Month: June 2026

This post by Ananth Krishnan includes an interview with Vijay Gokhale, a set of excerpts from various recent articles, and thoughts by Krishnan on issues in how China understands India. It’s hard to summarize, so good to read it all. I was struck by this assessment of Chinese writing on its relations with India:

“There’s lots of debate and writing in India on our China policy, what we got wrong, and where it should go. If you’ve read my book, you’ll find lengthy critiques of India’s foreign policy and how it looks at relations with China. Yet increasingly, I find there is no such introspection on the Chinese side. Not one Chinese scholar has made a serious attempt to deal with the source of the rupture in relations. Perhaps it’s because how, unlike 10-15 years ago, discussions of foreign policy have become so straitjacketed. But a conversation can’t go very far if the basic premise is that every problem in the relationship is because of the other side’s insecurities, which is what I increasingly hear and read in Beijing. It wasn’t always this way.”

A clear-eyed assessment of what India-US ties now involve, in the Indian Express. A couple good excerpts:

“What does India want from the US, and what does the US want from India? The answer is that India’s wants have remained stable. America’s have changed. As a result, the special relationship with the US is over. Looking ahead, the India-US agenda will be far more modest and transactional. . . .

The war in Ukraine demonstrated to the US that India would be no brake on Russia. Indeed, with its neutrality in the conflict and its purchases of Russian oil, it seemed to play the opposite role even if that was not New Delhi’s intention. . . .

when the US’s war with Iran moved towards termination and a deal had to be struck on Iran’s enriched uranium and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the Trump administration saw Pakistan and not India as the intermediary. . . .

More fundamentally for India-US ties, under both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, America’s China challenge has changed. It is less about Taiwan and the security of Asia against China and more about economic and technological competition in commerce (the trade deficit), chips, computer software (AI), and critical minerals. In the US view, India is not a crucial player in any of these four Cs. It cannot replace China as an exporter to the US (indeed, India is now a trade worry). Nor is it a big player in chips, AI computer software, or critical minerals”