An open debate in US foreign policy circles is whether we can see a return to more collaborative relationships with US allies – see, for instance, this discussion on the Foreign Affairs podcast (with links to their articles) between Mark Leonard (pessimistic) and Rush Doshi and Kurt Campbell (more optimistic). I can’t speak to Europe or East Asia, but I’m somewhat skeptical when it comes to India.
The older I get, the more leery I am of prediction, but there are a few things I’ll be watching between now and 2029; this is an informal update to a short piece I wrote for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs back in December 2025.
First, the structure of the Republican coalition going into and emerging from the 2028 presidential election. While I think many Indians on the right in the Modi era have viewed the Republicans more favorably than Democrats (who by contrast have been viewed as woke, censoriously liberal, meddling, etc), not only do Democrats have somewhat more favorable views of India than Republicans, but anti-Indian and anti-Indian-American sentiment have made a prominent appearance in the contemporary Republican party.
The fact that the newest salvo with negative implications for India by the Department of Labour was accompanied by JD Vance denouncing the hiring of “foreign indentured servants” strikes me as very meaningful. The Indian government was not happy – “Resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive.” The fact that even the US India Strategic Partnership Forum – which is deeply committed to seeing as many US-India glasses as half-full as humanly possible – felt obliged to tweet a criticism of the recent move gives a sense of how things are going.
Vance is nothing if not ambitious and clearly a frontrunner for the 2028 Republican nomination. The idea that a Vance administration would pursue a radical U-turn on India is of course entirely possible, but seems unlikely – what exactly would his incentives be to make nice to New Delhi compared to continuing to fan the flames of anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant, anti-outsourcing sentiment? I guess you can tell yourself a “Nixon goes to China” kind of story, but there’s not much reason to think that the Trump coalition will find that especially endearing or desirable. Who knows with Rubio – his focus has been the Western hemisphere and he is not a “profile in courage/first principles” kind of guy, so impossible to predict.
Second, the India question in the Democratic party in the run-up to 2028. I suspect there won’t be much of a debate – foreign policy toward India isn’t even remotely an issue compared to Israel/Palestine, what to do about AI and data centers, left-moderate contests over social issues and corporate power, and the myriad other topics that consume the Democratic coalition. My guess is that the easiest thing for any presidential aspirant to do is simply say “The Trump administration has treated India poorly, among other friendly states, and if I win we will fix our relations with our allies and partners. Anti-Indian bigotry and xenophobia must be combated.”
The Democrats are genuinely opposed to anti-Indian racism, but making India a foreign policy priority may be a different matter. Many Democrats in the House (though not a majority) and a majority of Democrats in the Senate voted to grant Trump the power to levy massive sanctions on India. For many center-left Democrats, Ukraine-Russia-European security is a more visceral and pressing issue than putting a lot of effort into the India relationship. For many further on the left, a somewhat mystical India of yoga and Gandhi and Arundhati Roy is much more popular than what they perceive as today’s India of Ayodhya and bulldozers and the BJP. I certainly may have missed something, but in general I am struck by just how little anyone is talking about India outside a small sphere of people who already care about India – it’s certainly not an issue on the campaign trail or in op-eds or whatever as we approach the midterms.
There will be center-left Asia hawks and India-friendly technocrats who will have some degree of power in any future Democratic administration, but it remains to be seen what the ultimate balance of power in the party will be – a Rahm Emanuel administration may look awfully different than an AOC one. The Jake Sullivan/Kurt Campbell “give India everything we possibly can” policy could get traction under one president but go nowhere under another (among other things, there are voices on the left that don’t think Jake Sullivan should ever be close to power again).
India can probably expect more respect and less gratuitous sideswiping under a new Democratic administration, which isn’t nothing (though some Indians weren’t happy even with the comparatively-effusively-pro-India Biden administration), but isn’t the same as an ever-deepening strategic partnership. The “we need India as a democratic partner to strategically balance China as we compete for power in Asia” faction may face off against a “why should any of these Biden-era people be in charge of anything, do we actually need to balance China all that intensely, and what exactly has Modi done to advance key American interests or values?” faction. If pulling back to the second island chain becomes a non-marginal position within Democratic politics, it’s hard to imagine cultivating India against China being a top priority.
I’m very curious to see if the progressive faction of the party articulates a different India approach than the more traditionalist one in the battle over 2028 and the future of Democratic foreign policy. I don’t expect India will be a major cleavage between them, but it might pop up every now and again.
Third, the China question looms. As Tanvi Madan has argued, China policy consistently influences US-India relations. This is the trump card – and it’s a compelling one, to be clear – of US-India optimists. New Delhi and Washington may squabble over trade or Trump’s social media posts or whatever, but when push comes to shove, both have to deal with the power of Beijing (for instance, see this recent piece by the ever-sharp and provocative Rajesh Rajagopalan on why China is the real threat to India, not the elusive chimera of a US-China G2).
I think there is a lot to this, but I’m not as confident it is inevitable as I once was. If Trump 2.0 has shown anything thus far, it is that India is not structurally ordained to be favored by the US as it competes with China. Trump and his coalition seem content to wage trade war on India at the same time as they mix cooperation and conflict with China, and to work with Pakistan even as it works closely with China. India isn’t the only country that can pursue complex multi-alignment approaches.
US-China competition waxes and wanes across issues and over time, and right now – per the Chicago Council’s newest data – most of the US public simply is not in the mood for a policy of full-spectrum China containment. And even in a world of renewed US-China competition, India may not be seen as especially important to key aspects of it – India obviously has a role to play in AI but lags vastly behind the competitive frontier, while a battle over Taiwan would not feature India.
China may give the US incentives to try to accommodate or cultivate India on particular issues in particular moments, to be sure, but that is different than a deepening strategic alignment. Despite its size and growth (and in my biased opinion, intrinsic interestingness!), from the US perspective, India’s strategic heft beyond its region remains limited – indeed, in the region, it is still stuck dealing with Pakistan, Bangladesh tensions remain (though in fairness its ties with Sri Lanka and Nepal are quite strong compared to periods earlier this century), war in the Middle East has not been good for Indian interests there, etc.
New Delhi, in turn, can point to US rapprochement with Pakistan and the war on Iran, plus American policy toward Russia, as actively detrimental to its core security and economic interests, even in the midst of an American competition with China.
All of this is provisional. We’ll see how the midterms shake out, who emerges as the leading Republican nominee, what the Democratic foreign policy landscape looks like closer to 2028, and what the deal is with China-US and India-China relations. It’s certainly possible everything will go back to normal with India come 2029. It’s also very possible this is closer to the new normal than an aberration.
