WASHINGTON: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-profile attempts to strengthen ties with the United States and China have reached a stalemate, exposing the limits of New Delhi’s influence on the world stage, The New York Times reported.
According to the newspaper, Modi’s first major outreach came in 2014 when he sought to strengthen relations with Beijing. The Indian leader rolled out the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping in his home state of Gujarat, hosting him for an intimate riverside dinner in Ahmedabad.
The talks at the time focused on economic cooperation, including Chinese investment in India’s railways and potential collaboration in nuclear energy.
However, the goodwill was overshadowed by a border stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops that erupted during the visit.
The Times reported that this was the first in a series of clashes that left Modi politically embarrassed and forced India to maintain tens of thousands of troops on a war footing in the Himalayas for several years.
Modi later shifted focus to Washington, seeing the US as a counterweight to China. The Times noted that he cultivated a close relationship with then-President Donald Trump, even breaking protocol to appear at a stadium rally in Houston in 2019, where he publicly endorsed Trump’s re-election bid.
The Biden administration, the paper added, chose to overlook this partisan gesture and continued expanding ties, with Modi famously telling a joint session of Congress in 2023 that “AI” stood for “America and India.”
Relations, however, have cooled during Trump’s second term. The Times reported that Washington recently imposed a 50 percent tariff on Indian goods, citing New Delhi’s continued imports of Russian oil. Trump referred to India’s economy as “dead.”
The paper also said Trump angered Indian officials by giving Pakistan “equal footing” in efforts to mediate a ceasefire following cross-border hostilities earlier this year, after the Pahalgam incident in Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir.
In June, Trump hosted Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, at the White House weeks after the confrontation between India and Pakistan — a move that, according to the Times, prompted a private diplomatic protest from New Delhi.
The report said these setbacks have triggered a period of “deep introspection” in India’s foreign policy, with the government recalibrating ties with Beijing as a hedge.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun on Friday welcomed Modi’s plan to visit China for the first time in seven years to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.
Last month, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Beijing for the first time since the deadly 2020 border clash.
Despite these overtures, The New York Times noted that relations with China remain strained due to unresolved border disputes and Beijing’s unwavering support for Pakistan during the recent military escalation.
At the same time, Modi has intensified engagement with Russia. The paper reported that India’s National Security Adviser was in Moscow this week to finalise details of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s upcoming trip to New Delhi, with officials emphasising the “India-Russia Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.”
Former Indian ambassador to both Beijing and Washington, Nirupama Rao, told the Times that Trump’s punitive trade measures had “upended the strategic logic of a very consequential partnership” with the US, and predicted “very pragmatic strategic recalibrations” by New Delhi to safeguard its interests.
Author and former adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sanjaya Baru, said the personal styles of Trump and Modi had reduced a bilateral relationship between nations to “a volatile relation between two egos.”
The Times said many Indian policymakers now see a return to the long-tested doctrine of “strategic autonomy” as inevitable — avoiding deep alliances and instead relying on a mix of pragmatic, sometimes contradictory partnerships.
As the report put it, India is “on its own,” and must avoid overcommitting to any single camp while focusing on strengthening its economic and strategic capabilities.
