Narendra Modi will travel to Washington this week for a state visit hosted by President Joe Biden, including a state dinner and an address to a joint meeting of the US Congress. The ceremony will inevitably produce language about the world’s two largest democracies, shared values and an increasingly important bilateral partnership. Those descriptions contain truth, but they can obscure what actually makes the relationship interesting. India and the United States are becoming strategically closer while continuing to disagree on several significant questions, and neither government appears to believe those disagreements prevent cooperation where their interests overlap.
For much of the Cold War, India and the United States frequently viewed one another with suspicion. India formally pursued non-alignment but developed a particularly close defence relationship with the Soviet Union, while Washington maintained an important relationship with Pakistan and at times interpreted Indian non-alignment as disproportionately favourable towards Moscow. The relationship improved substantially after the Cold War, particularly through economic integration, the Indian diaspora, defence cooperation and the 2005 civil nuclear agreement, but India never transformed into a conventional American treaty ally.
That distinction remains important because Indian foreign policy is still organised heavily around strategic autonomy. New Delhi wants close relationships with major powers without allowing any one of them to determine India’s choices across unrelated issues. India participates in the Quad with the United States, Japan and Australia, conducts increasingly sophisticated military exercises with Western partners and views China’s growing power with serious concern. At the same time, it remains a member of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, maintains a longstanding defence relationship with Russia and has dramatically increased purchases of discounted Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine.
From Washington’s perspective, this can look inconsistent. The United States has spent enormous diplomatic and financial resources supporting Ukraine and isolating Russia, while a country it increasingly describes as a major strategic partner continues purchasing Russian energy and refuses to adopt Western sanctions comprehensively. Yet expecting India simply to reproduce American foreign policy would misunderstand why India values strategic autonomy in the first place. New Delhi does not define partnership as agreement across every geopolitical issue.
India’s response to Ukraine is a good example of issue-based alignment. India has criticised civilian deaths, supported principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity and repeatedly called for diplomacy, while avoiding the comprehensive political and economic break with Moscow demanded by many Western governments. Russian oil also provides India with an economic benefit: discounted crude can reduce import costs for an energy-dependent economy and help moderate domestic inflation.
That decision reflects national interest more than ideological loyalty to Russia. India depends heavily on imported energy, and its government is accountable primarily to Indian citizens rather than Western governments. Asking New Delhi to purchase more expensive energy in order to strengthen a sanctions regime designed elsewhere requires explaining why Indian households should bear part of that cost.
This does not make every Indian decision beyond criticism. Strategic autonomy should not become a phrase automatically justifying whichever relationship is convenient. If India claims that sovereignty and territorial integrity are important principles, it has to confront tensions when major partners violate them. Autonomy means retaining freedom of judgement, not avoiding judgement altogether.
The same standard should apply to the United States. Washington frequently describes the partnership through shared democratic values while simultaneously pursuing India because of hard strategic interests, particularly the rise of China. Those motives are not mutually exclusive, but pretending values alone explain the relationship produces unnecessary hypocrisy whenever interests and values diverge.
The structural reason for closer cooperation is relatively straightforward: China has become powerful enough that both India and the United States have incentives to constrain the risks created by Chinese dominance in Asia. India and China share a disputed border and fought a deadly confrontation in the Galwan Valley in 2020. China maintains close relations with Pakistan and has expanded its economic and naval presence across the Indian Ocean. The United States simultaneously views China as its principal long-term strategic competitor.
That creates overlapping interests without requiring a formal alliance. India benefits from American intelligence, technology, investment and defence cooperation. The United States benefits from a powerful democratic state on China’s southwestern frontier with enormous economic and military potential. Japan and Australia possess complementary concerns, which helps explain the revival of the Quad.
Yet India does not want the Quad to become an Asian NATO. A formal alliance would reduce strategic flexibility and could create expectations that India support American military objectives unrelated to its own interests. New Delhi therefore prefers a looser structure involving maritime security, technology, infrastructure, vaccines and other areas of cooperation alongside defence coordination.
This may increasingly become the normal form of international partnership. The twentieth century encourages us to imagine geopolitics through relatively fixed blocs: NATO versus the Warsaw Pact, American allies versus Soviet allies. The emerging international system appears more fluid. Countries can cooperate intensely on one issue while competing or remaining neutral on another.
Saudi Arabia can maintain a security relationship with Washington while deepening economic ties with China. Turkey can remain inside NATO while purchasing Russian weapons and negotiating independently with Moscow. India can participate in the Quad while buying Russian oil. Brazil can cooperate with the United States on climate policy while resisting Western positions on other geopolitical questions.
This is not necessarily disorder. It may be multipolar bargaining.
Middle and emerging powers gain leverage when great powers need their cooperation but cannot assume permanent alignment. India is particularly well positioned because its scale means neither Washington nor Moscow can treat it as diplomatically disposable, while China’s rise increases India’s strategic value to the United States.
That bargaining power will increase further if India’s economy continues growing rapidly. Population alone does not create power, as I argued in April, but a population of more than 1.4 billion combined with sustained productivity growth, technological capability and military modernisation could make India one of the central poles of the international system.
This is why the economic component of the US-India relationship may ultimately matter more than diplomatic ceremony. American companies increasingly view India as both an enormous market and a potential location for diversified manufacturing as firms attempt to reduce excessive dependence on China. India’s government wants exactly that investment because manufacturing can help create employment for its young workforce.
