Tariffs, Russian oil purchases, and renewed tensions regarding Pakistan have caused a rapid and regrettable downturn in the U.S.-Indian relationship, replete with public insults and recriminations. As Washington and New Delhi evaluate the state of things, it is prudent to remember why India has emerged over the last generation as one of the United States’ most important global partners. It is also time to consider how to fortify a relationship that has been one of the brightest spots of bipartisan support in a divided Washington where concerted international purpose has been in short supply.

U.S. policymakers have long seen promise in India’s status as the world’s largest democracy as well as opportunity in its economic and technological dynamism and its growing global leadership role. More recently, India’s desire to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific has led to a strategic alignment with the United States that has effectively disincentivized reckless Chinese adventurism.

This common purpose must not be taken for granted. Until this most recent dustup, multiple U.S. presidents have pushed forward specific initiatives to advance the relationship and convert a general sense of promise into something deeper and sustained, including U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s landmark U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement and U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cooperation in critical fields such as AI, biotechnology, and aerospace.

The relationship, however, has remained vulnerable to misunderstandings, missteps, and missed opportunities because of lingering distrust and misaligned expectations. This is partly because U.S.-Indian ties do not fit neatly into the boxes that the United States has historically used to define its most consequential bilateral relationships. In the Cold War and post–Cold War eras, U.S. foreign policy made a distinction between alliances and partnerships. Alliances involved formal treaty commitments built on the foundation of a mutual defense guarantee. Partnerships were for essentially all other countries that worked with Washington—and India fell into that category.

The end of the post–Cold War era has exposed the shortcomings of this approach, which overemphasized collective self-defense commitments and neglected the deeper economic, technological, and strategic ties that are increasingly salient in modern geopolitics. Indeed, despite fundamental areas of alignment between the two countries, the U.S.-Indian relationship received relatively little attention, because it was not centered on a security guarantee.

The current trajectory risks a split that would be difficult to mend, to the great detriment of both countries. As Modi’s chummy appearance over the weekend with Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin made clear, the United States could end up driving India directly into its adversaries’ arms. India, meanwhile, could end up squeezed on all sides with an unaccommodating power in China on its border and strained technology, education, and defense ties with the United States. Given this reality, Washington and New Delhi must strive to do more than simply restore the old, suboptimal status quo. They must create a firmer and more ambitious foundation: a strategic alliance between the United States and India based on a series of mutual commitments regarding technology, defense, supply chains, intelligence, and global problem-solving. An alliance, in other words, not based on a traditional mutual defense pact.

At this moment of unprecedented discord, it may be hard to imagine reinventing and bolstering the relationship. But the United States and India can move forward by using the scaffolding already in place to build a stronger structure. Failing to do so risks squandering a major strategic opportunity and could encourage India to adopt a path less aligned with, or even hostile to, American strategic and economic interests.

PILLARS OF STRENGTH

A new strategic alliance between the United States and India would be established by a treaty subject to advice and consent by the U.S. Senate. It would be built on five core pillars, with the aim of enhancing the mutual security, prosperity, and values of both countries.

First, the countries would agree to a ten-year action plan in the technologies that will define the future: artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotech, quantum, clean energy, telecommunications, and aerospace. The goal would be to build a common technology ecosystem, linked to other allies, to ensure the United States and fellow democracies do not cede the innovation edge to competitors like China. This would mean working together on both the “promote” agenda of bold public investments, common R&D, and shared talent—as well as the “protect” agenda of aligning export controls and cybersecurity measures. The Trump administration’s U.S.-India TRUST initiative, built on top of the Biden administration’s U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies, should be at the core of this effort, but it could and should evolve from primarily a convening forum to a more formal architecture. By the close of the Biden administration, for instance, early discussions had begun around a formal U.S.-Indian AI agreement, potentially the first of its kind. Such an agreement could anchor R&D partnerships and encourage private-sector investment. This type of agreement, replicated across a range of emerging technologies, should be a cornerstone of a new alliance.

The United States and India should also establish a strategic talent partnership that removes obstacles for their scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and technical experts to work together on priority areas. This would include streamlining visa processes on both sides, creating common pots of funding, and removing outdated export controls that stymie collaboration.

The second pillar would be enhanced economic cooperation, including a bilateral trade pact that reflects the structural realities of the modern global economy while accounting for the political realities in both Washington and New Delhi. The natural first step would be a supply chain and investment agreement that would reduce mutual vulnerabilities to coercion and enhance the two countries’ respective techno-industrial bases. India and the United States have each acknowledged dependencies on China for vital supply chains, and in some instances, those dependencies are interconnected. For example, China supplies India with 70 to 80 percent of its active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Since 40 percent of generic drugs in the United States are manufactured in India, the United States is indirectly exposed to India’s reliance on Chinese APIs. Similarly, both countries rely heavily on China for critical minerals.

A supply chain agreement would help accelerate diversification and resilience by creating a standing mechanism to identify and address risks to supply chains in areas critical for national security and economic competitiveness. This would involve both early warning of impending disruptions and longer-term strategies to make investments that build resilience. In addition, the United States and India should establish high-standard principles for cross-border data flows and data security. And both countries should pursue an investment pact that would reduce obstacles to foreign direct investment, especially in strategic sectors, by addressing nontariff barriers, removing outdated regulatory restrictions in areas like clean energy, and strengthening intellectual property protections. Much of this diplomatic work was underway before the recent bout of public acrimony.

Washington and New Delhi must do more than simply restore the old, suboptimal status quo.

