OPINION:
Great relationships evolve. Asymmetry gives way to estrangement. Estrangement gives way to engagement. If sustained, engagement ripens into maturity.
The United States and India are now at that threshold.
Today’s quarrels over tariffs and oil are distractions. The deeper question is whether both nations can escape old habits and exhibit the maturity required at this hour.
For two decades, the pattern was asymmetric. Washington carried the heavier load. It broke orthodoxy to bring India into the nuclear order, rewrote rules, pressed allies, and absorbed the costs. It loosened export controls, waived sanctions, and accepted India’s gradualism.
It foresaw India’s role in Asia before New Delhi declared it. Again and again, America met India more than halfway.
India accepted these openings while holding fast to “strategic autonomy,” which once served as a shield against entanglement. Over time, it became the principle that allowed India to accept U.S. overtures while keeping its distance.
The imbalance was not only material but psychological: America invested belief in the future, India invested in cautiously accepting short-term gains from the relationship.
That era may be ending. India is no longer the hesitant power of the 1990s or the diffident partner of the 2000s. It is a pole in its own right.
But with stature comes responsibility. Autonomy cannot evolve into aloofness. A great power does not preserve distance; it shapes outcomes. India itself calls for the mantle of VishwaGuru — a teacher to the world — which by definition implies engagement, not detachment.
For centuries, India’s instinct has been to stand apart; its aspiration now is to stand above. But leadership cannot be exercised from the margins.
The American temptation is no less challenging. Having carried the imbalance for so long, Washington risks reducing partnership to a ledger. It counts deficits, tallies purchases, measures loyalty in sanctions. Divergence is treated as deficiency; independence is read as ingratitude; and distinct choices are cast as betrayal.
This is the Cold War reflex in new form. America once wagered on Pakistan to balance Asia, a bet that collapsed under the weight of history. India, by contrast, is a far more promising long-term bet.
To demand conformity is to invite disappointment; to accept independence is to secure cooperation. A ledger measures the moment; a partnership defines the trajectory. America’s wager on India was never about the quarter but the century. If it forgets that, it forgets its own purpose for engaging in the first place.
These temptations are not unique to one side. India hides behind autonomy, America behind conditionality. India fears entanglement; America fears divergence. Each mistake keeps maturity at bay. But maturity will begin when both escape their own insecurities.
Maturity does not mean harmony on every vote or parallel policies on every front. It means recognizing that two powers, distinct in history and temperament, can advance together without marching in lockstep. Divergence is natural; what matters is direction. Parallel lines never meet, yet they shape the same horizon.
History warns against flawed interpretations. In the Cold War, India mistook autonomy for distance, and America mistook divergence for opposition. Both lost decades. Neither should repeat the error today.
America’s future doesn’t lie with Pakistan, nor India’s with Russia and China. Those ties reflect a defensive past. The U.S.-India bond reflects a more assertive future. Today, the gravity of history pulls Washington and New Delhi toward each other.
This truth has already surfaced in moments of crisis and change: when the Quad distributed vaccines across Asia; when Congress chose to waive sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act rather than a rupture with India on Russian arms; and when both governments began shifting semiconductor supply chains toward one another.
Each action revealed the outlines of maturity.
A mature relationship accepts neither illusion: that India can rise while avoiding greater burdens, or that America can secure partnership by demanding compliance. It requires equilibrium: the recognition that sovereign powers can differ on tactics yet converge on strategy.
Maturity is not the absence of disagreement, but the habit of alignment. It means two powers, secure in their independence, steady in their cooperation, shaping Asia’s balance not by exception but by design.
The U.S.-India corridor no longer needs breakthroughs or bargains. It requires steadiness and perspective. India must resist the temptation of equating autonomy with detachment. America must resist the temptation of mistaking independence for resistance.
Without India, America cannot balance Asia. Without America, India cannot secure its rise.
History has brought these two great nations to this threshold. They can embrace maturity or relapse into distance and disappointment. But the balance of power in Asia will not be decided in spite of U.S.-India ties. It will be decided through them.
• Kriti Upadhyaya is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
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