Beyond the Lines | An American Job: Donald Trump and The Unintended Peace between India and China

The United States has had a mercurial relationship with India. During the Cold War, it took two decades to build a cordial relationship, and one president to wreck it. After the Cold War ended, India tested its nuclear device, and the relationship hit a nadir. But again, it took two decades and several presidents and prime ministers to build it. In a repeat, it needed one president to ruin it. History has never run a fuller circle than the India-America relationship saga.

For any state head to reverse India’s strategic alliance with America, 4 years is too short a period to change plans. 4 months is too little to judge. And yet, 4 weeks can be long enough to dismantle the bond. President Nixon did it in 1971. Trump has done it in 2025. The only difference was that Nixon did not make any pretence of which side he was on, while Trump does not know if there is a side other than his own. History, by repeating itself, reminds us of the orb we inhabit, just when you begin to think the world may be flat.

A few months into his second term, President Donald Trump has reversed a carefully built relationship between India and the US over the last twenty five years. Pessimists diss the prospects while optimists, wary of the downside of India going it alone, believe that the relationship between the two states goes beyond personalities.

People ask whether the damage can be reversed. Is it irreversible?

The extent of severity can only be known after the tariffs kick in. Or, if Trump decides to backtrack before the end of August, we might again begin to rationalise his actions as one of a snot-nosed, hard-boiled negotiator from New York’s real estate. This is how some commentators thought of him before the emperor lost his proverbial clothes of discretion: I remember asking a prominent former government advisor about Trump in the early part of his second presidency and received a rational response about the president being a negotiator with a long-term plan. Most of us got it wrong. That’s because dissecting Trump through a rational lens is incorrect. Trump has proved to be remarkably consistent in being inconsistent.

Reams have been written on how Trump has impacted India’s trade with America. After all, the 50 per cent tariff hits the pharma, agricultural, textiles, chemicals, electronics, auto parts and other sectors. But what can be the larger impact of Trump’s actions, going beyond the those on India’s exports and trade with America?

Let’s start with the backstory.

In the last two decades, the rapid rise of China and Xi Jinping posed a significant challenge to American hegemony in the Asia Pacific. The Americans pivoted towards India as a political counterbalance. Despite being an ally, the Americans, post the Cold War, understood that India preferred to operate in an autonomous orbit, pursuing a bilateral route on political, trade and military dealings. The signing of the nuclear treaty, warming up of Indo-US relations, the initiatives on QUAD and India’s diplomatic reciprocation of good relations towards America were based on the consistent line adopted by successive American presidents.

The last decade saw US presidents supporting the idea of an active QUAD – with India, Australia, and Japan expected to work in tandem to counter Chinese influence. Quad threatened to be a thorn in the flesh for China’s plans. Killing two birds with one stone, America cannily kept the growth of BRICS at bay. As the war in Ukraine broke out, Washington’s political dependence on India was evident as the US supported India’s energy purchases from Russia, helping stabilise global energy prices. This was in line with America’s acknowledgement of New Delhi’s neutral stance on international issues, which it did not want to interfere with. Shailender Arya, a former advisor with Ministry of Defence and now, Senior Advisor with Asia Group, believes that ‘India and the US are natural partners and there are geopolitical reasons for them to be aligned.’

Trump and India

Therefore, what may have been the inflexion point for Trump overturning the steady relationship with India? His hostility may have been triggered by a bruised ego after India refused to acknowledge his role in defusing the military crisis with Pakistan in May. The inability of Trump’s advisers to guide him on the background of the bilateral nature of the dispute between India and Pakistan meant that he put his ego before historical precedent. Whilst there can be an argument that India could have left a smarter escape clause in its response, there is also the thinking that a bully takes more when offered an inch, as the Chinese ambassador alluded in his response to Trump’s hyperextended tariffs on India. This signal brought India’s northern neighbours into the picture.

The US continues to import fertilizers, chemicals, and minerals from Russia. China has also continued its energy purchases from Russia, despite threats from America. Under Trump, the US has granted China a temporary reprieve on tariffs while it targets India with amongst the highest rates, thus signalling its disinterest in Quad or any such grouping in the region. The US has also been harsher towards allies such as the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan in relation to China. Since the US imported 70 per cent of its rare earth requirements from China, the Chinese weaponised the rare earths in their trade deal with the US and forced them on the backfoot on tariffs. Trump conceded to Jinping in their trade exchanges, much like how Putin held the edge in his meeting with Trump in Alaska.

