July 31, 2025
Dhruva Jaishankar, Ashley J. Tellis, and Nirupama Rao discuss the future of U.S.-India relations on an episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview with Dan Kurtz-Phelan. The discussion is part of a debate about India’s pathways to power in the September/October 2025 issue of Foreign Affairs.
Transcript of Dhruva’s contributions:
12:17 [Dan Kurtz-Phelan] Dhruva, we got that distillation of where Nirupama differs Ashley’s analysis. What is your critique or where do you differ from his?
[Dhruva Jaishankar] Thank you for having me. It's a great pleasure to be joined by two people — and I'm not sure how much some of your listeners would appreciate that these are really two people who've done a lot for the U.S.-India bilateral relationship over the past few decades. Both as policy makers but also as just explaining the U.S. and India to audiences in each other's countries. For a relationship that is sometimes characterized as one of the most important bilateral relationships in the 21st century, it's surprising how few people there are who are able to do that and it's a pleasure to be here with two such individuals.
12:56 [Jaishankar] I think there are a few points where I would agree quite strongly with what Ashley said on the podcast. Although I feel it's not necessarily reflected, at least not stressed to the same degree, in his essay. One is that India's rise is in U.S. interests and remains so, for the reasons he very nicely articulated. And so it's not been completely altruistic on the part of the United States to engage with India and to partner with India, but it has also been done to advance U.S. interests. Second, that at least one objective is to retain a stable balance of power in Asia, in the Indo-Pacific, and by extension globally as well. And that balance of power is now under threat by China's rise. In both the nature and the rapidity and scale of China's rise. So I think again, no real objection there. And the third, that India cannot balance China entirely on its own. That while, again, India has risen quite considerably — its share of global GDP has almost tripled since 1991 — but the gap with China remains considerable.
13:58 [Jaishankar] I think my differences though would be sort of three-fold. This really gets into what does one do about this once you're done analyzing the situation. And I think the biggest challenge is that the U.S. is not offering India an alliance. And certainly that's not true under Donald Trump's presidency, where the U.S. is actually watering down some of its alliance commitments both in Europe and in Asia. But even under a democratic presidency, say a Biden administration. Even if he had a strong mandate in Congress, it's difficult to imagine any formal alliance being ratified by the U.S. Congress with India or with many other partners for that matter. And in fact, the last — I had to look this up — the last bilateral collective defense agreement that the United States signed and ratified was 1960, was with Japan. NATO expansion has been a bit of an aberration, an exception to the rule. Furthermore, it's not as if India needs an alliance with the United States, not at least one that is formally defined in the way a lot of traditional U.S. alliances, Cold War alliances, were constructed. So unlike a lot of others, India does not need U.S. troops or bases or military aid or a mutual defense treaty or joint commands or a nuclear umbrella. And that's, you know, what a lot of allies expect of the United States.
15:09 [Jaishankar] But short of that, I would argue, it can and is in fact doing a lot with the U.S., including activities that some might describe as of a quasi-alliance type behavior or more formally a partnership. And this extends to unprecedented intelligence sharing — and we saw this after the Galwan clashes 5 years ago — combined maritime operations, ship repair agreements, mutual logistics assistance. Another recent example signed a couple of years ago is the Security of Supply Arrangement (SOSA) in 2023. That I think is like the main area of departure, which is it suggests that sort of India is turning down something, which is really not an offer. Now two things follow from that given these realities, India has little choice but to strive for a multipolar order because one, the world is not reverting to unipolarity — barring a sudden collapse of China. A sort of U.S.-led unipolarity. Second, an alliance, as I said, is not an offer from the United States in a world of increased bipolar competition. And third, another possibility which is a U.S.-China condominium — a G2, what some have described as a G2 — would actually marginalize Indian interests, would cut India out. And thus, striving for a multipolar order in which Indian interests are to be defended and secured is a natural aspiration for a rising India.
