The year 2025 marked a crucial reality check for Indian foreign policy. India’s major partners recalibrated their engagement in ways that challenged New Delhi’s narratives of strategic autonomy, diplomatic indispensability, and strategic exceptionalism.
At the center of this shift was friction between India and the US in 2025. Some moves towards the end of the year, such as the October 2025 renewal of the ten-year defense framework agreement and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “warm and engaging” conversation with US President Donald Trump, fueled speculation about a potential thaw in bilateral relations.
But beneath the surface of cordiality, the relationship remains under strain. Since January 2025, New Delhi has discovered that proximity to Washington no longer comes with a free get-out-of-jail card. Unlike the previous Biden administration, where Washington tolerated India’s zero-sum agenda, the second Trump administration has adopted a more conditional and transactional approach.
This accountability has not taken the form of pressure on India to meet its geostrategic expectations as a “cyber security provider” in the region. Instead, it materialized as economic sanctions and political restraint. In August 2025, the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs, the highest applicable to all US partners, along with tightened visa controls affecting the Indian diaspora.
This directly hit two pillars of India’s global self-projection: economic strength and diaspora influence. Together, these moves punctured New Delhi’s narrative of being an inevitable alternative to China in global supply chains and investment flows. In fact, the Trump administration imposed more tariffs on India than on China.
President Trump’s tone on balancing trade with China appeared to further expose the fragility of India’s claims to be a viable alternative. Despite the geopolitical competition between the US and China, Washington treated China as economically indispensable rather than replaceable. This indicated that Washington’s trade pressure on India in 2025 was unusually severe compared to China.
While Washington urged India to “make trade fairer”, these measures were perceived in New Delhi as “economic coercion”, and many Indian analysts linked them to President Trump’s displeasure over the denial of credit for the brokering of the India-Pakistan ceasefire in May 2025. Regardless, these measures were a departure from past practice.
In the past, Washington and New Delhi have divided their economic, political and geostrategic bilateral relations. A disruption in one did not meaningfully disrupt their strategic cooperation. Even with serious political controversies, such as the revelation of an Indian-linked assassination plot on US soil, Indo-US relations continued as business. The firewall appeared to be breached in 2025.
Washington’s explicit linking of punitive tariffs to India’s continued purchase of Russian oil at discounted prices has further narrowed India’s room for maneuver in its pursuit of strategic autonomy. The issue of India’s strategic autonomy has been in focus in Washington since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in 2022.
But the environment after May 2025 has exposed its limits. Reports that India reduced Russian oil imports after the tariff highlighted that strategic autonomy could not carry the burden when tested in terms of economic costs. By 2025, India’s assumption that a free swing between Washington and Moscow would continue proved increasingly flawed.
This is because neither Washington nor Moscow seemed willing to continue India’s approach to balancing the multipolar world. New Delhi assumed that it had successfully diversified its relations with major global players and it had a “menu of countries” from which to extract benefits. As Washington sidelines New Delhi, it may turn to alternative partners such as Russia. But the great powers are more calculated now.
While the Trump administration has taken a firm approach to India, Russia has limited its engagement to maintaining symbolic cordiality without offering concrete strategic or economic gains. President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India in December 2025, while diplomatically heated, produced no major new deals in defense, energy, nuclear cooperation or space.
Even existing commitments, notably the delayed delivery of the S-400 systems, remain unfulfilled, contributing to operational and financial setbacks for the Indian military. New Delhi fails to understand that relations with the US are not built on its interpretation of strategic exceptionalism, but rather on mutual accommodation. The US prioritizes its own strategic and economic interests over a special and privileged partnership.
India’s privileged relationship with the United States gave it significant strategic traction, particularly through its entry into the Quad, which opened access to Western elite platforms for political and security matters.
In 2025, India was scheduled to host the postponed Quad Summit in 2024 after its much talked about G20 chairmanship. However, it appears that the accumulation of trust deficit and reputational damage from extrajudicial killings in Canada and interference in the country’s domestic affairs has led to further postponement of India hosting the high-level summit. To date, the shattered confidence in India has not been restored to host the twice-postponed Quad summit.
The Quad platform remains largely inactive as a result of India’s miscalculation that it could deal independently with major powers and their partners without consequence. This nullifies India’s narrative of “multi-alignment”.
Although China’s military build-up, both conventional and nuclear, continues, India has not been able to project itself as a credible counterweight. Instead, the setbacks during the May 2025 conflict exposed significant weaknesses in India’s military preparedness and strategic planning.
From Washington’s perspective, India no longer appears to be a reliable balancer against China, but rather a limited actor prioritizing its own immediate interests over broader regional responsibilities.
What seemed more serious to New Delhi was the Trump administration’s renewed engagement with Islamabad. While this did not reflect a tilt toward Pakistan, it did suggest that Washington is rebalancing relations with South Asian states, a process often framed through a zero-sum, India-centric lens that fails to recognize the region’s geographic extent.
The Indian aggression after May 2025 indicates that the region requires balancing rather than over-prioritization. This balancing act was also evident from the US’s reported willingness to potentially upgrade Pakistan’s F-16 fleet.
For New Delhi, this measure indicated that 2025 changed the regional strategic dynamic by eroding the presumed military primacy and undisputed dominance of India in South Asia. For Islamabad, it is an indication of Pakistan’s relevance as a prominent security actor in the region.
By 2025, Pakistan has strengthened its strategic anchor, international standing, practiced restraint and maintained active diplomacy to make significant progress in Washington.
For India, this meant that 2025 was characterized by suspicion, reduced political trust and a shift from unconditional partnerships to accountability-based engagement. Going forward, it appears that India may no longer be insulated from the consequences of its geopolitical choices.
The author is a research analyst in emerging technologies and international security based in the United States. She tweets/posts @MaheenShafeeq
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Pakinomist.tv’s editorial policy.
Originally published in The News