Trump and the India-China Tango

The recent events have demonstrated a weakening US presence and showcased audacious Chinese ambitions in the region. America has set nations scrambling to find favourable groupings in the event of dwindling trust towards Trump’s America. Economist Jeffrey Sachs has termed the tariff policy a foreign policy blunder that unified ‘the BRICS countries as never before’, referring to Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

As Trump sought to adopt radical postures to hector states into responding to his short-term transactional demands, he ignored a basic tenet. Unlike nations led by tinpot Pakistani generals or rulers where civilian governments had no more than cosmetic value, here he was dealing with two grand old civilisations – India and China – that have more history than their recent dossier of conflicts. Here were two civilisations inadvertently brought together by an erratic American president. While China held the cards to push back at Trump on the trade deal, the latter believed India did not quite have the cards.

While previous American presidents were conscious of the downside of India drifting towards China or Russia and hence adopted measures that prevented such possibilities, Trump may not have fully comprehended the impact of his actions beyond his immediate transactions or deals. He has triggered the revival of a working relationship between China and India, which is at the expense of American interests in the region. Trump may have failed in his desperate attempts to bring in peace between warring parties elsewhere, but ironically, this is a truce between big rivals that Trump might have inadvertently triggered.

The relationship between India and China has been defined by conflict, competition and cooperation. India-China relations have been on the mend for a while, but there has been a remarkable eagerness to build relations after Trump’s about-turn on India. India hosted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who stressed that the two countries should view each other as partners, not rivals. In the last six months, Ajit Doval, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar have visited China. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit China for the SCO summit at the end of the month. Trade and air services have resumed between the two countries, years after it was suspended after the 2017 Doklam standoff.

A Mix of Enthusiasm and Caution

Despite recent enthusiasm in favour of a growing India-China relationship, Asia Group’s Arya holds a word of caution, adding, “Whether it shall lead to a rapprochement is a difficult question to answer. The boundary dispute is intractable. There could be a possibility that we can compartmentalize it and move on to explore other cooperative areas, but then what if there is a unilateral change in the status quo at the LAC by China, as in the summer of 2020?” China has built up infrastructure, roads and bridges along the LAC, to the extent that it can leverage the advantage if terms with India seem unfavourable. The trust deficit between the two countries makes the journey from Delhi to Beijing a longer one than imagined.

The three pegs that define Sino-Indian relationship – conflict, competition and cooperation – appear to have been framed more by dispute in recent history and partly competition in recent times whenever the two have jostled for economic headspace and over China plus one markets. Cooperation is an alien term for Indian and Chinese analysts, which shapes a circumspect, cautious opinion.

On the other hand, the presence of Indian diaspora in the US makes them a natural partner. Arya believes that economic ties and industrial collaborations should be ‘trusted and strengthened, since the situation in the US is temporary… People, perceptions and priorities change – much faster than it takes to resolve complex boundary questions.’

The outcome of recent events, however, is a reiteration of India’s adoption of an independent policy defined by its own interests, rather than aspiring for an all-weather relationship. Questions over Quad will gain ground as quickly as those over America’s waning presence in the absence of a strong Indian support in the region. On the other side, it is yet to be seen whether the enthusiasm over a thawing Sino-Indian relationship will lead to gains in the neighbourhood. Much as India would like to play a role in the global arena, the neighbourhood needs attention.

The Sino-Indian dialogues will bring India back into discussions with Nepal and Bangladesh over unresolved issues. Therefore, the ability of India to draw takeaways from the recent positive vibes with its northern neighbour will determine how far the two big neighbours can travel together on intractable issues. Trump’s inadvertent decision has not only triggered a temporary truce between two cantankerous neighbours, but also demonstrated that India is a key player in the region that can sustain its interests independently. Events of history, as they say, can be an outcome of unintended consequences of not so noble decisions.

The writer is the author of ‘Watershed 1967: India’s Forgotten Victory over China’ and ‘Camouflaged: Forgotten Stories From Battlefields’. His fortnightly column for Firstpost — ‘Beyond the Lines’ — covers military history, strategic issues, international affairs and policy-business challenges. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Tweets @iProbal.