“India and USA have become such strong strategic partners that they need not become formal allies.” Comment. (2024, 15 Marks)
The Cold War pair that Dennis Kux called “estranged democracies” now share logistics, encrypted communications and geospatial data, yet owe each other nothing in a crisis. Narendra Modi told the US Congress in June 2016 that the two had overcome the “hesitations of history”. The statement treats this alignment without alliance as a finished design, not an unfinished alliance; the evidence largely supports it.
How strong the partnership is
- Converging interests: both want an Indo-Pacific balance of power that checks China; Washington wants an Asian counterweight without a US guarantee, India external weight on its northern frontier. The Quad gives this diplomatic form.
- Defence machinery: Major Defence Partner status (2016), STA-1 (2018) and all four foundational agreements (GSOMIA 2002, LEMOA 2016, COMCASA 2018, BECA 2020), plus the Security of Supply Arrangement (2024). Rajnath Singh and Pete Hegseth signed a ten-year Framework for the US–India Major Defence Partnership at Kuala Lumpur on 31 October 2025; a Javelin missile deal followed on 28 August 2026.
- Economy and people: goods trade of about $149 billion in 2025 (US data), the TRUST technology initiative and a diaspora of about 5.4 million.
- S. Jaishankar (Washington, September 2023): the two once dealt with each other and now work with each other.
Why a formal alliance is unnecessary
Stephen M. Walt’s The Origins of Alliances (1987) explains the alignment as balancing against threat; Glenn H. Snyder’s alliance security dilemma (1984) explains why it stops short. An ally that fears abandonment pays for protection with the risk of entrapment.
| Formal alliance | Strategic partnership | |
|---|---|---|
| Commitment | Treaty guarantee | Issue-based, no guarantee |
| Autonomy | Bloc discipline | Russia, Iran, BRICS, SCO ties kept |
| Main risk | Entrapment (a Taiwan war) | Abandonment |
- Autonomy: C. Raja Mohan cast India in 2006 as the potential swing state in the global balance of power, a role an alliance would forfeit.
- For Washington too: Ashley J. Tellis (2025) describes US policy since George W. Bush as “strategic altruism”, building Indian power without expecting specific reciprocity. An autonomous India balances China without claiming guarantees.
The limits of the claim
- Tellis’s America’s Bad Bet on India (2023) warns that New Delhi will not side with Washington against Beijing in a war.
- Abandonment risk is real: the 50% tariff of August 2025, cut to 18% only in February 2026, and the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act (18 September 2026), which authorises tariffs of up to 100% on buyers of Russian energy. Jaishankar has since faulted Washington’s lack of empathy on cross-border terrorism, and Sumit Ganguly argues that a trade deal cannot restore lost trust.
- Untested: in Ladakh in 2020 US help meant intelligence and winter equipment, not commitment.
Conclusion
The statement holds. The partnership delivers interoperability without obligation: everything an alliance offers except a guarantee neither side wants to give. That the defence framework was signed during the tariff war, and that Modi and Donald Trump reviewed trade and defence by phone on 30 September 2026, shows the convergence is structural. The scarce resource is trust, not a treaty.