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The Trump administration has not been kind to India. Nevertheless, India has responded with far greater equanimity than most observers expected. Predictions that President Donald Trump’s behavior will hurt U.S.-Indian relations have not come to pass, with the leaders of the two countries remaining in frequent and friendly conversation. Instead of retaliating, India has responded calmly, though the Indian government faces considerable domestic criticism. Despite continuing irritation with American behavior, India can be expected to maintain its two-decade course of seeking good relations with the United States.
The reason is a simple one that is ignored by critics and analysts: India has no other choice. India faces a China that is growing ever more powerful and aggressive and one with which India has both political and territorial disputes. China is India’s overriding strategic concern and it will remain so for the foreseeable future. India’s many other partners are useful supplements, but they cannot replace American heft. As offensive as Trump’s behavior has been, New Delhi needs Washington’s support to deal with Beijing. This may change if American unreliability becomes embedded rather than simply being, as the Indian government no doubt hopes — a Trumpian interlude. Until then, India’s partnership with the United States is not a matter of choice but an absence of choice.
The situation looked a lot more promising when Trump won the U.S. presidential election in 2024. There was a considerable confidence in New Delhi about the future of the relationship in the second Trump term. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s welcoming of his friend Trump’s “spectacular victory” was probably understandable because he was far from alone in recognizing that Trump required over-the-top ego-massaging. But there was also genuine hope at both the popular and elite levels about Trump. And the optimism seemed well-founded. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was given a front-row seat at the Trump inauguration, and Modi himself made an early visit to meet Trump just weeks after the inauguration.
The good vibrations came to a screeching halt when Trump imposed tariffs on India in April 2025 as part of his “Liberation Day” tariffs. But that was not the end of it — a month later, he was claiming credit for stopping an Indian-Pakistani military clash that followed a terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Trump was now carelessly undermining the Indian position that it was Pakistan that had sued for peace because of punishing Indian military action. Moreover, for decades, India has maintained that it will not accept third-party mediation in Indian-Pakistani disputes, though this was never entirely true, as the U.S. government had periodically stepped in to calm Indo-Pakistani crises. But previous U.S. presidents had been careful to maintain the fiction of American non-involvement to satisfy India.
Trump, of course, was different, and his loud claims forced the Indian government into quandary. New Delhi was unwilling to reject his claims lest the mercurial Trump took offense, but not able to accept it either. The mediation claim probably hurt India even more than the tariffs because the current nationalistic Indian government has been particularly insistent about its forceful defense of Indian territory and sovereignty. Rubbing salt on Indian wounds, Trump invited Pakistan’s military chief for an hour-long lunch at the White House, publicly praising him and disagreeing with India about how the Indian-Pakistani war ended.
Further blows followed. India faced additional tariffs on importing Russian oil, forcing India to reduce such imports to a 44-month low by January 2026. The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran made things even worse. India’s approach was passive, leading to much domestic criticism in India of the government’s pusillanimity towards the United States. India was further dismayed by Pakistan’s central role in mediating the Iran war. There are even indications of internal disagreements within the Indian government, with Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar being blamed for Indian diplomatic failures.
Despite such carelessness to its interests and pride, an explicitly nationalist Indian government is careful to avoid antagonizing the United States because India has no option other than to balance China. It is important to note that nothing has undermined this central purpose, though a lot of Trump’s actions have hurt Indian pride.
The imbalance of wealth and power between India and China has grown rapidly. The two were roughly comparable from the 1950s to the 1980s. But by the mid-1990s, China’s economic liberalization had already made its economy thrice as large as India’s, and the gap kept growing. As of 2024, the Chinese economy is about five times as large. Though India has itself grown quite rapidly, and its share of the global economy had doubled from 1.6 percent in 2000 to 3.4 percent in 2023, it had weakened relative to China. From being about two-thirds the size of China’s economy in 1980, it has now declined to less than a fifth.
China is rapidly converting its wealth into military power. For decades, India was proud of deploying the only aircraft carrier in Asia. China now has three carriers — all larger than India’s two — with rumors of a fourth nuclear-powered carrier. India produced Asia’s first indigenous jet fighter after 1945, but is now largely dependent on imported fighters, while China has at least two indigenous fifth-generation combat jets in service. China’s industrial manufacturing capacity also makes it a major drone power, while India is far behind.
Not surprisingly, Indian leaders see balancing China as their primary strategic problem. When India conducted the 1998 nuclear test, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee pointed to the China threat as the reason. By 2010, India’s Army chief was warning for the first time about the possibility of India facing a two-front war contingency, having to deal with both China and Pakistan at the same time. This was the main reason why both the right-wing Vajpayee and the left-wing Manmohan Singh governments — ideologically radically different — pursued a new relationship with the United States.