16:33 [Jaishankar] One final point on this. I think Ashley stressed, sort of one thing he said which I think I would disagree with. This concern is that the U.S. has offered India various benefits to a partnership that India has repeatedly demured, and I'm not sure I think if you look back on the last 25 years under the last three prime ministers of India, going back to 1998, that that has necessarily been the case. In fact, I mean one could argue that all three prime ministers in their own ways actually stuck their necks out to improve relations with the United States. And so what follows that the U.S. is one of many partners and that those partnerships are somehow equal. I'm not sure, again, holds up that today the U.S. is in fact the most important partner for India. If you, you know, take the entire breath of the relationship from trade, defense to energy to people-to-people contacts. Today, the United States remains India's most important partner.
17:27 [Jaishankar] And so, you know, it was Prime Minister Vajpayee who called United States and India natural allies after India's nuclear test. He actually made an insidious effort at normalizing relations with Washington. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh actually put his government on the line on the question of the relationship with the United States. Prime Minister Modi has probably, you know, done more to advance that relationship, including visiting the United States more than he has any other country. So I do think that there has been a fair amount of effort made on the Indian side, at building up this relationship and that continues. I mean today the fact is India has been working quite assiduously to finalize some kind of trade agreement with the Trump administration.
37:54 [Phelan] Dhruva, I want to go to you on this question of strategic autonomy and why you believe that it or multi-alignment, which I don't believe is a term you use but is often related, is in fact a necessity for India. Let me press you on the Russia-Ukraine piece of this. I think there's more sympathy in Washington for the balancing act that India needs to play with China just given the history and the geography. Russia, there's some sympathy for the history but I think a little bit more frustration. How do you see that particular piece of it in the strategic autonomy context?
38:25 [Jaishankar] I think a distinction needs to be made — something you said Dan in the past of non-alignment, strategic autonomy, multi-alignment — I don't personally like to use the term multi-alignment because I think, to get to Ashley's point, it gives the misleading impression that all of India's relationships are equal when they are practically not so. But I think each had a particular history. The context is sometimes muddied. So non-alignment had a very specific purpose in the early years and I stress the early years of the Cold War, and it changed over time. I mean for the second half of the Cold War, India was aligned with the Soviet Union. Strategic autonomy really came out in the context of the nuclear discussion in India, and the realization that no country — not the United States, not the Soviet Union — was going to offer offer a nuclear deterrent to India, and therefore India had to be strategically autonomous at that time. We can debate the terminology, but I think where there is more clarity is maybe what the nature of the U.S.-India relationship today. It is really an entente cordiale if you want to go back to a traditional way of thinking about a relationship. And in the pre-nuclear age, this was in fact a very common type of set of arrangements that, you know, they called it sometimes alliances or ententes, but this was really the nature of most close security and strategic partnerships at that time. And it was really only the nuclear age that required this sort of ironclad commitment that sort of characterized what we now think of as U.S. alliances with NATO, with Japan, and others.
39:50 [Jaishankar] On the Russia question, I think on China there is no balancing act. India has in some ways more serious concerns about China than maybe the United States does precisely because it's on the border. And that has in fact, opened up this room for this U.S.-India partnership that we now talk about. I don't think it's often appreciated how deep the differences between India and China go because it's not just about the disputed border, although that's the most important manifestation of it, but you have a trade deficit that is larger than India's entire defense spending. You have very intense competition between India and China in the Indian subcontinent, in the Indian Ocean region. You have questions about the broader balance of power, maritime security, China's relationship with Pakistan, and also on international order issues. It's China, not any other country, that's blocking Indian aspirations at the United Nations Security Council, at the Nuclear Suppliers Group. I think these differences are structural. They're well recognized and that has actually opened up room for this cooperation. That has been appreciated by successive administrations in the United States. There are two relationships that sometimes rub Washington the wrong way. India's relationship with Russia and with Iran. And what I would stress with both these relationships, more with Iran, but to some degree with Russia, is that at least in material terms, they are diminishing in importance from India's point of view. Today in the Middle East, India's most important partners are the UAE, Israel, possibly Saudi Arabia. Whether it's from an energy standpoint, a people-to-people standpoint, a security standpoint, Iran is diminishing in relative importance for India. Will India push Iran away? No. But this is the reality of India's regional relationships.
41:27 [Jaishankar] Similarly, with Russia, prior to 2014, 85% of India's defense imports were from Russia. Its space program was very closely tied to Russia. Indian astronauts were training in Russia, not the United States. Its nuclear program was much more close with Russia than with the U.S. That has all changed quite significantly. So the latest figures from SIPRI are that less than 35% of India's defense imports are coming from Russia over the recent years. It was the United States that helped launch an Indian astronaut into space recently. The nuclear relationship is also on the cusp of changing quite significantly subject to Indian liability legislation. So it's not as if India is going to push Russia away because India has other concerns. It wants to retain the existing stock of its defense imports from Russia because its maintenance and state of readiness is intrinsically tied to that relationship with Russia. It's also concerned about the Russia-China relationship getting too close. And to the extent that India can offer alternatives, it's actually in the interest of many countries to ensure that India has a continuing line to Moscow. This, by the way, was of use even to the United States when there were nuclear threats being leveled by Moscow and against Ukraine in 2022. India was one of the channels used by the United States to get its message across to Moscow. But again, if you look in material terms today — in purely material terms – India's relationship with the European Union is significantly more important from trade, from an investment point of view, there's a trade negotiation underway, maybe concluded by the end of this year, even security today. So I think that it's worth sometimes just laying out these facts and explaining the context, and I find people tend to be quite understanding. They may not agree with India's point of view but they certainly come away more appreciative of India's context.
49:49 [Phelan] Dhruva, anything you would add?
49:50 [Jaishankar] I do think sometimes in reading assessments of India's domestic policy from outside, I notice a few things. One is sometimes the starting context for a lot of discussion about Indian democracy is very different. There is an imposition sometimes of a U.S. or a European lens, and I often stress that, you know, the first amendment of the Indian constitution is not the same as the first amendment United States constitution. In fact, it's almost the opposite. That Indian notions of liberalism are very different from say a French notion of Laïcité, which is, you know, a very different definition of the relationship between religion and the state. I also think other things are overlooked. The strength of grassroots democracy, the Panchayat system in India for example, not something a lot of people are aware of. Many would be surprised that opposition parties in India, until recently, governed states that were home to six largest cities in India. Some of this needs to be taken into account when assessing the future. But one more thing, I mean you know, I mean there’s actually been, Devesh Kapur and others have done work on this, but there’s actually been a decline in violent religious riots, for example, not just religious but communal riots over the past few decades. So again I do think sometimes the reality is much more complex and these are some things that people need to take into account.
51:41 [Phelan] Dhruva, let me stick with you on one other difference that you have from Ashley. Ashley's view is that Trump's skepticism of alliances and questioning of some key pieces of America's global role is temporary and aberrational. You argue in your response to his essay that Ashley is focused on a world that is vanishing not because of anything India is doing but more because of what the United States is doing. Do you think there's risk to betting on the United States from India's perspective just given the the instability in U.S. policy? I mean what’s the, how does the volatility in U.S. politics play into Indian strategic considerations here?
52:19 [Jaishankar] You know, one of the challenges for all of us who are analysts in the Trump era is distinguishing between the signal and the noise. During the first Trump term, it was interesting to observe in real time, what were policies that were likely to survive and what were policies that were likely to change with a new presidency and a few executive orders being signed. And I think we're still in the midst of that right now. You know, things that are enshrined in U.S. law, legislation tends to be more difficult for a future administration to change.
52:46 [Jaishankar} That being said, I think there've been a few trends that have continued, I would argue, since the late Obama years and have changed mostly by virtue of the tone and perhaps severity of the policies that followed. So, one, the U.S. has been keen on burden sharing. This is something that under both Obama and Biden, the United States asked of its NATO allies, we would like to see greater burden sharing on your part. Trump says it in a much harsher way, but I think that that's been pretty consistent. To some degree of skepticism of multilateral institutions. Again, the Biden administration took a more reformist approach to it, but there is that skepticism that the institutions of today are out of date. Three, a skepticism of trade. The U.S. is no longer going to enter into trade agreements with anyone that involve the U.S. not increasing access to its market in a non-reciprocal manner. And I think again these are areas where there's been some consistency. Now all of this suggests — like I’m bringing it back to the question of multipolarity — that, you know, the U.S. and China while in material terms may in the, and Ashley's correct in this, may over the next decade, and it's hard to project beyond a decade, may be in a league of their own. They will both be constrained in their own ways. And just again, to use Ashley's own argument, China will certainly and has been constrained by the nature of its government. There have been moments in the past few years where China has not stepped up to its plate in a way that you would expect a country with its material capabilities to have done so, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there have been many cases after that as well where China has been somewhat missing in action.
