Introduction

In 1948, the first objective outlined by President Harry Truman in the United States’ (US) first national security strategy document was expansionary. The document identified the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) as the overarching risk to the US, and the core focus of American grand strategy was therefore to reduce Soviet power and influence.^[1] Seventy-seven years since then, the US is shifting its grand strategy from aggression to continuance. The first of twelve “wants” in US President Donald J. Trump’s National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS 2025) is the continued survival and safety of the US^[2]—i.e., to play defence rather than offence.

There are two parts to this shift from dominance to safeguarding. First, it recognises a bipolar, if not a multipolar, world in which the USSR has receded into Russia and the primary competitor has come in the form of China, whose economic, technological, and strategic shadow looms over US global engagements. Second, through the articulation of ‘America First’, the NSS 2025 turns inward, with foreign policy directed towards supporting domestic challenges. The emphasis is no longer on democracy promotion through regime changes in other countries,^[3] the extraction of West Asian energy resources,^[4] nor the serial sanctioning^[5] of countries that fail to comply.

The focus of the 29-page strategy document is to prevent and discourage mass migration into the US; protect trade routes, particularly in the Indo-Pacific; ensure the security of Europe; prevent any adversarial power (without naming China) from dominating West Asian energy; and maintain US leadership in the knowledge economy, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, and quantum computing.^[6]

The document crafts a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.^[7] The Monroe Doctrine, announced to the US Congress by President James Monroe on 2 December 1823,^[8] is regarded as a fundamental and foundational foreign policy statement of the US. It effectively declared the Western Hemisphere closed to further European colonisation, warning that any such attempt would be seen as a hostile act against the US. In return, the US would not interfere in Europe. It oversaw the isolation of the US from Europe by regional supremacy. In its NSS 2025, the US is indicating a return to what some analysts term “neo-imperialist presence”^[9] in the Western Hemisphere—essentially North and South America—as well as the western fringes of Europe, notably Portugal and Spain, and, in Africa, Ghana, Senegal, and Mali. Beyond the document, Trump now sees Greenland as part of this hemisphere and seeks to claim it.^[10]

Trump would not be the first to add a ‘corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine with the ‘Roosevelt Corollary’. While accepting existing barriers against European powers in the region, it added stability, order, and prosperity as a strategic idea that could, if required, be subjected to “international police power”. In other words, Roosevelt self-appointed Washington as the regional policeman,^[11] embedding this role as a strand of US grand strategy. Beneath the corollary lay the assertion of American regional hegemony and a pathway towards global power. It is this power that has dominated global discourse since then. Among others, US power has driven some 47 regime changes^[12]—including in Nicaragua (1909) and Honduras (1910-1911) in the imperial expansion era, Iran (1953) and Brazil (1964) in the Cold War era, Panama (1989) and Libya (2011) in the aftermath of the Cold War era, and Venezuela today.^[13]

The Trump Corollary retreats from expansion ambitions and reverts to a status quo in the Western Hemisphere. Through it, Trump is declaring a priority on stability and good governance: governments that cooperate with the US against “narco-terrorists, cartels and other transnational criminal organisations,” ensure freedom from hostile foreign incursion, support critical supply chains, and guarantee continued access to key strategic locations. The recent threat to reclaim the Panama Canal—through which nearly 4 percent of global trade passes—fits squarely within this corollary. In Panama, Trump identifies a looming China threat,^[14] while others argue the concern stems from the US not being “preferentially treated.”^[15] Either way, this represents a tactical manoeuvre to control a crucial global waterway; a power play aimed at securing an economic asset while refocusing strategic attention on the Western Hemisphere.

On the other side of the Earth’s hemisphere, despite sustained rhetoric about ending the war with Russia, NSS 2025 mentions Russia only ten times, compared to 25 times in NSS 2017 under his first term.^[16] Europe, in contrast, is emphasised more, with 48 mentions, up from 29 times in NSS 2017; and the Middle East and Africa 19 times each (compared to 11 times and 17 times, respectively, in NSS 2017). Japan rises by one mention to five times. To be sure, the number of mentions in the NSS will not be the primary indicator of a state’s importance to the US. For instance, outside NSS 2025, Trump has put 50 percent tariffs (25 percent base, 25 percent penalty) on India for buying Russian oil—with no such penalty on the European Union for continuing to buy Russian gas, China for continuing to buy more Russian oil than India, and the US for continuing to buy Russian uranium.

China is the primary protagonist in Trump’s grand strategy with 24 references, though this is down from 33 in NSS 2017. Most of the current mentions are around disappointment with Beijing, as well as American elites, for the country not entering the rules-based order,^[17] exporting to the US directly and through “proxy countries,”^[18] and now prioritising reciprocity.^[19] The document tackles issues around the South China Sea and seeks the help of Japan and India to counter a potential threat by China (which he does not name) to impose a toll or close and open it at will.^[20]

NSS 2025 stands on the ideas of ‘America First’, burden-sharing in security, economic coercion through tariffs within partnerships, and the realisation that economic security is a pillar of national security (see Appendix 1). Further, the two big regional focuses in this document are Europe and China. Contrary to headlines, references to Russia are almost a fifth of Europe’s and two-fifths of China’s (see Appendix 3). Further, the focus on peace is 2.4 times that on war, though the word ‘military’ stands right on top (See Appendix 2). Taken together, NSS 2025 reflects an acknowledgement of multipolar realities and the eastward shift of economic power. It relocates the US within these realities while keeping American interests squarely at the centre.

India’s Place in NSS 2025

In rhetorical terms, NSS 2025 positions India as a strategic partner, ranked just below Europe and on a par with Japan. Outside of the strategy document, however, India tops the list of countries experiencing trade coercion from the US: it is facing 50 percent tariffs—25 percent as “reciprocal” tariffs and another 25 percent as “secondary” tariffs for buying Russian oil.^[21]

China, which Trump explicitly sees as a competitor, faces combined tariffs of 20 percent—10 percent reciprocal tariffs and 10 percent ‘Fentanyl’ tariffs. Japan and the European Union face 15 percent, the United Kingdom 10 percent, and Russia none. Along the First Islands Chain, Taiwan faces 20 percent tariffs and the Philippines 19 percent, while South Korea faces 15 percent. Further south, Venezuela—where higher tariffs on oil are being threatened—faces 15 percent. In India’s neighbourhood, Pakistan faces 19 percent, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka 20 percent each, and Myanmar 40 percent.^[22]

This dissonance between Trump’s words and actions complicates India’s placement within NSS 2025. Is India a partner and a friend, or the world’s fastest-growing geography that, along with its 1.45 billion people, must be restrained? The NSS 2025 lens is unipolar and domestically focused, while remaining bipolar in its worldview, with China at the centre. India’s own multipolar outlook, in contrast, involves multiple, often competing, elements of engagement. A convergence of these two paths seems difficult, irrespective of defence deals,^[23] decoupling of trade and technology by deepening tie-ups in AI and semiconductors,^[24] or business-to-business mega investments by US companies such as the US$35 billion by the Amazon,^[25] US$17.5 billion by Microsoft,^[26] and US$15 billion by Google,^[27] all three announced in the last quarter of 2025.

To turn the course of the world’s two largest, and arguably the nosiest, democracies is not easy. It has taken huge strategic effort across decades and under successive leaderships, from both sides, to power the US-India relations historically hyphenated by mutual trust. Challenges have arisen, including defence cooperation with,^[28] and geopolitical support for,^[29] Pakistan^[30]—a hub of terrorism whose networks have operated globally, including in the US, where several figures feature on the FBI’s most-wanted lists.^[31] This trust has endured. Until August 2025, that is—when Trump imposed irrational tariffs on India’s energy imports from Russia, a country that has long been a trusted partner for India.^[32]

Of the five references to India in NSS 2025, two are irrelevant to India’s place in the US grand strategy, both made in the context of giving credit to Trump for negotiating peace between India and Pakistan^[33] during Operation Sindoor.^[34] These claims may serve Trump’s desire for a Nobel Peace Prize,^[a],[35] with Pakistan eager to nominate him^[36] in return for diplomatic access and the ‘correct’ optics.^[37]

For the Trump administration to overlook that India considers this a bilateral matter and accepts no third-party intervention displays its tactical shallowness that does not befit a strategically driven nation like the US. The Indian stance is clear: Trump did not build the bridge to peace with Pakistan, Islamabad did it by requesting New Delhi to end the war: “Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) called the Indian DGMO and It was agreed between them that both sides would stop all firing and military action on land and in the air and sea with effect from 1700 hours Indian Standard Time on 10 May 2025.”^[38]

It is the remaining three references that matter and, despite the uncertainty and unreliability that mark the strategic signature of the Trump administration, help relocate India. The first is economic. NSS 2025 places India in a basket of “treaty allies and partners”,^[39] whose combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stands at US$35 trillion, and constitutes more than half of world GDP. Together, the two can help ensure that allied economics do not become subordinate to any competing power. When viewed through the formulae of spreadsheets, this appears rational and mutually beneficial.  To that extent, this is not a relocation, but a strengthening of an extant relationship that lost its base in 1971^[40] and began to get repaired from 2004 onwards.^[41]

Yet, India is not an ally of the US—that is, a country bound by treaty or agreement to support another for military cooperation such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The 32 members of NATO, also known as ‘NATO Allies’, are sovereign states that come together to discuss political and security issues and make collective decisions by consensus.^[42] Other than the US, Canada, and Türkiye, all other members are from Europe.

India has been a partner of the US in various domains including defence,^[43] trade in goods and services,^[44] and people-to-people engagements in education, work, or as aspirational migrants serving and thriving there. The 2008 Indo-US nuclear deal,^[45] popularly known as the 123 Agreement, laid the foundations of what could have been a compounding of trust momentum. This partnership, built after three decades of mistrust and 17 years of rebuilding that trust, is now under threat.

The second dimension of India’s placement in NSS 2025 is strategic. Trump seeks to leverage economic relations with India to secure the Indo-Pacific, including through the Quad with Australia and Japan.^[46] He extends this cooperation from “India to Japan” to the control of the South China Sea, driven by the perception of a potentially hostile power—left unnamed—capable of imposing tolls or restricting access at will.^[47] This framing implies more investment in the military. As with Europe and NATO partners, NSS 2025 places an implicit demand on India and Japan to financially underwrite such cooperation, possibly through the purchase of US defence equipment. For India, acquiring strategically sensitive equipment from an untrustworthy partner would be a risky proposition. The US will have to rebuild trust before making any such demand from the world’s second-largest importer of arms, after Ukraine.^[48] Transfer of technology and manufacturing in India, for India, could be a way forward.

West of the Arabian Sea, Trump hopes to “enlist” European and Asian allies—but also including India—to strengthen the US position in the Western Hemisphere around critical minerals in the African continent. India has long-standing relationships with several countries in this geography. It can become a bridge for the US to build goodwill, make investments, and manage resources through a model distinct from China’s. But the benefits of this strength have to look beyond the “Western Hemisphere”; Trump needs to engage with India as a partner rather than a support function.

This partnership is fraught with uncertainty. A year into his second term, Trump’s actions diverge from the intent articulated in the NSS 2025. From India’s perspective, any resolution must begin with normalisation and rationalisation of US tariffs on Indian products. Expecting India to support the US’s strategic objectives, while Washington DC uses economic coercion to twist New Delhi, reflects a misreading of contemporary geopolitics. Such assumptions may have held in the unipolar moment between the collapse of the USSR and the rise of China, but not in today’s multipolar geopolitics.

Further, the strategic and political memory of India has not forgotten the anti-India stance of the US—along with its allies and China—during the 1971 war with Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh.^[49] Nor has it moved past the US nuclear embargo following India’s first nuclear test in 1974, or the sanctions imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests.^[50] These memories persist not only within the strategic community but have also permeated public consciousness in India. Compounding this is Washington DC’s current conduct—economic and military support to Pakistan,^[51] and its role in driving an anti-India regime change in Bangladesh^[52]—which does little to rebuild trust.

These fissures are now hardening. As a result, it will need a lot of work, on both sides, to bring the relationship back on track. These challenges will outlast Trump’s second presidency.^[53] For trust to be restored, both Washington DC and New Delhi will have to think creatively, act cohesively, understand the domestic compulsions in both the democracies culturally, and respect one another’s freedom of foreign policy stances. Defence pacts^[54] and forthcoming nuclear collaborations^[55] can be the first bridges to a strategic reconnection.

Looking Ahead

In its broader approach to global engagement, NSS 2025 appears to encourage countries such as India to contribute to American heft while absorbing the costs of doing so. This may have been feasible in the unipolar or even bipolar worlds of the past. It remains workable for regimes such as Islamabad, which depend on US patronage to suppress domestic dissent and challenge India. For segments of the US strategic community to persist with an undifferentiated notion of “South Asia” reflects an intellectual vacuum that risks destabilising the region. By supporting Pakistan and Bangladesh, Washington risks creating geopolitical insecurity in the region and playing into the hands of China.

Beyond 2025, the intersecting dynamics of multipolarity will become too complex for any single great power to manoeuvre. The eras of Truman and Reagan, Clinton and Obama are behind. Those periods were marked by great-power games, with mixed outcomes. All this while, the strategic and power landscape was changing, and India was becoming a pivotal driver of a strengthening multipolarity.

Even during Trump’s first term (2017 to 2021), the approach to India in NSS 2017 was cordial: “We welcome India’s emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defence partner,” the document had said.^[56] Expanding defence and security cooperation with India was key, as was supporting India’s relationships throughout the region. Trump had sought to deepen the India-US strategic partnership and support India’s leading role in the Indian Ocean security.

Once Trump’s stance shifted—from viewing India as a strategic partner to treating it as a relationship he appeared to be losing^[57]—New Delhi faced a choice: bend before his personal ego, as Pakistan has often done, or stand straight, even aloof. Prime Minister Modi has chosen the latter. This decision carries short- and long-term implications for both the US and India. Trump may simply have expressed, in blunt terms, a relationship already trending downward. Or this is his currency of negotiation. Either way, by pushing India further away, he has weakened the US position in the Indian Ocean region. The reciprocity he sought through trade wars is expanding into strategic affairs and creating frictions.

For its part, India is resituating itself globally. On energy, it continues to work with Russia. If Trump reaches a deal with Putin, it will be good for India, as the secondary tariffs will become meaningless and negotiations will happen only around base tariffs. Otherwise, the excess tariffs will remain, but India will not oblige by buying more American oil. Either way, India is unlikely to give up on the Russia relationship that has been trustworthy across several decades. With China, military tensions are easing—there is still a long way to go for complete disengagement, de-escalation and de-induction,^[58] but kinetic clashes are ending—direct flights have begun and trade is continuing. On the other side, Trump is also bringing Russia and China closer, a move that will create new challenges for the US.^[59] From India’s side, both Washington DC, and Moscow-Beijing provide strategic options to New Delhi. Finally, the Trump administration is negotiating a tonality shift of cooperation with Beijing^[60] by using words of reconciliation, and once again displaying an inexplicable rift between what it says and does.

Further, India has already signed free trade agreements (FTAs) most recently with the UK, Oman, and New Zealand in 2025; and concluded the negotiations with the European Union in 2026.^[61] Another 50 FTAs, including with the US, are being negotiated at the time of writing this article.^[62] Above all, India’s strong GDP growth is continuing. If Trump persists, India will embrace other options, and his grand strategy will lose a crucial plank. These agreements are not merely economic; they are also strategic, encompassing connectivity initiatives such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.^[63]

Given the dynamic geopolitical landscape and strategic crossfires, the probability of the India-US relationship seeing repair is high. From trade and defence to technology, visas, investments, and markets, the world’s two largest democracies may clash, converge, or drift apart periodically. Yet a strategic divorce remains unlikely—not because of shared values, but because both rest on deeply interwoven interests of power, people, and prosperity.

The two need to shift the gaze towards a strategic-economic embrace. Whether that will happen during Trump’s second term or later will remain an evolving question till January 2029. In all these negotiations, unless India crafts and articulates its own national goals and finds the instruments and resources to fulfil them through its own grand strategy,^[64] it will pendulate in the crossfire of great-power politics.

Gautam Chikermane is Vice President, ORF.

All views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author, and do not represent the Observer Research Foundation, either in its entirety or its officials and personnel.

Annexure

Annex 1: Core Focus of NSS 2025

1. America First. NSS 2025 marks a clear shift from global domination and overextension to a quieter pragmatism simultaneously serving and driving core national interests. It prioritises survival and safety, sovereignty and border security, and domestic prosperity over transnational ideologies.
2. Burden-Sharing. Under the threat of an Atlas Shrugged moment, when the Atlas of the US props up the world order, NSS 2025 coerces its allies to contribute 5 percent of GDP to defence spending through the Hague Commitment^[65] for the 31 non-US members of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) countries and a similar model for other protectorates.
3. Rejection of Interventionism. The NSS 2025 sets a high bar for military action, favouring non-interventionism and deal-making (such as through tariffs or by expanding the Abraham Accords) to end “forever wars” and stabilise regions through partnerships. Venezuela is a loud exception.
4. Economic Security as National Security. The document stresses rebalancing trade; securing self-sufficient supply chains (mirroring Swadeshi 2.0 in India),^[66] reindustrialising critical sectors; reviving defence-industrial base, achieving energy dominance by embracing oil, gas, coal, and nuclear and rejecting net zero policies); and protecting the dollar’s reserve currency status.
5. Countering Adversarial Dominance. It seeks out a balance of power to prevent any single adversary from dominating regions through military deterrence, alliance strengthening, and exposure of hidden influence costs, with particular focus on the oil and gas in West Asia as well as its shipping chokepoints.
6. Technological and Innovation Leadership. It hopes to lead global standards setting for industries of tomorrow such as AI, biotechnology, and quantum computing, while protecting intellectual property and investing in domestic science, while strengthening protections against competitors. It mentions “economic preeminence” to prevent large-scale military conflicts.
7. Realistic Diplomacy and Alliances. NSS 2025 aims to realign partnerships in Europe and the Indo-Pacific through fair trade, open markets, and mutual benefits.
8. Competence and Merit. Since it has been merit and competence that has brought America to where it is, NSS 2025 powers it further. Radical ideologies that seek to replace competence and merit with favoured group status would render America unrecognisable and unable to defend itself. But the pursuit of merit should not mean opening up the US labour markets to find global talent while undercutting domestic workers.

Annex 2: India in NSS 2025

1. Strengthen the Quad. The US commits to deepening the Quad partnership with India, Japan, and Australia to secure Indo-Pacific sea lanes, deter Chinese aggression in the region, and balance power in the First Island Chain, an arc of islands spanning Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
2. Burden-Sharing Incentives. As a Quad member, the US seeks India’s contribution to safeguarding security in the Indo-Pacific region and preventing domination by any single “competitor nation”—the paragraph does not mention China.
3. Sees partnership of economic power with India. NSS 2025 puts India in the group of US ‘partners’ as part of a US$35 trillion GDP conglomerate, which, when added to the US GDP constitutes more than half the global GDP. This group must not become subordinate to any competing power, the document states.
4. Strategic cooperation with Africa. In the African continent, the NSS 2025 hopes to “enlist” India, along with other allies, to strengthen joint positions around critical minerals. These coalitions of cooperation can merge into “strategic alignment”. Likewise, the Persian Gulf is another common geography of interest, not merely energy but expanded into artificial intelligence.
5. End of mass migration. The strategy argues for the end of mass migration and notes that border security is the “primary element” of national security, including threats such as terrorism, drugs, espionage, and human trafficking. All of these apply to India’s borders too and reflect India’s concerns and common cause.

Annex 3: Important References in NSS 2025

Endnotes

• Economics and Finance
• International Trade and Investment
• India
• USA and Canada
• india us engagement
• india us relations
• india us ties
• trump policy on india
• trump tariff on india
• us india policy
• us india trade

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