When Narendra Modi swept to power in 2014, his budding alliance with America was hailed as a masterstroke. Yet the United States’ freshly unveiled National Security Strategy (NSS November 2025), published on December 4, lays bare the folly of that embrace.
What Modi pitched as a ladder to a great-power status has instead ensnared India in a lopsided bargain, one that serves only the parochial whims of Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine. This alliance risks entrenching India in dependency, limiting strategic autonomy and undermining long-term national interests.
Allies, it turns out, are expected to shoulder more burdens, align strategies and pour resources into Washington’s coffers – while receiving little in return: no market openings, no preferential market access, none of the tech windfalls that were lavished on China in the 1990s.
Modi hawked this pact as transformative, a shortcut to global heft. In truth, it smacks of a snare, designed to bleed India’s assets in pursuit of the prime minister’s vaulting “guru to the world” ego. This should bother anyone concerned about India’s future independent foreign policy.
This author sounded the alarm as early as 2020, in an Asia Times dispatch warning that America was goading India into squandering scarce funds on a ruinous arms race with Beijing. A pro-Western lurch, the piece contended, would only deepen the trap.
Modi brushed aside such counsel, plunging India into a pact in which its outlays dwarf any illusory gains. This stems from his blinkered approach to China, which has left India economically exposed amid festering border rows – a peril dissected in another critique.
Modi’s suicidal fundamental agreements with the USIndia inked three of the four foundational pacts with America under Modi, cementing its role as a full-fledged strategic sidekick.
Latest stories
International dating industry often sells traditional gender roles
Australian Ghost Bat drone bares fangs as PLA bombers edge closer
Trans-Siberian Rail poised for pivotal role In Russia-US Projects
The General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), dates back to 2002. The rest – Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016, Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) in 2018,and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) in 2020 – unlocked American access to India’s classified military data, terrain maps and supply lines. These, Modi proclaimed, would be a bulwark of deterrence arming India against “the Chinese aggression.”
The NSS 2025 – particularly pages 14, 16 and 28 – reveals them for what they are: levers for American leverage. Washington prods partners to hike defense budgets and snap up its weaponry, offering no ironclad shields or fiscal sweeteners. This should make clear the true costs of the US partnership.
The tab for strategic fealty falls squarely on the supplicants. It’s a classic bait-and-switch, goading India into outspending itself on naval frippery to counter China, at the expense of broader progress.
Modi’s wager has backfired spectacularly: India’s tribute to the Stars and Stripes – be it troop deployments, anti-Beijing brinkmanship or hardware hauls – is gutting the exchequer. At the same time, American reciprocity remains a figment of fancy. Such myopia has consigned national priorities to the pyre. India is shown to be an expendable chess piece in the great-power game.
Worse, this could be, and was, pilloried as an elite delusion, with India chasing a superpower dream despite its ignominious 4th-place slot on the Global Hunger Index, trailing its neighbors in human development.
Modi’s delusion of obtaining the Chinese model market from the USModi daydreamed of aping China’s 1990s bonanza: American firms fleeing Beijing for Bangalore, bearing factories, know-how and capital. The NSS 2025 shatters that reverie on pages 17 -18, prioritizing “reshoring” to American soil over outsourcing to anywhere else. A piece published five years ago laid bare the hollowness: Despite Modi’s siren song, firms shun India for its bureaucratic thickets, infrastructural woes and governance gremlins.
This quixotic ploy has yoked India to dependence on the Yankee. Washington extracts concessions to buoy its own economy. It underscores Modi’s economic naivety, peddling “self-reliance” as a virtue while courting self-strangulation – banishing India from global supply chains, vaporizing jobs and stunting growth.
A deadly priceThe partnership’s grim toll is the rupture with China, India’s erstwhile trade colossus. Doklam in 2017 was Beijing’s pointed riposte to New Delhi’s American dalliance; Galwan in 2020 sealed the schism, as Modi’s jingoism torched economic ties. Lured westward, India chained itself to the anti-China crusade, which diminishes its regional influence and compromises its “strategic autonomy” by aligning it too closely with US strategic interests over regional diplomacy.
Modi’s historic blunder of economic isolationThis is nationalism’s blood price: regional ostracism, squandered Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) prospects and a sacrificed stake in Asian prosperity. Modi’s China phobia ousted India from RCEP, a historic blunder. The economic isolation resulting from this alliance limits India’s access to vital markets, technology and investment, hampering growth and development prospects.
Sign up for one of our free newsletters
- The Daily Report Start your day right with Asia Times' top stories
- AT Weekly Report A weekly roundup of Asia Times' most-read stories
Opting out in 2020 forfeited a 2-billion-strong middle-class bazaar, plus tech and investment from China, Japan, South Korea and ASEAN. The NSS 2025 proffers no fresh trade overtures, compounding Modi’s gaffe and marooning India in splendid isolation. Ignorance of America’s mercantilist bent has kept India from the world’s cornucopia.
Resources squandered in misplaced military prioritiesThe NSS 2025 compels defense bloat, with Modi funnelling billions into frontier fortifications and firepower. Health, education – both basic and tertiary – and jobs ensnare India in a spiral of penury. This is anti-developmental dogma, pure and simple – the US’s empty promises on technology transfer and Modi’s servility to America.
Modi banked on Yankee tech troves to turbocharge productivity; the NSS 2025 vows to hoard America’s edge, dooming such hopes. This muddle has India pleading with a feckless patron, culminating in Trump’s tariffs – servility’s just deserts.
Modi pushed India to the forefront of the anti-China front through the QuadThe NSS 2025 elevates the Quad to an anti-China fortress, dragooning India into Uncle Sam’s phalanx on spurious pretexts. Gone is New Delhi’s vaunted strategic autonomy; in its stead, a straitjacket. The grouping deters nothing; it merely forfeits the economic dividends of China’s erstwhile embrace over eight lost years of Modi rule in India.
Modi’s American apostasy, unmasked by the NSS 2025, imperils India’s ascent – a fatal fumble that was foretold in these pages. Rectitude demands reversal, lest uncertainty devour the future. The hour for course-correction is perilously late.
Bhim Bhurtel is on X at @BhimBhurtel
Sign up here to comment on Asia Times stories
Sign in with Google Or Sign up Sign in to an existing account
Thank you for registering!
An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link.
Bhim Bhurtel
Bhim Bhurtel teaches Development Economics and Global Political Economy in the Master's program at Nepal Open University. He was the executive director of the Nepal South Asia Center (2009-14), a Kathmandu-based South Asian development think-tank. Bhurtel can be reached at [email protected].
More by Bhim Bhurtel