This was continued by the Modi government. Though Modi initially did also seek more cooperative economic relations with Beijing, repeated Chinese aggressive behavior along the Tibet border meant that there were clear limits to how far engagement would moderate Chinese behavior. After an attack in 2020 cost the lives of 20 Indian soldiers (and an unknown number of Chinese) — the first blood spilled on the border in decades — India tightened its embrace of the United States and the Quad, a strategic cooperation arrangement between India, the United States, Australia, and Japan.
While in theory, India has a number of other partnership options, they fall apart under even a cursory examination. For example, a seemingly obvious choice is Russia, India’s partner through much of the Cold War, and still a favorite fallback option. In fact, in response to Trump, India signaled this very option with a flurry of official visits in the latter half of last year, capped by a state visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to India in December, the first in four years. But the visit proved to be a lot less significant than promised, especially because expectations of a new oil and arms deal were belied. A weakened Russia — leaning on China, bogged down in Ukraine, and a shadow of its Cold War military technological prowess — is not a substitute for the United States.
India still buys Russian arms, but this has declined significantly over the past decade. Only a small part of this is New Delhi’s concern at being over-dependent on Moscow for arms. Pressure from the United States also possibly plays a small part. The main reason is simply that Russia no longer has the advanced weapons technology India needs. For example, Russia produces no fifth-generation fighter that India can buy as it faces off against an increasingly sophisticated Chinese airpower. India had previously invested in the Russian SU-57 fighter which was supposed to provide such capability but pulled out of the partnership after it became clear that Russia did not have the technology to build what India needed.
China fields at least two advanced fifth-generation fighter planes, and possibly even a stealth bomber that would be a particular concern to India. Moreover, some of these technologies will likely make their way to Pakistan, China’s long-time strategic partner. Chinese military technology has already made a difference: several Indian fighter planes were reportedly shot down in the Indian-Pakistani military confrontation in May 2025 by a combination of advanced Chinese fighter jets and long-distance air-to-air missiles, which took the Indian Air Force by surprise.
Another major strategic hurdle is the growing camaraderie between Moscow and Beijing. Russia has joined Chinese criticism of the Quad, a group which includes India. Most critically, Russia’s failure to support India during the India-China border clash in 2020 means that New Delhi knows it cannot depend on Moscow in any future China confrontation. India is unlikely to entirely abandon the Russia relationship, but the Indian establishment knows that Moscow is not the answer to India’s China problem.
Another alternative India has is to partner with Indo-Pacific powers, such as Australia, Japan, and others — all of whom fear the consequences of China’s growing power and share a common experience of recent Chinese aggression.
Japan has repeatedly faced Chinese incursions into its territory in the East China Sea as well as other belligerent military behavior, including exercises. In late 2025, a Chinese naval task force engaged in an unprecedented circumnavigation of Australia, staying just outside of Australian territorial waters. This is in addition to previous efforts at economic coercion of these countries, as well as China’s assertive use of force in the South China Sea and against Taiwan.
Not surprisingly — even if reluctantly — the countries in the region have responded. Japan and Australia have already been ramping up their own efforts to counter the threat from China, both by increasing their own domestic military efforts, as well as by strengthening existing partnerships. For example, Japan’s military spending has long since left the 1 percent of GDP limit; including supplemental funding, it has already crossed the 2 percent of GDP threshold. Australia is the latest country in the region to hike its defense spending, with the Defense Minister justifying it as necessary to meet “the most threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II.” Others in the region, such as South Korea, have also sharply increased their defense spending.
The region is also building local partnerships, leaning on each other for support. Australia and Japan have significantly deepened their bilateral defense ties, including with a Reciprocal Access Agreement. Earlier this year, Australia signed a security treaty with Indonesia. Even Japan and South Korea, despite a troubled legacy, are enhancing their defense cooperation. Beyond the region, both the Quad and the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) alliance are examples of countries in the region building partnerships for security.
The region thus represents a potential partnership opportunity for India, which it has pursued. Still, a number of practical difficulties hinder any such partnership. First, though the common concern is China’s enormous power disparity, the specific ways in which this manifests are different for each country. India worries about China’s territorial claims along the land border, while Japan is concerned primarily with its maritime territories, especially the Senkaku islands. Australia’s problem is not territorial at all but about sea lanes of communication. Second, the forms of cooperation: Japan and Australia have long habit of security cooperation, but India remains suspicious of actual security cooperation. And of course, burden-sharing in any such cooperative venture will prove to be a difficult conversation, if these countries ever get to that point.
