For over 25 years, successive U.S. administrations, from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden, have courted India as America’s indispensable security bulwark in South Asia, a linchpin in the grand strategy to contain China’s inexorable rise. The logic was simple: the world’s largest democracy and the world’s largest economy are natural allies, destined to work together to counter an authoritarian China’s threat to the democratic world.
Consequently, India did all it could to facilitate a complete transformation of its relationship with the U.S. after the Cold War, resulting in joint military exercises, intelligence-sharing pacts, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) with the U.S., Japan, and Australia, underscoring this alignment.
Yet, in the wake of India’s Operation Sindoor in May 2025, the Indo-U.S. relationship appears poised for a seismic reset. Is it a clash of personal egos between Narendra Modi and Donald Trump, or a calculated pivot in cold geopolitical strategy? The evidence points to the latter: a sobering recognition that the unipolar world is indeed dead, and propping up India as a proxy risks repeating the very mistakes that birthed China’s ascendancy.
Under Operation Sindoor, India targeted nine sites in Pakistan, which it alleged had links to terrorist outfits, using precision munitions like SCALP missiles, HAMMER bombs, and loitering drones.
In a swift response, Pakistan claimed to have downed six Indian jets, including three French-made Rafales, using the indigenously produced JF-17s in cooperation with China and Chinese J-10C fighters, both armed with PL-15 beyond-visual-range missiles, assisted by Chinese radars, satellites, and reconnaissance systems without crossing borders.
The U.S. establishment observed the entire conflict firsthand through its satellite-based surveillance systems and, sensing a potential nuclear conflict, Trump’s team frantically engaged with both sides. Within hours, Trump tweeted that he had convinced the nuclear rivals to a ceasefire, leveraging the threat of bilateral trade as a weapon. While India agreed to and declared a ceasefire, Narendra Modi oddly refused to acknowledge Trump’s obvious role in ending the conflict. Pakistan, on the contrary, readily agreed to the ceasefire and thanked Trump by nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump took credit for ending a potential nuclear conflict nearly three dozen times and reaffirmed that Pakistan downed seven Indian jets, marking the first combat defeat for the advanced Western jet by much cheaper yet equally effective Chinese hardware. The fall in the stock price of Dassault Aviation, manufacturer of Rafale, and the rise in the stock price of Chengdu Corporation told the rest of the story.
This four-day conflict was thus a rude awakening for the West. It exposed the lethality of Chinese defense technology as a credible peer to Western systems, shattering illusions of unchallenged superiority. Beijing’s J-10C and PL-15 missiles, battle-tested for the first time against Western rivals, shattered the age-old narrative that Chinese technology was ineffective and a poor imitation of Western technology, boosting China’s credentials and nationalist fervor at home.
More profoundly, it underscored that containing China through proxy conflicts or punitive trade tariffs is futile, especially when China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has ensnared nations from Pakistan to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, encircling India economically.
The West has no one to blame but itself, and specifically, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. In 1972, their historic opening to China was considered a masterstroke of realpolitik: luring Beijing away from the Soviet orbit to exploit the Sino-Soviet split. Nixon’s Beijing summit, following Kissinger’s secret trip assisted by Pakistan, normalized ties and integrated China into the global economy, ostensibly to contain Moscow. But it backfired spectacularly. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, backed by the U.S., turbocharged its growth, lifting 800 million out of poverty while hollowing out Western manufacturing capacity.
Today, China’s GDP rivals America’s, its military modernizes apace, and its influence spans Eurasia via the BRI. Unipolarity has given way to multipolarity, as a resurgent Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion, framed by Putin as a bulwark against NATO expansion, drags on into 2025 with no end in sight, and Moscow shows no signs of capitulation. This further complicates matters for the U.S. in rationalizing the relevance of NATO to its interests.
The Indo-U.S. reset is rooted in this backdrop. America’s establishment now grasps India’s enduring non-alignment, a doctrine etched in its post-colonial DNA since Jawaharlal Nehru’s era, with its democratic credentials an impediment to coercing Delhi into “total submission” like Europe. India’s decision to continue buying Russian oil despite U.S. objections is further proof that India will assert its independence with every passing day, whether it suits U.S. interests or not.
The U.S. establishment has thus realized that preferential trade deals to strengthen India risk mirroring the China playbook: accelerating New Delhi’s rise while eroding U.S. leverage. Flooding India with concessions could hasten the end of multipolarity, not avert it, especially under Modi’s divisive and belligerent style.
Consequently, the U.S. establishment has disguised a cold strategy in the garb of Trumpian diplomacy, imposing 50% tariffs to coerce India into submission, knowing its border disputes with China in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, alongside Pakistan’s Chinese-backed arsenal, evident in Sindhoor, pose existential threats and will thus force Modi’s India back into the U.S. camp despite his defiant posturing.
The reset, then, is a cold strategy: America retreats from over-commitment, lest it hasten its own decline. Egos notwithstanding, the real tale is realism’s revenge. As multipolarity dawns and alliances fracture, India, having painfully learned through firsthand experience that it is dangerous to be an enemy of the U.S. but fatal to be her friend, stands at a crossroads: submit to the U.S. like the Europeans and maintain turbulent relations with all her neighbors, or forge peace with them to form the largest economic bloc.
It is in China’s interest to demonstrate leadership in developing a border dispute management mechanism that benefits China, India, and Pakistan alike.
Mr Zubair Gilani is a writer, banker, an entrepreneur, and a political activist, who has also served as Chairman Board of Investment in Pakistan. He can be reached at zubairhaidergilani@gmail.com