Pakistan shadow over US-India ties: In the wake of a terrorist attack in late April targeting tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, a series of military skirmishes took place between India and Pakistan. These involved extensive artillery barrages along the Line of Control (the de facto international border in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir), the use of drones and missiles to attack a range of targets, and the use of air power.
Following this four-day conflict, Pakistan claimed that it had shot down as many as six Indian combat aircraft. General Anil Chauhan, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, confirmed that the Indian Air Force had lost some aircraft but did not affirm the number.
After the hostilities concluded, US President Donald Trump claimed that he had successfully persuaded both India and Pakistan to agree to a ceasefire. To that end, he asserted that he had threatened to impose significant trade sanctions on both countries, thereby inducing them to end the ongoing hostilities.
Cloud over US-India ties
Pakistan lauded his public remarks and even briefly nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. (After Trump’s decision to attack three nuclear facilities in Iran, Pakistan’s political opposition asked its government to rescind the nomination.) India, for its part, has repeatedly and categorically denied that the ceasefire was a product of Trump’s intervention.
It is both difficult and unnecessary to adjudicate the veracity of either claim. However, Trump’s attempt to insert himself into this latest India-Pakistan crisis has set off alarm bells in New Delhi about the state of US-India relations.
Before Trump had proclaimed his role in ending the brief, intense conflict, Vice-President JD Vance had stated that the India-Pakistan crisis was “none of our business”. Trump subsequently claimed the US acted as mediator in defusing India-Pakistan tensions.
The latter statement raised hackles in New Delhi owing to its long-standing aversion to external efforts to resolve its differences with Pakistan. Finally, to New Delhi’s dismay, Trump decided to host General Asim Munir, the Pakistan Army’s Chief of Staff, for lunch at the White House. Though little of substance emerged from this meeting, the optics were a source of considerable misgiving in New Delhi.
Several Indian political analysts and commentators have argued that Trump’s statements and actions suggest a return to the much-disliked American policy of hyphenation: linking India and Pakistan in its dealings with the two antagonistic neighbours. Indeed, this had characterised American policy toward the subcontinent during much of the Cold War. It was only under the late American ambassador Frank Wisner in the mid-1990s that the US decided to de-hyphenate its relations with the two countries.
Wisner, who served as the ambassador to New Delhi between 1994 and 1997, was able to pursue this strategy because of India’s growing economic clout in the wake of its fitful embrace of economic liberalisation in 1991. Subsequent administrations, for the most part, adhered to this policy.
Even after the renewal of a US-Pakistan security relationship following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in America, the US maintained a cordial and mostly robust relationship with India. The US-India partnership even survived Secretary of State Colin Powell’s maladroit designation of Pakistan as a “major non-NATO ally” in 2004, despite causing its share of unease in New Delhi.
The costly signal
What, in considerable part, had redeemed the US-India relationship was President George W. Bush’s monumental decision in 2005 to pursue the US-India civilian nuclear accord. This accord, for all practical purposes, exempted India from the strictures of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970 and allowed it to maintain its nuclear weapons programme. All prior US presidents had, to varying degrees, sought to cajole, persuade and even browbeat India to eschew its nuclear weapons programme and accede to the NPT.
Bush’s decision to make an exception for India amounted to what scholars of international relations refer to as a “costly signal” — namely, one that requires the expenditure of significant domestic and international political capital. In its wake, US-India relations had been placed on a far more secure footing.
Subsequent administrations, both Democratic and Republican, steadily built upon the solid foundations that Bush had constructed during his second term in office. The Barack Obama administration, for example, during its first year in office, neglected India. However, Obama visited India in 2010. During the visit, much to the surprise of his interlocutors in New Delhi, in a speech to the Indian parliament he publicly stated that the US, at some point, would look forward to including New Delhi as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Since this was a long-standing Indian goal, his announcement came as a very pleasant surprise to the Indian political leadership.
Also, at the initiative of the Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, the administration designated India as a “Major Defense Partner” before remitting office, thereby easing defence acquisitions from the United States.
Even the advent of the first Trump administration did not lead to substantial policy changes. India, it appeared, had for all practical purposes become a mostly bipartisan issue. Its successor, the Joe Biden administration, despite expressing some misgivings about democratic backsliding and human rights in India, continued to deepen and broaden the strategic partnership, especially because of its concerns about an increasingly assertive, if not downright revanchist, People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Asia.
Trump’s return to office in 2025, however, has seen some disturbing signs, largely because of his propensity to use trade as a weapon or at least a source of leverage. Unlike in the past, perhaps cognisant of Trump’s inclination to exploit the trade deficit with India as a political blunderbuss, the Modi government indicated a willingness to make certain trade concessions. These trade negotiations, though initially promising, have yet to result in an accord.
Meanwhile, Trump’s maladroit remarks and his hosting of General Munir have cast a pall on the US-India relationship. It is, of course, possible that New Delhi is needlessly tying itself in knots about these ill-advised statements from the White House. They may simply reflect Trump’s proclivity for self-aggrandisement and a degree of policy incoherence.
That said, given Trump’s mercurial disposition, New Delhi’s concerns about the future of the relationship may well be understandable. Much of the progress that has been achieved in US-India relations could suffer a setback owing to Trump’s ill-advised remarks.
Šumit Ganguly is Senior Fellow and Director, Huntington Program on Strengthening US-India Relations, at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info
