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Washington and New Delhi were once bound by one of the most triumphant strategic partnerships in the post–Cold War era. For more than two decades, the United States and India built a robust defense and diplomatic relationship — only to now be facing one of its most trying periods.

Evan Feigenbaum, a South Asia analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called the current climate “absolutely brutal.” “We’re in a situation in the U.S.-India relationship where the premises and assumptions of the last 25 years — that everybody worked very hard to build, including the president in his first term — have just come completely unraveled,” he said. “The trust is gone.”

The cracks started to show soon after Trump introduced tariffs on 25 percent of Indian imports earlier this year, then set to increase to 50 percent on Aug. 27. The tariffs, which Trump tied to India’s refusal to cut back on buying oil from Russia despite the war in Ukraine, appear to have had the opposite effect of their stated goal of pressuring New Delhi into changing its purchasing decisions. Rather than bending to U.S. demands, Indian officials have signaled a warming toward Moscow and even Beijing.

In recent weeks, India’s national security adviser and foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, traveled to Moscow, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi just completed a visit to New Delhi. Modi himself is expected to soon make his first trip to China in over seven years, and is likely to meet Putin in Moscow before the end of the year, too. Analysts say the shift, at a time of mutual Russian-Chinese cooperation, is more than cosmetic.

A new poll conducted this month found that Indian public opposition to the purchase of Russian oil had “dramatically softened” and that many Indians had rejected U.S. sanctions on Russia as an infringement on their nation’s sovereignty. “They’re signaling very clearly that they view that as interference in India’s foreign policy, and they are not going to put up with it,” Feigenbaum said.

Jaishankar made a similar argument this month: “We have strong economic, energy, and strategic ties with Russia. But not everyone in the world needs to look at our foreign policy decisions through the prism of their bilateral relationship with us.”

India’s state-run refiners initially paused Russian oil purchases after the invasion, then resumed buying when discounts of 6-7 percent were made available. Russia’s stake in India’s crude imports has since ballooned to 35 percent, up from 0.2 percent before the war. Moscow, for its part, is doubling down on Russian oil exports and has expanded its offer. Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov told reporters that Moscow would “continue to supply crude, oil products, thermal and coking coal, we have good potential for the export of Russian LNG.”

Mixed Signals

Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Washington-based Wilson Center, told The Diplomat that tariffs were not the only reason India is recalibrating its diplomatic stance, however. “We’ve seen indications for almost a year of India wanting to ease tensions with China and strengthen relations, mainly for economic reasons. But the Trump administration’s policies have made India want to move even more quickly,” he said.

Some of New Delhi’s recent moves have been “entirely theater” or are “completely reversible,” Feigenbaum said, but “there are other parts where India is going to double down on some aspects of its economic and defense relationship with Russia — and those parts are not performative.”

India, for instance, had already been moving away from Russia for defense purchases before the Ukraine war, using U.S., French, and Israeli arms to diversify away from Moscow. But once the war began, energy purchases ramped up. Kugelman says this dynamic is “validation for many Indians of the fact that the U.S. can’t be trusted, whereas Russia can — because Russia is always going to be there for India no matter what.”

India has also seized on the opportunity to burnish its standing at home with inaction. Modi has cast himself domestically as a principled defender of Indian sovereignty — able to protect Indian farmers and the livelihoods of small businesses and young workers — in a move with “significant” political overtones, Kugelman added. “India had already given so much” to the United States on major issues that drew domestic pushback, like reducing tariffs and bringing back guest workers from pandemic lockdowns, Kugelman said. “Because of those concessions, India needs to be careful about signaling further willingness to bend. This is one reason there was no trade deal — Modi put his foot down,” he said.

In the United States, growing frustrations with India’s energy purchases are reaching a fever pitch. In an op-ed for the Financial Times this week, former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro called India’s oil purchases “opportunistic” and “deeply corrosive.” He argued that tariffs were necessary to hit India “where it hurts — its access to U.S. markets — even as it seeks to cut off the financial lifeline it has extended to Russia’s war effort.”

The heady days of strategic convergence appear to be a distant memory for a partnership that first bloomed after the 2008 U.S.-India civil nuclear deal. That agreement, which gave India access to U.S. fuel and technology despite its non-participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, required both nations to compartmentalize issues of disagreement to ensure they did not erode other aspects of their nascent ties. Today, U.S.-Indian trade tensions are starting to infect defense and intelligence cooperation.

The United States has for years treated India as an essential counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific. Under Obama, Trump, and now Biden, India has been embraced as a key democratic bulwark against authoritarian Beijing. And now, even as the United States frets over growing trade and technology interdependence with China, there are increasing signs that defense ties with India are no longer as impregnable as they once were.