54:18 [Jaishankar] For the United States, it's more a question of choice rather than capability. I point this out in my response to Ashley that it's quite remarkable that the U.S. retains about 25-26% of the world's GDP today, which is the same proportion as in 1991 1992. So U.S. is a enormously resilient power, but the question is less one of capabilities and more one of will. And will the United States going forward even after Trump be willing to enter into the kinds of arrangements that it did during the Cold War — and it was motivated again by this existential competition with the Soviet Union in doing so — will that continue? The answer I think is, and we've seen evidence of this, is India to continue to invest in that relationship with the U.S. Prime Minister Modi made a very early visit in February of this year to meet with Trump to kind of iron out this new relationship with the new administration. So, it's a continue to invest in that, but in fact hedge against the possibility of a more retrenched United States as well. And that means investing in relations with other partners and including many of them U.S. allies. And you're seeing that, I was just in South Korea, but you're seeing a lot more interest in investing in the relationship with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Europe, the Middle East. Not that these will be a single replacement for the United States. It's going to be very hard to do that. But this is all a hedge against the possibility, which is not an entirely unfounded possibility of a much more retrenched United States.
55:45 [Phelan] There have been some commentators who have looked at the recent fighting between India and Pakistan and the U.S. response to it as some kind of betrayal by the United States or, you know, a response that was overly sympathetic to Pakistan. How do you read the outcome of that war in the U.S. role?
56:02 [Jaishankar] Initially, the U.S. was actually quite supportive of India, including its right to retaliate against Pakistan. I think India was caught off guard for reasons that I can only partially explain on Trump's announcement on May 10th taking credit for a ceasefire between the two countries and his role in that and why he did that. I think two things that were also somewhat surprising. One was Secretary of State Marco Rubio's tweet saying that India and Pakistan had agreed to wide-ranging talks in a neutral third country, something India says they did not agree to. And also subsequently the visit by Pakistan's army chief to Washington and assuming consolidation of that mil-to-mil relationship. Now I think a few things to be need to be kept in mind. I think again in material terms coming back to that, the U.S. doesn't offer the same level of assistance nor is it dependent on Pakistan to the same degree as it was prior to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan before. And again just the economic constraints that Pakistan is under and not to mention the Pakistan China relationship, which remains considerable and deep and again quite consequential from a military technological point of view. I think that there will be limits to where that relationship will go. But this is not to discount that it has depreciated the appetite in India for a closer relationship with the United States. Things that would I think have been easier to convince people of in New Delhi have become harder.
57:21 [Jaishankar] Now the question that remains, and this is still an open question because it depends on steps taken by Washington and to some degree India over the next few months is, is this a bump in the road or is this a deviation? I still sense is, at the present moment, there it is a bump in the road. Again, trade talks have continued subsequent to that, the Quad has met after that. Other, the sort of normal interactions have continued. And I think another question needs to be raised, which is how much is this really a difference between India and the United States? And how much of this is a difference between Prime Minister Modi and President Trump? How much is this personal versus a substructural question? The trick for India going forward is how to get across India's dissatisfaction without doing anything that would harm Indian interests. Because there's nothing Pakistan would like more than for India to, in a peak of fury, cancel some contracts with the United States, right? So how not to play into Pakistan's hands because they're obviously exploiting certain conditions to create this sort of division between Washington and New Delhi. So, I do think a sort of level-headed assessment but I wouldn't discount the fact that there's been a vibe shift in U.S.-India relations.