ministers Forum – is long overdue and something the Indian government should pursue in earnest.
A recent letter by members of the U.S. House of Representatives creates an opening, but the onus will be on India to generate new and creative modalities to translate good intentions into concrete outcomes, such as a long pending idea for a Quad congressional delegation visit to the region. Congressional engagement also presents an avenue for India’s political opposition – historically instrumental in fostering bilateral relations – to serve as a bipartisan advocate for a reset, rather than limiting itself to the role of public skeptic.
Trade Tailwinds, Not Tensions
The understatement of the last 20 years might be that the India-U.S. trade relationship has never been easy. There is a long history of tension and rivalry with much of this centered in the World Trade Organization (WTO), where the two countries’ opposing positions resulted in showdowns that would make traditional diplomats’ quake in their boots.
However, as the strategic relationship has blossomed since 2008 and the WTO’s relevance to global trade has faded, India-U.S. bilateral trade has increased at an impressive rate and the two have shown that they can engage in some give and take. The first Trump administration made tremendous progress toward concluding a mini trade deal, and the Biden administration followed up with historic resolutions to seven WTO trade disputes.
The first months of Trump 2.0 were promising on trade when the two leaders agreed in February to launch negotiations on a comprehensive Bilateral Trade Agreement. The trade negotiators got an early start in exchanging offers across the table, well before Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of reciprocal tariffs on April 2. By mid-July both sides had predicted that a big trade deal was imminent.
But all that changed when Trump and Modi failed to follow up and mend fences after a negative phone call over the U.S. role in resolving the recent India-Pakistan crisis.
The big question, now that there has been some behind-the-scenes diplomacy and a recent exchange of warm notes between the two leaders, is whether the tough trade issues can be addressed and resolved. If Gor can help land the plane on the Russian crude impasse, which is seemingly in the works, the positive goodwill can then be channeled toward restoring momentum on trade.
India, understandably, is wary of what a U.S. trade deal can deliver as it looks at the one-sided agreements the Trump administration has concluded with other trade heavyweights, such as the European Union and Japan. The United States, also understandably, believes this may be a truly unique moment to put the trade relationship on a more level playing field. What is clear is that the stakes for both are high – an ambitious trade agreement between the world’s largest economy and the soon-to-be third largest could create the economic underpinnings for a growing strategic partnership, especially in countering China.
Babus and Bureaucrats
From military exercises and intelligence sharing to critical minerals and nuclear energy, the areas of convergence in the India-U.S. relationship are vast and varied. In many instances, these lines of cooperation have been advanced by career bureaucrats across the two governments’ nearly three dozen working groups and dialogues. While bureaucrats and babus have in the past gotten a bad rap for throwing up red tape to stall progress – a criticism that is occasionally justified – it must also be acknowledged that bureaucratic dialogues have served as ballasts in the relationship, providing the necessary frameworks to get business done, even amid political spats.
Now is an opportune moment for the Indian government to propose long-term, forward-looking initiatives extending beyond 2028 that would offer both bureaucracies something to strive for. The science and technology frontier has historically been a bedrock for India-U.S. ties. Take, for example, the NASA-ISRO NISAR satellite mission, which launched in July 2025, but was first announced during the Obama administration. Similar anchor projects that span multiple political administrations can contribute to continuity and predictability and are all the more necessary when ties are frosty.
India should not shy away from proposing a bold new initiative on frontier technology cooperation – such as nuclear fusion or next-generation robotics – which would provide a much-needed ballast and capture the imagination of babus and the public alike.
No Surprises on China and Pakistan
Divining each country’s policy intentions toward China has long been a parlor game in Washington and New Delhi. The fundamental paradigm for both countries has largely been consistent – strategic competition with episodic engagement – but there is no doubt that Beijing has benefited from the recent India-U.S. spat. Most recently, the Trump administration’s overtures to Beijing, including the prospect of a presidential visit to Beijing next year, has revived anxieties in New Delhi that a China-U.S. rapprochement could be a precursor for a larger “G-2” understanding.
Fears of this are overblown, given China’s track record of overplaying its hand and Trump’s oscillations on China policy, but it will be incumbent upon Washington to keep lines of communication open with Indian interlocutors to ensure close coordination on U.S. China policy. This will be difficult, given that China policy is closely intertwined with the president. That said, existing channels – such as Foreign Office Consultations, the Strategic Intelligence Dialogue, and the East Asia Dialogue – can help preview shifts and prevent misinterpretations.
The same rule should apply for Pakistan. At the end of the day, the Pakistan-U.S. relationship must stand or fall on its own merits, given the rancor and disappointments that have marked the relationship in recent years. Complaints about “re-hyphenation” are likely to fall on deaf ears, but a policy of close coordination and no surprises is the minimum New Delhi should ask for and receive from Washington.
Conclusion
While it may not receive due recognition, the United States’ drive to build a strategic partnership with India stands as one of the great accomplishments of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Over the past quarter century, six U.S. administrations, Republican and Democrat, have invested in strengthening the India partnership through trust, patience, and at times, bold action.
This effort has required a constant balancing act of maximizing convergences and minimizing divergences. The divergences and crises have been many – the arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York, F-16 fighter aircraft for Pakistan, tensions over the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act and Ukraine, the murder-for-hire plot against a U.S. citizen, the list goes on. But through weathering these storms, both sides gradually built a degree of resiliency that allowed them to navigate subsequent crises in a more constructive manner. The need of the hour is rebuilding that resilience and goodwill.
History offers cautious optimism. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan arrived at Roosevelt House in 1974 to take up the role of U.S. ambassador to India, few could imagine how India-U.S. ties could get any worse. Painful memories of U.S. actions during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War were still fresh, and President Richard Nixon harbored a deep personal animosity toward Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The New York Times summed up Moynihan’s daunting task as “shaping a coherent link between two countries that were locked in corrosive limbo.”
Despite the dark mood, the new envoy struck an optimistic note: “Our mutual concern and interest that each other’s institutions should prosper and prevail and endure is fundamental. This is not simply rhetoric. It’s a hard‐headed assessment of mutual self‐interest… In every important sense, we need each other.” Moynihan’s sage words still hold true today.
