America’s China lesson reshaping its India policy

Washington does not want to make the same mistake twice.
Having helped China become an economic and technological powerhouse, only to create its greatest strategic rival, Washington now appears determined to approach India’s rise differently.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau made the point during his New Delhi visit earlier this year. Landau stated bluntly that America would not make its China mistake again by allowing India to “develop all these markets” and capabilities, only to discover that India was “beating us in a lot of commercial things.”
The remarks echoed a broader reassessment in Washington of India’s rise. Two months earlier, the State Department’s five-year strategic plan made only one reference to India and declared that Washington would “seek partnership with growing regional economies such as India but on terms that advance US security and economic interests and avoid repeating past mistakes.”
For two decades, Washington saw a rising democratic India as inherently good for the free world, especially as a counterweight to an increasingly autocratic and expansionist China. A stronger India also meant a larger market for American companies and a more capable Indo-Pacific partner. India was thus given pride of place in America’s Indo-Pacific strategy, first unveiled in 2017.
Now, the administration no longer appears to view India’s rise as entirely benign. India’s role in US policy is being downgraded, especially as President Trump adopts a more conciliatory approach to China, including recognizing it as America’s principal strategic peer.
The White House’s latest National Security Strategy, unlike previous iterations, demotes India’s role by making only a passing reference to the country. 
The Pentagon’s 2026 National Defense Strategy, for its part, does not mention India at all, although New Delhi holds more annual military exercises with America than any other country. In another signal of India’s strategic downgrading, the Pentagon in June dropped the prefix “Indo” from “Indo-Pacific.”
India’s eroding salience in US policy is also weakening the Quad, America’s strategic coalition with India, Japan and Australia. Increasingly marginal to US strategy, the Quad risks strategic irrelevance. No Quad leaders’ summit has been held since 2024. 
Trump’s trade war against India derailed last year’s summit, and none has been scheduled this year. Trump’s own National Security Strategy reflects the Quad’s diminished standing, giving the grouping a single passing mention and only in relation to India.
Much of India’s strategic establishment still sees Trump merely as an aberration. 
They view his tariffs, pressure tactics and transactional approach to New Delhi as the excesses of an unusually disruptive president. Once Trump leaves office, the thinking goes, the US and India can return to the trajectory that preceded him.
But that assumption mistakes a structural shift for a presidential interlude. The deeper shift in Washington’s thinking about India began in the latter half of Joe Biden’s presidency and is likely to outlast Trump.
As India’s power grew, disagreements over trade, US policies in South Asia and New Delhi’s Ukraine-war neutrality spurred tensions. Trump has accelerated that shift and stripped away much of the diplomatic cushioning that once softened bilateral differences.