The third pillar of the strategic alliance would involve defense cooperation—specifically codevelopment, coproduction, joint logistics, and interoperability. This need not require a traditional Article V-like guarantee to trigger mutual defense. But if both sides committed to developing the necessary consultation mechanisms and technology and personnel platforms, a more durable capacity to train, exercise, and operate together is within reach. Among other things, this would mean further institutionalizing and capitalizing the India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X), which was launched in 2023 as an innovation bridge that directly connects the full spectrum of the two countries’ defense ecosystems, including government agencies, prime contractors, startups, investors, and research institutions.

The agreement that GE Aerospace would manufacture F-414 jet engines in India—an unprecedented technology transfer to a nontreaty partner—showed the promise of a more robust defense partnership. (Delays in executing the deal reflect the continuing bureaucratic inertia in both countries.) But the goal here cannot and should not be simply to facilitate the transfer of American defense capabilities and technologies to India. Instead, it should be to build and operate new capabilities and technologies together, in areas such as unmanned aerial systems and air defense that will shape future combat. The United States brings obvious defense production prowess to the table, while India offers a new and critical opportunity: the chance to leapfrog many of the legacy defense platforms by deploying new platforms at scale. The scope of cooperation should grow to include joint naval and air activities in the Indian Ocean involving more submarine cooperation, airborne reconnaissance operations, and joint contingency planning.

A fourth pillar of the new alliance would be intelligence cooperation, which accelerated during the first Trump and Biden administrations. The 2022 Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, for example, has allowed Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—the so-called Quad—to address illegal fishing, trafficking, and unauthorized maritime activities. The next major step would be to build a common maritime intelligence picture for the Indian Ocean, as well as a formalized structure of intelligence sharing and joint analysis that can continually update that picture.

The fifth and final pillar of the new alliance would be a commitment to global problem-solving. The unique strengths of the two countries present significant opportunities for dealing with the climate crisis, food security, and public health, as well as the effective use of emerging technologies to deliver global public goods. The United States can mobilize public- and private-sector resources and development know-how; India can leverage deep experience with this set of challenges as well as its trusted relationships across East Africa and in the Pacific. This could start with joint scalable pilot projects in third countries—such as in Papua New Guinea and Fiji where the Indian government has demonstrated a new commitment to ambitious infrastructure and health and technology initiatives that align with long-standing U.S. approaches in the Pacific—and grow from there.

REALISM REQUIRED

Some will argue that it will not be possible to reengineer momentum in the bilateral relationship after the recent downturn. On this point, those invested in the relationship on Capitol Hill and in the business and strategic community need to impress on their Indian interlocutors that U.S. President Donald Trump’s theatrics are often the prelude to dealmaking. This is a deeply unpleasant reality to many, but to paraphrase the late U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, you must do diplomacy with the United States you have, not the one you might prefer. Of course, it may turn out that it will be difficult to elevate the relationship under the current administration, but proponents of a U.S.-Indian alliance must keep building the strategic case and the intellectual and practical framework for the long term.

Some will also credibly ask whether India’s democratic backsliding would make such an alliance untenable. There are real challengesin India on pluralism, civil rights, and the rule of law, but the relationship should be mature enough to sustain an honest conversation with the government of India and Indian civil society about these trends. The United States should also be humble enough to acknowledge its own significant challenges when it comes to democracy and the rule of law. It is a very large glass house.

There is also the question of whether such an alliance can be built in the face of India’s relationship with Russia, which was brought into sharp relief by the recent Modi-Putin meeting. India will need to make a long-term strategic choice to break its dependence on Russia for defense and energy. This is a choice that New Delhi can and should make for its own reasons, not out of deference to Washington. And there have been subtle signs in recent years that India has gradually repositioned itself more toward the United States and Europe.

Washington must also refrain from hyphenating its relations with India and Pakistan: there should be no “India-Pakistan” policy. U.S. diplomacy in recent years has been heavily weighted toward New Delhi for a reason. The United States has enduring interests in Pakistan in combating terrorism and limiting nuclear and missile proliferation, but these pale in significance to Washington’s multifaceted and consequential interests regarding India’s future.

On the Indian side, some will ask—particularly now with nationalist sensibilities running hot—whether a U.S.-Indian alliance will impinge on India’s strategic autonomy. The very idea of an alliance will be strange and scary to the inheritors of the Non-Aligned Movement, which India helped spearhead during the Cold War. But a strategic alliance is not mutually exclusive with strategic autonomy. India and the United States are both proud and independent countries. Alliances are about alignment and common purpose—not about sacrificing sovereignty.

NEW ERA, NEW ALLIANCE

As always, there is the practical question of bureaucracy and capacity on both sides. Can they move the machinery of government to build an alliance? Doing so would require leadership from the top of both governments. And it would require a vision that inspires not only their governments but also their private sectors, technology communities, universities, and publics.

It is also worth remembering that many of Washington’s most important alliances have seen setbacks and led to domestic discord. The U.S.-Japanese alliance, for example, had to weather the economic disputes and political pressures of the 1980s and hard questions about the continued necessity of an alliance with Washington in the post–Cold War environment in the 1990s. The NATO alliance has had to contend with persistent questions about burden sharing. The United States and South Korea previously butted heads over how to handle the threat from North Korea, and there have been periodic public upheavals in Korean public opinion over tragic incidents involving American troops stationed on the peninsula. The United States and its allies have gotten through tough moments before, and the United States and India can do so, too.

Whether that will happen with the current occupant of the Oval Office is unpredictable, but the strategic aim should be clear. The realities of the emerging era have elevated the value of new shared security arrangements. And India has emerged as one of the United States’ most consequential partners. The only thing harder than building and formalizing a deeply significant relationship with India is not having one. So, with no illusions, the United States and India should get to work.

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