'US can't fight China alone, we need India': Former US State Department adviser on Trump policies

The United States cannot tackle China alone in the Indo-Pacific and needs India on its side, according to Mary Kissel, a former adviser at the US Department of State and a China expert.

“If we are really serious about considering Communist China the greatest threat to the United States and our way of life, we need India. It’s just a fact. We can’t fight them alone in the Asia-Pacific,” said Kissel, who served as a Senior Adviser to the US Secretary of State (2018-21), in an interview with Fox News.

"If we are really serious about considering communist China the greatest threat to the United States and our way of life, we need India."@marykissel on @FoxBusiness pic.twitter.com/50wpX8vmMD

— Hudson Institute (@HudsonInstitute) September 2, 2025

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Kissel’s remarks came at a time when US President Doanld Trump's anti-India campaign —ranging from 50 per cent tariffs to meddling in the Kashmir dispute, undermining India on Operation Sindoor, and aligning himself with Pakistan— has plunged the India-US relationship to its lowest point in years. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seen interacting warmly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the SCO Summit, commentators in the West have said that Trump’s policies are pushing India to embrace the China-Russia bloc and ditch the United States.

Kissel referred to the SCO Summit in the interview and said it posed a “major challenge” for the Trump administration.

“We need the heft of not just Australia, not just our friends in Japan, but also India. I think this meeting is highlighting a major challenge for the Trump administration,” said Kissel, who currently serves as a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank.

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The two-day SCO Summit that concluded on Monday saw some of the biggest non-Western leaders converge at China’s Tianjin. Xi hosted Putin, Modi, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, among others. This was the biggest SCO Summit and the group has been seen in the West as a China-led rival of Western groups like the G-7 or Nato.

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Observers in both India and the United States have warned that Trump’s policies have put at risk decades of progress in the India-US relationship.

President Trump has broken the trust in the India-US relationship, and it will take time and efforts on part of the Americans to rebuild trust, and the responsibility would likely fall on the next administration, Yusuf Unjhawala, a scholar of geopolitics at the Takshashila Institution, previously told Firstpost.

“For now, the India-US relationship appears to be frozen and that is expected to deal a blow to collaborations such as the Quad. However, this situation also brings opportunities for middle powers, including in the Indo-Pacific, to come together. I have long believed that India, Japan, and Australia should have a much closer partnership,” said Unjhawala.