M A Hossain,
In geopolitics, there are no permanent friends—only permanent interests. And today, those interests have forced India to make the most consequential choice in decades: to bow before Beijing’s economic and strategic dominance, and to distance itself from an increasingly hostile Washington. What began as a cautious rebalancing in late 2024 has now hardened into a reality—India has no other option but to accept China’s upper hand.
For years, India managed to walk a diplomatic tightrope, maintaining cordial ties with Washington while keeping an uneasy peace with Beijing. That balancing act has now been jolted by the unpredictability of U.S. policy under President Donald Trump. What was once a cautious partnership with the United States has begun to feel like a liability.
The flashpoint came when Trump, irritated by India’s continued purchases of Russian oil and commodities, decided to impose a 25% tariff on Indian goods in July 2025—followed, astonishingly, by an additional 25% just a month later. For New Delhi, the message was unmistakable: defiance would be punished, loyalty would not be rewarded. This wasn’t a trade policy. It was economic coercion.
India’s leaders did the math. They understood that while tariffs could be dialed up at a moment’s notice, supply chains take years to rebuild. The United States was turning into a moving target—transactional, erratic, and no longer the reliable strategic partner it had been billed as. A country that had invested decades in cultivating U.S. ties suddenly found itself treated no differently than America’s adversaries.
It was not always this way. Since the end of the Cold War, India had drawn steadily closer to Washington, sharing concerns over China’s rise and Beijing’s aggressive posturing along the disputed Himalayan border. The 2020 Galwan Valley clash—when Chinese and Indian soldiers engaged in deadly hand-to-hand combat—cemented this alignment. India banned over 300 Chinese apps, restricted Chinese investment, and slowed down cross-border exchanges. The mood was one of confrontation, not conciliation.
But history teaches that animosity is not immutable. In October 2024, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time in five years. The meeting did not erase memories of Galwan, but it did mark the start of a thaw. Chinese authorities reopened pilgrimage routes, restored tourist visas, and restarted limited civil-society exchanges. Indian troops quietly resumed patrols along certain contested stretches of the border.
This was not a sentimental embrace. It was a calculated risk. China controls roughly 60% of global electronics manufacturing—a reality India cannot ignore if it intends to become the world’s third-largest economy. Indian companies had already lost an estimated $15 billion from supply disruptions caused by the post-Galwan restrictions. Completely cutting Beijing out of the equation was economically suicidal.
Western commentators call this “caving in.” In reality, it is surrendered under economic duress. The United States has not only failed to shield India from harm—it has become the source of that harm. Tariffs, threats of secondary sanctions over Russian energy imports, and humiliating comparisons between India and Pakistan have shattered the illusion of partnership.
At some point, the realization dawned: Washington was not going to treat India as an indispensable partner, but as another pawn in its great-power competition with China. That left New Delhi with two options—cling to an increasingly capricious ally, or recalibrating toward a more predictable, if still adversarial, China.
Predictability is not to be underestimated in geopolitics. The U.S.-China rivalry may dominate headlines, but Beijing’s behavior toward India has certain constants. It may press its territorial claims, but it does so within a framework of calculated escalation. China is not prone to the kind of sudden, whiplash-inducing policy swings that Trump has made routine. For Indian planners, that matters.
India’s pivot is also informed by a longer historical memory. In 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War, Washington sided openly with Pakistan, sending the USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal in an ill-fated attempt to intimidate India. The lesson was clear: American support could vanish the moment its global priorities shifted. Fast forward to today, and that same suspicion is back—fueled by a U.S. foreign policy that appears increasingly driven by short-term political theater rather than long-term strategic commitments.
To be sure, the India-China relationship remains deeply asymmetrical. China’s economy is five times larger; its military is more technologically advanced. The Himalayan border remains tense, and mutual suspicion runs deep. But for New Delhi, the goal is not to embrace Beijing, but to manage the relationship in a way that buys time—time to strengthen domestic manufacturing, secure energy supplies, and diversify economic partnerships beyond the binary choice of Washington or Beijing.
In practical terms, Symbolic gestures now replace confrontation. Reopening pilgrimage routes, resuming cultural exchanges, and keeping military tensions low are all steps toward a grudging coexistence. This means quietly aligning with China’s economic agenda while avoiding direct challenges to its strategic ambitions.
Meanwhile, India can still quietly deepen ties with other regional players—Japan, Australia, ASEAN states—who share concerns about China’s ambitions but are equally wary of becoming dependent on an erratic United States. This is strategic autonomy in action: hedging bets, keeping options open, and refusing to be anyone’s client state.
The larger point is this: alliances today come with fewer guarantees than at any point since the Cold War. The United States is locked in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and is bankrolling Israel’s military campaign in the Middle East. Its diplomatic bandwidth is stretched thin. Its willingness to impose punitive measures—even on friendly nations—suggests that Washington now views foreign policy less as a system of mutual commitments and more as a series of transactional deals.
For India, the pivot toward China is not an ideological statement. It is a recognition that in a global chess game, survival depends on flexibility. Yield when it costs little, stand firm when it matters, and always keep one’s own national interest at the center of the board.
In the new great game of Asia, India’s handshake with the Dragon is not one of equals—it is the handshake of necessity, from a weaker power to a stronger one. Washington has made this surrender inevitable. The real test lies in how high Beijing is willing to take this relationship.
M A Hossain, political and defense analyst based in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: writetomahossain@gmail.com
This article published at :
1. New Age, BD : 11 August, 25
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