An ongoing misconception in US foreign policy analysis is the assumption that presidential intent always shapes national strategy. The near-simultaneous release of Donald Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the Pentagon’s China Military Power Report, and the Congressional FY2026 National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) exposes this fallacy.
Historical precedent emphasises this institutional resistance. In the 1970s, the War Powers debates showed how Congress sought to curtail presidential overreach in military engagements. After the Vietnam War, both Congress and the Pentagon played key roles in supporting a more controlled and moderate approach to foreign engagements. Rather than a unified state, these documents show deliberate institutional pushback.
Congress acts overtly through laws and funding, while the Pentagon uses threat assessments and signals. These serve as checks on presidential excesses and preserve strategic continuity, even if the White House moves toward ideological retrenchment.
The 2025 NSS sets out a strong executive agenda influenced by partisan domestic politics. It places emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, renews elements of the Monroe Doctrine, and treats alliances mainly as pragmatic arrangements. Europe and the Indo-Pacific receive less focus. The notion of “strategic stability” replaces deterrence in approaches to Russia and China. Instead of classical grand strategy, this illustrates a foreign policy guided by electoral considerations and cost efficiency.
Congress has responded in the only way that matters structurally. The FY2026 NDAA blocks any reduction of US troop levels in Europe below 76,000. To enforce this restraint, Congress uses a system of certification, notification, and funding holdback. This requires strict certifications and allied consultations, directly negating the executive’s retrenchment. It mandates annual assessments of Russian strategic objectives and Nato’s military balance, restoring the adversarial clarity missing in the NSS.
By authorising funding beyond the President’s request and setting up compliance mechanisms, Congress signals that alliance credibility and forward deterrence are not optional. This is the constitutional design working as intended and not congressional defiance.
The Pentagon’s pushback is quieter but just as consequential. Mandated by Congress, the China Military Power Report challenges the NSS’s burden-shifting logic by documenting China’s rapid nuclear expansion, hypersonic advances, early-warning counterstrike capabilities, and rehearsals for Taiwan contingencies. It presents Beijing as a revisionist power preparing for high-intensity conflict, not a stabilising actor seeking equilibrium as portrayed in the NSS.
For India, the report is especially significant. It identifies Chinese pressure along the Line of Actual Control as a deliberate effort to derail US–India alignment. This directly contradicts the NSS’s assumption that New Delhi can manage continental deterrence independently. Beijing’s sharp denunciation of the Congressional report is revealing. The Pentagon’s assessments matter because they base US military planning on operational reality rather than presidential preference.
This dual-track resistance, with Congress overt and the Pentagon technocratic, creates opportunity rather than confusion. To engage the US effectively, India should avoid relying only on the White House and instead use the multiple institutional layers that stabilise US policy, such as Congress and the Pentagon.
First, India must engage Congress directly and unapologetically. Parliamentary diplomacy should become routine. India should conduct structured briefings for Armed Services and Intelligence Committee staffers and maintain ongoing engagement with India caucuses. The Indian diaspora is deeply embedded in US technology, academia, and defence. It must be mobilised as it was during the US-India Nuclear Deal.
The diaspora can push Indian security concerns into congressional action by employing language such as deterrence, alliance credibility, and defence-industrial resilience. Congress responds to incentives. India has underused this lever so far.
Second, India should use military channels to convey its security concerns and shift policy, as the United States has done hithertofore. Formal Department of Defence engagement, while important, is aligned politically with the NSS. In contrast, the uniformed US military evaluates the strategic consequences of retrenchment more directly, as seen in threat assessments, congressional testimony, and reports like the China Military Power Report.
US-India military-to-military interaction is more than simply interoperability or exercises; it is about strengthening the logic of a sustained alliance. Focus on the sources of leverage, the US theatre commanders, especially in Indopacom, who are not ideological actors and are accountable for worst-case scenarios.
Consistent signals from Indian commanders regarding shared threat perceptions, coordination needs, and the costs of disengagement will have a stronger impact than soft diplomatic murmurs. This matters immediately for India: any escalation along the Line of Actual Control would be borne first by the Indian military, just as Indo-Pacific instability directly affects US force posture.
New strategic uncertainties require adaptive approaches. The Chief of Defence Staff is well placed to provide coherence if India’s foreign policy establishment remains flexible enough to integrate military engagement with traditional diplomacy.
The larger conclusion is clear. The illusion of seamless American hegemony is over. This is not because US power has vanished, but because it is now openly contested within the American state. For India, resilience will come not from presidential assurances but from deeper incorporation within US institutions and operational structures. In an era of volatile leadership, India needs to focus on sustained military-to-military diplomacy rather than relying on communiqués to build security.
(The author is a Research Fellow at the Takshashila Institution and focuses on US domestic politics and foreign policy. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Firstpost.)
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