• Foreign & Public Diplomacy
• United States
• India
• Ravi Agrawal

September 3, 2025, 12:57 PM View Comments ()

Former U.S. President Barack Obama once predicted that India and the United States would form a defining partnership of the 21st century. Recent events show he may have gotten this one wrong. The White House has imposed one of its highest levies on imports from India—a 50 percent tariff—and U.S. President Donald Trump has hurt a proud nation’s sentiments by saying it has a dead economy.

Trump’s moves threaten to reverse a decades-long trajectory of closer relations between the world’s two biggest democracies. It is likely no coincidence that amid shakier ties with Washington, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently attended a summit in Tianjin, China, and was seen embracing Russian President Vladimir Putin and hobnobbing warmly with Chinese President Xi Jinping. On this week’s FP Live, I spoke with Nirupama Rao, a former Indian foreign secretary who also served as ambassador to China and to the United States. Subscribers can watch the full interview on the video box atop this page or listen to the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: What’s the mood like in India after this sudden shift in the Trump administration’s posture?

Nirupama Rao: There is a lot of shock and disbelief. A few months ago, everybody assumed that the chemistry, this very special relationship Modi had with Trump in his first administration, would be carried forward and this friendship would grow stronger and deeper. But all that has been proved wrong.

Trump is unpredictable. He’s been called transactional, and he seems to have thrown this relationship under the bus.

RA: But why? Why is Trump suddenly down on India? You’re seeing the unwinding of what had for 30 years been a very positive trajectory.

NR: We’ve all been trying to figure out the root cause of this alienation. I think it comes down to a question of ego. In this case, Trump’s ego and all the controversy surrounding this idea of mediation as far as the India-Pakistan conflict in May was concerned. Trump has claimed again and again, ad nauseam, that he was responsible for pulling the two adversaries apart and bringing about a peace. And from that, of course, stems this idea of a Nobel Peace Prize, which the Pakistanis have quickly jumped on board to endorse.

Now, where India is concerned, mediation is a four-letter word. New Delhi’s approach has been that problems between India and Pakistan have to be solved bilaterally and that there is no room for mediation. But the uncomfortable reality is that outside powers do intervene when there is tension, especially between two nuclear-armed countries. And it’s been reported on several occasions since the turn of the century that American voices have swayed the direction of what happens between India and Pakistan.

We can endlessly debate the concept of “soft mediation.” But the fact is that Trump claimed he had mediated in this dispute, Pakistan went along with him, and India vehemently denied it. And perhaps we could have said it differently to Trump, but he seems to be terribly roiled by this.

RA: Would it have been smarter for India to give Trump what he wanted? In other words, whether it’s true or not, to tell the world that he played this huge role in resolving the India-Pakistan conflict? To play the flattery card?

NR: Flattery is a way of life in South Asian culture. You “butter up” friends and people you respect. I have reflected a great deal on this; I was once spokesperson for India’s foreign ministry, and I was thinking about what could have been said in this context. We could perhaps have formulated our response by saying in public that we appreciated Trump’s interest in regional peace and his support for stability in South Asia and that the path to peace has to entail dialogue between those concerned. In private, we could have told the Americans that we’re very grateful for the president’s concern—but the strategy of India-Pakistan issues must remain bilateral, and so we look forward to working closely with the United States on wider stability in the region. I think we could have put it that way. But of course, you know, if wishes were horses.

RA: Trump has just nominated a new ambassador to India, Sergio Gor. He is currently Trump’s personnel chief, so he’s close to the president. Might that be beneficial to India?

NR: There is unease in Delhi when looking at what the future holds. But I would advise that it’s wise to wait and see. Of course, Sergio Gor is a political pick—not a professional one. He has no diplomatic résumé but has a direct line to Trump. And that is, as someone said, like having an Amex Centurion Card.

What worries India particularly is that Gor has also been named as envoy for South and Central Asia. This signals that in Trump’s frame of mind, India is a regional placeholder and is not a standalone partner of the United States. This is really quite contentious for India. And when you’re looking at the political base in India, defying Trump plays to big fan clubs here.

RA: I want to linger on that. Not too long ago, Trump was popular in India. You’re now describing the opposite.

NR: Yes, the pendulum has swung from adulation to condemnation. There’s a very emotional reaction to Trump. It looks from here that he has heaped insult upon insult on India.

RA: He’s called India a dead economy.

NR: Yes, that cut extremely deep. So we’re bleeding from all those wounds.

RA: Modi visited China over the weekend. It was his first trip there in seven years. It comes after a period of some tension and a border dispute with Beijing. How are you reading the imagery of Modi and Xi appearing friendly and then also Modi and Putin? Is India making clear to the world it has options outside of America?

NR: India is definitely conveying to the world that it has options. Everything bound up with tariffs is about optionality.

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, there was a lot of theater. From my own experience, the Chinese choreograph these things with a lot of panache. It is very staged, but you must recognize that even theater becomes ballast after some time. When you see these disastrous events in relations between India and the United States, and you see Modi’s outreach to China, he’s certainly looking for stability in the relationship. It’s not so much rapprochement because we have so many problems between India and China. But to some extent, Modi and Xi and Putin were reminding the world at Tianjin that you can’t script Asia, Eurasia, the Indo-Pacific—you can’t script it through the dictates of a single superpower.

But as far as Beijing is concerned, India is seeking stability. The border is still heavily militarized, but at least cooperation between the two countries is functionally resuming, and there is stability along the Line of Actual Control today. But trust is definitely absent.

RA: What are the optics of this shift—the visuals of hugging Putin, a war criminal? The strategic calculations make some sense to me for India, but where does democracy fit into this? Where do values fit in?

