America’s China lesson is reshaping its India policy

Washington does not want to make the same mistake twice.

Having helped China become an economic and technological powerhouse, only to create its greatest strategic rival, Washington now appears determined to approach India’s rise differently.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau made the point during his New Delhi visit earlier this year. Landau stated bluntly that America would not make its China mistake again by allowing India to “develop all these markets” and capabilities, only to discover that India was “beating us in a lot of commercial things.”

The remarks echoed a broader reassessment in Washington of India’s rise. Two months earlier, the State Department’s five-year strategic plan made only one reference to India and declared that Washington would “seek partnership with growing regional economies such as India but on terms that advance U.S. security and economic interests and avoid repeating past mistakes.”

For two decades, Washington saw a rising democratic India as inherently good for the free world, especially as a counterweight to an increasingly autocratic and expansionist China. A stronger India also meant a larger market for American companies and a more capable Indo-Pacific partner. India was thus given pride of place in America’s Indo-Pacific strategy , first unveiled in 2017 .

Now, the administration no longer appears to view India’s rise as entirely benign. India’s role in U.S. policy is being downgraded, especially as President Trump adopts a more conciliatory approach to China , including recognizing it as America’s principal strategic peer.

The White House’s latest National Security Strategy , unlike previous iterations, demotes India’s role by making only a passing reference to the country. The Pentagon’s 2026 National Defense Strategy , for its part, does not mention India at all, although New Delhi holds more annual military exercises with America than any other country. In another signal of India’s strategic downgrading, the Pentagon in June dropped the prefix “Indo” from “Indo-Pacific.”

India’s eroding salience in U.S. policy is also weakening the Quad, America’s strategic coalition with India, Japan and Australia. Increasingly marginal to U.S. strategy, the Quad risks strategic irrelevance . No Quad leaders’ summit has been held since 2024. Trump’s trade war against India derailed last year’s summit, and none has been scheduled this year. Trump’s own National Security Strategy reflects the Quad’s diminished standing, giving the grouping a single passing mention and only in relation to India.

Much of India’s strategic establishment still sees Trump merely as an aberration. They view his tariffs, pressure tactics and transactional approach to New Delhi as the excesses of an unusually disruptive president. Once Trump leaves office, the thinking goes, the U.S. and India can return to the trajectory that preceded him.

But that assumption mistakes a structural shift for a presidential interlude. The deeper shift in Washington’s thinking about India began in the latter half of Joe Biden’s presidency and is likely to outlast Trump.

As India’s power grew, disagreements over trade, U.S. policies in South Asia and New Delhi’s Ukraine-war neutrality spurred tensions . Trump has accelerated that shift and stripped away much of the diplomatic cushioning that once softened bilateral differences.

India, however, is no longer a relatively weak power whose strategic policies Washington can shape. India’s economy has almost quadrupled in real terms since 2000. India has also developed its own industrial ambitions, energy strategy, technology policies and geopolitical relationships. As a rising power, India seeks to preserve the freedom to make its own strategic choices.

Strategic autonomy is not uniquely Indian. Every major power safeguards its freedom of action, and America is no exception.

The problem, then, is not strategic autonomy itself. It is the growing tension between Washington’s expectation that India’s rise should reinforce American strategic objectives and New Delhi’s determination to ensure that its growing power expands rather than narrows its freedom of action.

Bilateral trade negotiations are currently deadlocked. India wants to become a manufacturing powerhouse, reduce external dependence and protect strategic industries. The U.S., on the other side, wants greater access to India’s enormous domestic market, the world’s largest and fastest-growing.

The tensions, however, are manageable, provided Washington does not mistake partnership for alignment and New Delhi does not confuse strategic autonomy with strategic defiance.

Washington’s experience with Beijing helps explain the renewed China analogy: It has changed how U.S. policymakers view economic interdependence. The old assumption was that helping a rising power become wealthier and more integrated into the global economy would make it a more responsible stakeholder and perhaps even a strategic partner.

The lesson Washington is drawing today is not necessarily that India’s rise should be stopped, but that America should be more careful about the terms on which it helps another major power rise. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to visit India early next week for the second time in five months.

The irony is that China is also taking steps to constrain India’s rise. This year, Beijing has imposed India-specific export curbs , widely seen as efforts to slow India’s emergence as an alternative global manufacturing hub. Leveraging its dominance of global supply chains , China has restricted exports to India of manufacturing equipment, industrial components, lithium-ion and battery technologies, and critical minerals.

India and the U.S. still need each other, but the relationship must be built on a more realistic foundation. For New Delhi, the test is to manage U.S. expectations without sacrificing its own interests. For Washington, it is to accept that a genuinely powerful India will sometimes make choices America dislikes.

Washington should recognize that a powerful India can be a valuable partner precisely because it is capable of acting independently. With the Trump administration asking U.S. allies to take greater responsibility for their own security , Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby declared , “India is a model ally that takes its own defense with utmost seriousness.”

America’s China lesson could ultimately strengthen the U.S.-India relationship. But that will happen only if Washington learns to distinguish an independent partner from a prospective rival, and New Delhi shows that autonomy need not preclude collaboration.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground. “