The G7’s “de-risking, not decoupling” strategy therefore creates an opportunity for India. If multinational companies want a “China plus one” production strategy, India can compete to become the additional location. Its advantages include scale, a large workforce, domestic demand and improving infrastructure.
The disadvantages are equally important: regulatory complexity, land acquisition, logistics, skills mismatches and uneven state capacity can make manufacturing investment difficult. Geopolitical opportunity does not eliminate economic fundamentals. Companies may want to diversify away from China, but they will not move production to India simply because Washington prefers it.
India therefore needs to convert geopolitical relevance into productive investment rather than assuming strategic importance automatically generates factories. Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia and other economies are competing for many of the same supply-chain shifts.
This is another example of the distinction between potential and conversion. India’s location and population create strategic opportunity. Institutions determine how much economic benefit follows.
Technology may become the most consequential part of the relationship. Semiconductors, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, space systems and defence technology increasingly sit at the boundary between commercial economics and national security. The United States possesses enormous technological capabilities but wants trusted partners and diversified supply chains. India wants access to technology that can accelerate domestic industrial development.
That creates mutual gains but also tension. Washington traditionally restricts transfers of sensitive technologies because it fears proliferation or leakage. India resists relationships that leave it permanently dependent on foreign suppliers. A durable partnership therefore requires enough trust that the United States shares technology while India develops domestic capacity without simply demanding unrestricted transfer.
Defence cooperation presents the same problem. India still operates large quantities of Russian-origin military equipment, partly because the Soviet Union and later Russia were willing to provide systems and technology when Western relationships were less reliable. Replacing that dependence cannot happen quickly because military platforms operate for decades and require spare parts, ammunition and training ecosystems.
Washington may want India to reduce reliance on Russian defence equipment, but the most effective strategy is probably not demanding immediate separation. It is offering alternatives sufficiently attractive that dependence declines gradually through procurement decisions.
This is de-risking applied to defence.
India itself should probably want greater diversification because relying heavily on any single foreign supplier reduces strategic autonomy. If Russia becomes increasingly dependent on China economically and diplomatically, India has additional reasons to question whether Moscow can remain the same long-term strategic partner it once was.
Strategic autonomy therefore does not mean preserving old relationships forever. It means ensuring no relationship becomes indispensable.
The Indian diaspora adds another layer that conventional realist analysis can miss. Millions of people of Indian origin live in the United States, including large numbers in technology, medicine, academia and business. Diasporas create networks through which capital, knowledge and political influence move between countries.
International relations therefore occurs through societies as well as governments. A semiconductor partnership negotiated by officials may eventually depend on engineers, investors and companies whose professional networks already connect the two economies.
This is one reason bilateral relationships can become more resilient when they contain several independent layers. If cooperation depends entirely on two leaders liking one another, leadership change can destroy it. If businesses, universities, militaries, diasporas and technology ecosystems all have relationships, political disagreements at the top become less capable of reversing the entire partnership.
Institutional depth creates diplomatic resilience.
The democratic-values question nevertheless deserves attention rather than being dismissed as Western interference. The Biden administration presents competition with China partly as competition between democratic and authoritarian political systems. Closer relations with India therefore carry symbolic importance because India remains the world’s largest electoral democracy.
At the same time, international organisations, journalists and opposition figures have raised concerns about press freedom, treatment of civil society and religious minorities under Modi’s government. Washington faces an obvious tension: how strongly should it raise those concerns when India is becoming strategically more important?
This is where values-based foreign policy encounters the selectivity problem. Governments almost always apply principles more aggressively towards adversaries than partners. The United States criticises human-rights violations in rival states while maintaining close relationships with authoritarian allies when strategic interests require them.
That does not make values meaningless. It means foreign policy operates through competing objectives.
A more credible approach would acknowledge the trade-off rather than pretending it does not exist. Washington can deepen defence cooperation with India while raising concerns about democratic institutions. New Delhi can reject external lecturing while recognising that describing India as a democratic partner naturally invites scrutiny of democratic performance.
Partnership should be capable of surviving disagreement.
In fact, that may be the central test of whether the relationship has matured. Weak relationships require constant declarations of friendship because every disagreement threatens the entire structure. Strong relationships can compartmentalise.
India can disagree with Washington over Russia without abandoning the Quad. The United States can disagree with India over trade without questioning the entire strategic partnership. Both can cooperate on China without requiring identical China policies.
That is a more realistic model of international relations than demanding ideological alignment.
The upcoming state visit will inevitably produce photographs, speeches and announcements designed to communicate closeness. Those symbols matter because diplomacy is partly signalling. Beijing, Moscow, American investors and Indian voters will all interpret the ceremony.
But the real significance lies underneath it. India and the United States are constructing a relationship in which neither side fully trusts the other to follow its preferences, yet both increasingly believe they are better off cooperating than operating separately.
That may sound less romantic than “natural allies”.
It is probably more durable.
Interests change, but they do not need to become identical before cooperation becomes rational. The challenge is identifying enough overlapping interests that disagreements elsewhere remain manageable.
The twentieth-century alliance system often asked countries to choose sides.
The emerging multipolar system may increasingly ask them to choose issues.
India is particularly comfortable with that world because strategic autonomy has been part of its foreign-policy tradition since independence. What has changed is the amount of leverage India possesses while practising it.
Washington increasingly needs India.
India increasingly benefits from Washington.
Neither wants the other as a patron.
That is exactly why the partnership may work.