NR: This is a point that we can definitely debate. There are many schools of opinion about the role that Putin has played when it comes to the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The relationship between India and Russia falls into the category of long-standing relationships and time-tested relationships. India and the Soviet Union had an enduring friendship. The soul went out of it after the birth of the Russian Federation, but it was maintained, it was nurtured, especially through the many defense and security linkages with Russia. A lot of our military equipment comes from there. The percentage of what we buy from Russia today is far less than a decade ago, but those linkages have persisted. Public opinion in India, of course, doesn’t want war between Russia and Ukraine. But the memory of that relationship and the fact that Russia came to India’s assistance in times of need are prevalent factors when it comes to how we deal with Russia.

But everything is defined by optics in today’s world of social media. And these images instantaneously make an impact on people’s minds. This triangle of the United States, China, and Russia is a bit of a three-body problem for India. And India is trying to achieve a desirable equilibrium. It doesn’t want to be captured in the gravitational field of any of these three countries. With the United States, we’re trying to ring-fence trade spats from defense and technology pillars. With China, we are trying to maintain credible deterrence and prevent further violence along the border while reducing dangerous dependencies because we have critical trade dependencies on China. And with Russia, we would like to keep ties functional because of the legacy defense relationship and, of course, the energy bargains, which have upset Trump considerably. And we also want to watch our vulnerability in Russia’s embrace of China. For all these reasons, we need to keep in contact with both Russia and China.

So it’s not like these are single vendors in the field of foreign policy. It’s all about the payoffs. You talk of values, but in foreign policy, it’s really more about interests.

RA: Just to bring this back to the U.S.-India relationship, the last few months seem like a setback. You’ve been such a central figure in debates about the merits of India’s strategic autonomy, the fact that it plays this cautious balancing act and avoids formal alliances. There was always a group that argued that India should throw its lot in with the United States completely, and there’s always been a group that was more cautious and held a historical memory of America’s fickle politics. How much has that debate shifted in favor of India’s strategic autonomy and toward à la carte diplomacy in the last few months?

NR: I’ve always maintained that India is a liminal country; it’s a threshold country. We are still finding our way. We want to maintain relations with several countries where it serves our interest. We want to take time to establish ourselves and to come out in the world as a leading power. In the United States, there’s always been a school of thought that has been perplexed about nonalignment and then later strategic autonomy and now with multialignment—they don’t seem to understand. But then there is the other school of thought who pushed for a stronger relationship with India and understood that we are a large, viable democracy. With the growth of China and its emergence as a competitor of the United States, they saw a need to build relations with a country like India that could provide balance in the Indo-Pacific vis-à-vis China.

You spoke of the bipartisan consensus on India between Democrats and Republicans. And until a few months ago, I would have sworn by it. But even on that aspect, I’ve been reading social media posts wondering where India’s friends are now in this hullabaloo about Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on India. Many media people have pointed to the hypocrisy and injustice of it. But I would have loved to see more voices in the policy space speak out about this.

RA: Some of that might be because of Trump’s capture of the Republican Party.

But you called India a liminal power. Explain that a bit more and India’s self-perception of its power and how that shapes its relations with other powers.

 NR: I have spoken over the last year about India standing at the threshold. It’s on a geopolitical tightrope, suspended over a roaring crowd. It’s trying to balance with precision. It’s neither fully on one side or the other but focusing on the need to balance. And you may call this ambiguity in foreign policy, but it is a blend of being autonomous and also being multialigned. India is trying to navigate this very chaotic, very disrupted multipolar world where everybody is trying to carve their spheres of influence. It’s reminiscent of a 19th-century scramble for power and influence. And in this sense, India becomes a bridge between power blocs. And that’s how I see liminality. We’re trying to wield whatever influence we can. We cannot dominate. But we are a big economy, with a fast-growing GDP. And in that sense, we are a titan in a chrysalis waiting to emerge.

RA: You’ve followed U.S. politics quite closely for a long time. What does a figure like Trump do to the global order?

NR: I was looking at Henry Kissinger’s 1994 book on diplomacy, and he spoke about the end of blocs and the rise of competitors and how new definitions are applied to friends. Trump has translated that theory into practice now in his own way. And this is in a political amphitheater that favors machismo. Even allies are reduced to bargaining chips in that process. That probably is how most of the world looks at Trump.

But if you were asking me to define the world order now, I see this disruption and chaos and was reminded of a movie from 1978 by Federico Fellini. It was called Orchestra Rehearsal. And it’s a movie about an orchestra rehearsing for a performance in an old Italian church. And the conductor has lost authority. And the sections are all playing to their own beat. The music is anarchic. The percussion guys are doing their own thing. And that’s what you find today in this Trumpian world. Multipolarity is encouraged by these new definitions that are being applied to friendships, to partnerships, to alliances. You get a very noisy, improvised, but very real sense of discordance. And that’s where our vision of strategic autonomy would stand us in good stead. We have to look around to protect our interests. We will go for issue-based coalitions. We will talk about multipolarity. We will ask for a multilateral universe that should be reformed. So this is where we stand. And Trump is playing his part in that.

RA: Do you think, given what’s happened over the last few months, the U.S.-India partnership can never be repaired?

NR: A lot of damage has been done to the relationship, and memories don’t fade very easily. But I think you could apply the metaphor of the Chinese strategy game of Go. How do we ring-fence areas in this relationship that are vital and crucial to both countries? We have to provide cover for things like technology and defense. Things like trade, of course, we will have to negotiate.

But then there’s a core to this relationship—the Indian American diaspora in the United States and the bipartisan consensus that we thought of as so hallowed in the past. We have to look at all these strengths that we believe are inherent to the relationship and see how we can protect them. So, yes, damage has been done. There’s a sense of hurt and injury and shock and disbelief. Nobody could have foreseen this, but this is a world where unpredictable things are happening constantly.