From tariffs to regional diplomacy, recent US actions suggest India should rely less on strategic assurances and more on building comprehensive national strength
In a single week this June, American missiles tore into three oil tankers off the coast of Oman, each crewed by Indian sailors, killing three of them. That Indian blood should be spilled by the navy of our strategic partner is a brutal symbol of how our relationship now stands. We have long believed that our courtship with Washington was maturing into a partnership of equals, a natural meeting of the world’s oldest and largest democracies. However, post Operation Sindoor, a pattern has emerged that is hard to miss. After India launched Operation Sindoor in May 2025 against Pakistan-based terror, the guns fell silent only when Pakistan’s military sought a ceasefire, one for which President Trump has since repeatedly claimed personal credit. Thereafter, Washington’s engagements have cut across India’s security interests, be it the rehabilitation of the Pakistan Army or driving its agenda across Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka, leaving India to manage the fallout in its own backyard.
This was accompanied by the economic squeeze. A 50% trade tariff, among the steepest the United States imposed on any trading partner, ostensibly to punish India for importing Russian oil. The hypocrisy is glaring as China, the largest buyer of Russian crude, faced no comparable penalty. The pressure also reached into technology and industry, where Trump publicly told Apple, Tesla and other big techs not to make in India.
India is not being singled out by accident; it is being managed by design. Nowhere is this clearer than in the war with Iran, where the American and Israeli strikes led to the closure of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, hitting us where it hurts the most. To prosecute the war, Washington leaned once more on Pakistan, enlisting Rawalpindi to carry its messages to Tehran; and it was the smaller Gulf states, their airspace and waters drawn into the crossfire, that absorbed much of the cost. Tellingly, not one Chinese or Pakistani vessel was intercepted or struck; it was ships flying the Indian flag or crewed by Indian sailors that were singled out. For India the lesson was written in Indian blood on those tankers.
If one looks back, history is replete with examples of US unreliability as a strategic partner. The Seventh Fleet’s menacing entry into the Bay of Bengal in 1971, the sanctions that followed India’s 1998 nuclear tests, the denial of GPS support during the 1999 Kargil conflict, and the recurring curbs on weapons and technology transfers all point the same way: American support has always come hedged with conditions and President Trump’s assurances at the recent G7 Meet do little to change that.
Viewed together, a clear pattern emerges. Each time Indian and American interests diverged, Washington reached for coercion rather than consultation. India’s experience fits a similar American approach of not confronting its rivals head-on but through others. Ukraine is armed and financed to bleed Russia; Japan, South Korea and a string of Southeast Asian states are marshalled to hem in China; and Pakistan is rehabilitated as a useful lever against India. In West Asia, the recurring confrontations between the United States, Israel and Iran have shown how smaller and more vulnerable states become arenas for great-power rivalry. The very Washington that courts India into the Quad to balance Beijing is content to see New Delhi pinned down on its Western and Eastern flanks.
This conduct is itself a symptom of a larger shift. At the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau remarked that Washington would not repeat the “mistakes” it made with China, a frank admission that established powers are unwilling to share strategic space with risers like India that might one day challenge the balance they have so painstakingly built.
What this demands is a deliberate strategy to wean us off dependence on any single power and to assert our autonomy. The foundation is building a comprehensive national power i.e. a broad economic base, hefty diplomatic weight, cutting-edge technological capacity and deterrent military strength that together make coercing India too costly to attempt. We must build genuine technological sovereignty in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, cyber and space, while accelerating military modernisation around unmanned and AI-enabled systems and a diversified, increasingly indigenous defence-industrial base, so that no supplier can hold us hostage. We must secure our energy and supply lines by diversifying sources, shipping routes and strategic reserves, expanding domestic and renewable generation, and reducing exposure to distant chokepoints that a single conflict can throttle. We must harden our critical infrastructure, from power grids to financial and digital networks, against both cyber and kinetic threats. Above all, we must diversify our strategic partnerships across Russia, Europe, Japan, the Gulf and the Global South and learn to express autonomy through calibrated reciprocity.
The lesson of the past year is simple. A partner that punishes you for your independence and courts your adversaries in your own neighbourhood is telling you precisely how much your independence is worth to it. Our objective must be clear: be strong enough to deter coercion, resilient enough to absorb shocks, and influential enough to shape the emerging order rather than be shaped by it.
(Brigadier Anil John Alfred Pereira, SM (Retd) is a veteran from Goa, who served the nation with distinction for 32 years)
