The U.S.-India relationship is built on interests, not illusions

The British statesman Lord Palmerston once said, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

India has long taken that dictum to heart, nowhere more so than in its approach to the U.S.

The U.S.-India relationship has never rested on sentimental notions of democratic fraternity or capitalist kinship. It has always reflected Palmerston’s realist precept that interests, not ideals, define relations between states. The relationship is the vector sum of cross-cutting interests — strategic, economic and political — shifting over time and rarely coherent. These dynamics are on full display today.

President Trump’s return to the White House, amid a fluid multipolar globe and the gradual erosion of the so-called rules-based international order, has rattled but also reinforced Indian-American ties. Tariffs are biting into India’s export economy even as defense frameworks draw Washington and New Delhi closer around shared concerns about security, technology and China.

The result is a relationship at once contested and indispensable — a paradox Palmerston would have recognized as the work of nothing more permanent than interests.

For years, some in Washington dreamed of a formal alliance, casting India as an Asian NATO partner or pillar of the liberal order. That vision was not realistic. India never wanted it, and Washington no longer expects it.

What has emerged instead is pragmatic cooperation. A matrix of military, economic and political ties thrives precisely by avoiding the rigidity of alliance. Forged not on ideology or treaties but on converging interests, it reflects calculation rather than sentiment.

This makes the U.S.-India relationship the quintessential product of a multipolar era. The unipolar moment is over and no single power dominates. Alignments are conditional, loyalties transactional. India has pioneered the art of multi-alignment — engaging with rivals and partners alike as interests demand. To traditional strategic minds in Washington, this has seemed like hedging. In truth, it is Palmerstonian realism: the strategy of survival.

India agreed to a new U.S. defense framework while buying discounted Russian oil. It signed space-cooperation agreements with Washington while inking energy deals with Iran. It expanded drills with the U.S. Navy even as it sat with China at BRICS summits.

This is not incoherence but strategy — maximizing freedom of maneuver while avoiding entanglement. For India, flexibility is not optional but born of geography, history and the long memory of outside manipulation.

For Washington, India’s geopolitical independence was once frustrating. Today it is accepted as the price of partnership. Trump’s “reciprocity” doctrine has buffeted the economic relationship, with India targeted by doubled tariffs and stalled trade negotiations. Modi’s government has responded with nationalist defiance, shoring up commercial sovereignty while still courting U.S. defense technology and investment. This paradox — open disagreement within a resilient partnership — persists because both sides know they need each other.

Military ties have strengthened despite the tariff wars. India now conducts more joint exercises with the U.S. than with any other state. The joint Malabar naval drills have expanded in scope, as have counterterror operations and amphibious training.

New interoperability agreements open U.S. logistics hubs to Indian use, and intelligence is shared more freely. Even space has become a theater of cooperation: Axiom’s human spaceflight partnership and joint satellite launches add a new dimension to the defense-industrial connection. None of this resembles a formal alliance, but it may be sturdier.

The economic dimension, though bruised, is not broken. Trump’s tariffs have tested India’s export economy and complicated industrial policy. Yet both governments insist they want to double trade to $500 billion by 2030. Supply-chain diversification, semiconductor research and clean-tech projects continue, even if the rhetoric is more combative than cooperative.

Running beneath the state-to-state dynamic is the Indian diaspora in the U.S., a force neither side can ignore. Over 4.8 million strong, Indian-Americans shape U.S. perceptions of India and anchor the partnership in American society. The diaspora ensures the relationship is more than statecraft, providing ballast in stormy seas.

That was evident during Vice President JD Vance’s recent visit to India. His warm reception in Delhi was not just diplomacy but also a message to Indian-American voters in battleground states. The diaspora has made India relevant not only in the Situation Room but also on the campaign trail. This is a strategic reality that makes the relationship unusually resilient.

Fault lines remain. India resists U.S. pressure on its ties to Russia, sanctions compliance and domestic policies from digital regulation to human rights. Trump’s tariff wars and occasional attempts to hyphenate India with Pakistan inflame nationalist suspicion.

Yet the partnership endures. Both Washington and New Delhi need to blunt Chinese power and secure resilient supply chains — and both understand that sovereignty preserved is the very source of strength.

The relationship will likely deepen in three areas: defense and deterrence, especially in maritime and space; high-technology collaboration in semiconductors, AI and clean energy; and diaspora-driven political influence, embedding India in U.S. domestic debates. This is not lockstep, but it is working.

In the post-unipolar order, this may become a template: not treaty chains, ideological blocs or hegemonic hierarchies, but dense webs of sovereign partnerships. Such arrangements are rarely tidy, but they endure so long as core interests converge.

The turbulence and tantrums over tariffs may obscure the broader picture, but these disputes are fleeting compared to the deeper convergence of interests that will continue to bind Washington and New Delhi. Palmerston’s maxim still applies — but in this case, the interests at play, if not permanent, are fated to endure for a very long time, virtually guaranteeing that the U.S.-India partnership will deepen further in the years ahead.

Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington.