Nothing captures India’s long-standing commitment to strategic autonomy more than the country hosting the leaders of three major global powers—Russia, China, and possibly the United States—in short succession. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit India in December, making it his first visit to the country since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Chinese President Xi Jinping is likely to be in India next year when the country hosts the BRICS summit. This year’s summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—a grouping that includes the United States—was scheduled to take place in India this month but was postponed amid the downturn in India-U.S. relations. If the meeting is rescheduled to next year, U.S. President Donald Trump could also visit India.
There is a flip side to this narrative, however. India’s equidistant foreign policy is often perceived as distant or aloof. This became apparent when Trump levied 50 percent tariffs on India, punishing the country for its trade imbalance and purchases of Russian crude. Meanwhile, other countries that maintain a larger trade surplus with the United States or a significant dependence on Russian crude were not targeted to the same degree because of their importance to global supply chains (e.g., China) or their status as U.S. alliance partners (e.g., Japan, Turkey). The differing treatment reflects India’s lack of strategic indispensability in the international system. A key lesson for India is the need to develop a more proactive, rather than passive, strategic autonomy.
2025 has arguably been the most difficult foreign-policy year for Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he assumed power in 2014. A terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in April was followed by a four-day conflict between India and Pakistan in May. While brief, the conflict marked the worst period of hostility between the two countries in decades.
The India-Pakistan conflict also became a catalyst for the downturn in the India-U.S. relationship as Trump claimed credit for the cessation of hostilities—a narrative refuted by New Delhi but one that Islamabad was only too happy to echo. Adding insult to injury, relations deepened between Islamabad and Washington, with the White House hosting Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir twice since the conflict. Modi and Trump had a phone conversation in June, during which Trump reportedly offered to host Modi and Munir at the White House. Modi rebuffed Trump’s offer in line with New Delhi’s long-standing aversion to third-party mediation on India-Pakistan tensions and the Kashmir dispute in particular. This was followed by a cooling of the India-U.S. relationship, as evidenced by the two leaders not speaking again until September.
In the interim, the bilateral relationship underwent a rapid deterioration as both countries were unable to seal a trade deal by a stipulated deadline in August, which was followed by India facing the highest of Trump’s tariffs. Trump’s insults of India as a “dead” economy that does very little business with the United States, which was supplemented by his trade advisor Peter Navarro’s acerbic comments referring to India as a “laundromat for the Kremlin,” further eroded trust in the bilateral relationship.
Recent conciliatory statements by both leaders alludes to a de-escalation of tensions and a trade deal eventually being reached between both countries. However, the earlier irrational exuberance in New Delhi about the India-U.S. relationship, as evidenced by Indians being among the most positive about a second Trump term, has faded. So have claims that Modi and Trump maintained a special or privileged relationship. Modi prided himself on maintaining a personalized foreign policy of cultivating close relations with key world leaders. However, this was unable to deter the wrath of Trump’s fickle and transactional foreign policy.
At a more fundamental level, recent developments point to broader challenges facing India’s foreign policy. India’s long-standing commitment to strategic autonomy has been both a boon and a burden for the country’s foreign policy. On the one hand, it provides India with flexibility. This became apparent when China-India relations deteriorated following border clashes in 2020. New Delhi responded by deepening cooperation with Washington, as evidenced by India embedding itself more deeply in the U.S.-led institutional architecture—through its upgraded engagement with the Quad, for example.
This multialigned and diversified foreign policy has offered India the advantage of not being beholden to any one country. Asked about this at the Munich Security Conference in 2024, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar noted that India should be admired for maintaining “multiple options” in its foreign policy.
However, the events of the last year demonstrate the hubris of this position. Sustaining strategic autonomy becomes more challenging when India is forced to choose between major powers. This is what happened when the Trump administration imposed secondary tariffs on India for its purchases of Russian oil as a means of applying pressure on Moscow to agree to a peace deal in Ukraine. As Russia-U.S. relations soured, New Delhi’s relations with Moscow came under growing scrutiny in Washington.