But the most fundamental problem is the most serious: even together, these three are no match for China. Their combined GDP is only about half of China’s (calculated from World Bank GDP data for 2024, current US $). Not surprisingly, China’s defense budget of about $336 billion — which likely understates its actual spending — towers above the $190 billion that these three powers can contribute together (calculated from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data). The truth is that even together — assuming all coordination problems are resolved — such a partnership is simply insufficient to balance China by itself.
Other partnership options are even less viable. European powers are too far away, too weak, and too disorganized to be of much help against China. The BRICS economic bloc, comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has grown but is divided and more likely to follow China’s lead than India’s. India is not likely to abandon any of these partnerships, but they will remain as supplements rather than a replacement for the United States. Moreover, such partnerships allow India to potentially reduce its dependence on the United States — which addresses India’s desire to maintain some strategic autonomy — but they work only if America is available to depend upon.
A final alternative that India has is resolving its difficulties with China, if not ultimately aligning itself more closely with Beijing. Afterall, India and China agree on a lot, which is one reason why India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru tried hard to build a partnership with the giant neighbor, a policy that came to be called Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai (India and China are brothers). Moreover, Indian leaders always recognized that enmity with China would force India into an uncomfortable dependence on other powers. This was the main reason why Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sought to improve relations with China by the end of the 1960s, despite suffering a grievous defeat at China’s hands just a few years earlier. Similarly, over the last year, as India grew increasingly worried about President Trump’s actions, it began to improve relations with Beijing, sending senior ministers on visits, freeing up business travel and reducing curbs on Chinese investments.
But despite these small steps, there is no indication that India has any China card that it can play. The problem New Delhi faces is that Beijing shows little sign that it is interested in any fundamental reset of its India relations. To the extent that ties are warming, it is being dictated by China. Moreover, India has little idea of what drives China’s behavior, including its aggression at the border, such as at Depsang in 2013, Chumar in 2014, Doklam in 2017, and most seriously at Galwan in 2020, the attack that killed 20 Indian soldiers. The Sino-Indian border problem is itself well-nigh impossible to resolve because they involve large swathes of territory, not mere adjustment of a border line, as well as questions of territorial sovereignty and national identity. Another stumbling block is China’s long-standing partnership with Pakistan — India’s regional nemesis — which shows no sign of weakening.
Thus, by default, India is left with the United States as the only viable strategic choice because only America is strong enough to balance China. Moreover, American self-interest makes it necessary to counter China. It is of course always possible that the United States eventually turns out to be not a real choice. This could happen if, for example, U.S. domestic politics makes the country a less willing international partner. American power is useless to India if the United States no longer wants to wield it to balance China.
The American public has indeed become weary about the costs of the country’s internationalist policy. The wild swings in Trump’s foreign policy, seemingly driven more by personal moods than even transactionalism, point to the risks that India runs. It is not beyond the scope of possibility that Trump or another American administration would seek an accommodation with Beijing. Should this dire possibility come to pass, Asia would likely fall under China’s hegemony and India and other Indo-Pacific powers would need to learn to live in a very different world. But this is also a highly unlikely outcome because great powers do not willingly withdraw from regions vital to their power and prosperity.
In any case, until such an unlikely denouement comes to pass, India will lean on the American balancer. A less likely possibility for the foreseeable future is that American power itself declines so much that the United States is no longer useful to India. But as long as America is able and appears willing, New Delhi will swallow its pride in its own larger interest.
Dr. Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is resident senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Previously, she was at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, which she joined after a five-year stint at the National Security Council Secretariat (2003 to 2007), Government of India. Dr. Rajagopalan has authored/ co-authored or edited more than a dozen books and reports including (most recently) Assessing India’s Perceptions of China’s Nuclear Expansion (US Institute of Peace, 2025) and research essays in journals such as India Review, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Air and Space Power Journal, International Journal of Nuclear Law, and Strategic Analysis. She can be followed on X at: @raji143
Rajesh Rajagopalan is professor of international politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His main areas of research are international relations theory and Indian foreign and security policies. His publications include three books, Nuclear South Asia: Keywords and Concepts (with Atul Mishra); Fighting Like A Guerrilla: The Indian Army and Counterinsurgency; and Second Strike: Arguments about Nuclear War in South Asia. His research articles (some jointly authored) have appeared in journals such as International Affairs, the Washington Quarterly, Contemporary Security Policy, India Review, Contemporary South Asia, Small Wars and Insurgencies, South Asia, South Asian Survey, and Strategic Analysis. He can be followed on X at: @RRajagopalanJNU
Image: Prime Minister’s Office via Wikimedia Commons