Strategic autonomy has its roots in the Cold War concept of nonalignment. When India joined the global community of independent nation-states in 1947, the scars of colonial rule made the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, eager to avoid any entanglements that threatened the country’s autonomy and independence. At its essence, nonalignment and strategic autonomy are about maintaining flexibility while pursuing relations with all major poles of influence in the international system.
Nonalignment did not always work in practice. During the Cold War, India’s strategic flexibility eroded when it faced any existential threat, which forced it to turn to one of the superpowers for support. This became apparent in 1962, when New Delhi contemplated closer alignment with the United States at the height of its war with China. It happened again in 1971, when India concluded a peace treaty with the Soviet Union ahead of a war with Pakistan in which Islamabad aligned with China and the United States.
In the post-Cold War period, strategic compulsions forced India to abandon the principle of nonalignment. New Delhi recognized that it needed to reorient its external relations as the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the loss of key markets and preferential barter arrangements. This fueled New Delhi’s rapprochement with the United States. But India’s commitment toward maintaining an omni- or multialigned foreign policy remained unchanged. If anything, it became more urgent as the unipolar moment following the end of the Cold War faded and great-power competition returned to the fore.
But the recent downturn in relations with the United States shows the need for India to develop a more proactive strategic autonomy. Modi’s participation in the recent G-20 summit in South Africa and the conclusion of a trilateral technology and innovation partnership with Australia and Canada demonstrate New Delhi’s ambition to be a voice of the global south, a key partner of the West, and bridge between both. The Modi government has referred to India as a “Vishwamitra,” or friend of the world. Yet there is a difference between being a friend to the world and helping the world make friends with one another. Despite maintaining close relations with both Russia and the United States, and both Iran and Israel, New Delhi has played a limited role in trying to de-escalate recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East (unlike other countries such as Qatar, Turkey, Brazil, and even China). Were India to play such a role, it would be in line with the important mediating role it once played when it was ironically a much weaker power. In the 1950s, India was a prominent voice in numerous global conflicts—from the Korean War to the Taiwan Strait crises.
Instead, India has chosen to remain distant. This became evident with Modi’s absence from two important gatherings in October: the Gaza peace summit in Sharm el-Sheikh and the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur. Despite being invited to both, Modi chose not to attend. The fact that both meetings took place in what India refers to as its “extended neighborhood” of East and West Asia (the Middle East) illustrates New Delhi’s aloofness on the world stage.
Interestingly, India’s archrival Pakistan offers a lesson in how to conduct a more proactive foreign policy. Islamabad is practicing its own form of strategic autonomy, with outreach to China, the United States, Russia, Iran, and the Gulf Arab states. Whereas New Delhi seeks to keep its distance from geopolitical flashpoints, Islamabad is happy to jump in—from its role in helping to facilitate the Sino-U.S. rapprochement in the late 1960s to allying with the United States to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and in the global war on terrorism in the 2000s to supporting the Middle East’s security architecture through its recently concluded defense pact with Saudi Arabia.
Whether Pakistan has the means to sustain this is another question, given the inherent contradictions of its foreign policy—offering port projects to both China and the United States, for example. Given instabilities internally and along its borders, how does Islamabad expect to offer extended deterrence to countries in the Middle East? Nonetheless, this offers an example of how to practice a more proactive form of strategic autonomy than what is often seen by New Delhi.
India needs to redefine what strategic autonomy means in a world of growing geopolitical uncertainty. This year’s downturn in India-U.S. relations revealed that even the perceived certainty of India as a “natural ally” of the United States cannot be taken for granted. India is under growing pressure to make choices that it has so far been reluctant to make. Making itself more strategically indispensable to the international system will make India less vulnerable to the whims of the United States under Trump—or any other country. The Trump administration’s absent and sometimes destabilizing role in global forums, including at the recent COP30 and G20 summits, has created a void in global leadership. It could not be a more opportune moment for India to step up.