NEW DELHI: For the US foreign policy and national security departments, the Indo-Pacific had clearly emerged as the region of priority to counteract China’s coercive and unilateral activities, and the first Trump administration, had in fact, played a critical role to put IndoPacific at the forefront of US grand strategy, renaming the Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command and reviving the Quad after a decade of slumber.
Like many foreign policy continuities, the Indo-Pacific region sustained its priority in the Biden presidency, and the Quad seemed to grow in strength despite many doubters questioning the alignment among the four democracies. Then, what has transpired in Trump’s second term that the IndoPacific seems relegated to being a background score in Trump’s new orchestra?
Has the Indo-Pacific become a casualty to Trump’s second iteration of “America First” policy that, among other things, has gone militant on correcting trade imbalances and puts premium on throwing allies and strategic partners off balance?
Are allies and partners investing in a “free, open and rules based” Indo-Pacific while the US is pulling the plug from the region? The Indo-Pacific region is not a cartographic reality but a geopolitical construct, one that was born out of convergent threat perceptions leading to habits of cooperation among like-minded partners.
The transition from AsiaPacific to the Indo-Pacific infused a new primacy of the maritime expanse that had become a zone of both cooperation and competition. While China’s assertive rise and its coercive activities became the glue stitching together multilateral, minilateral and bilateral mechanisms gradually building the Indo-Pacific architecture, major stakeholders projected a cooperative behaviour that did not circle just around China.
Nevertheless, Beijing continued to detest the Indo-Pacific terminology and projected it as nothing but the persistence of Washington’s Cold War mentality. At the same time, the last US national security strategy coming out from the Biden administration envisioned a world that had gone past the post-cold war era and had entered a new era of major power competition, where only China had the intention and capability to challenge US primacy.
The Biden administration pushed ahead an “integrated deterrence” aimed at combining capabilities across the spectrum and in concert with like-minded partners in the region. When Trump’s Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth toured Indo-Pacific and also later on, spoke at the Shangri La Dialogue, the premier forum for IndoPacific affairs, he doubled down on “re-establishing deterrence” signalling that previous attempts at deterring China had failed, and that it was Trump’s presidency that would, in true sense, take the necessary decisions, even if unpopular, to counteract China’s unilateral activities.
This includes prodding partner countries in Northeast and Southeast Asia to increase defence spending on their own. After European countries announced that they would increase their defence spending to 5% in the next decade, the expectations from Asian allies and partners will grow to match the European model.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also landed in Kuala Lumpur, for a series of meetings with ASEAN members, but his calls for stronger ASEAN-US ties stood in bizarre contradiction to the signals emitted from the White House, with most Southeast Asian partners still struggling to deal with Trump’s mercurial tariffs. Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs on partner countries in the Indo-Pacific have put them on tenterhooks, while Washington and Beijing despite the tit-fortat trade war also emits signals of a trade truce.
Many ASEAN countries stand utterly confused of Washington’s approach. The same countries that were benefiting out of the diversification drive, “friendshoring” and China+1 strategies are now at the receiving end of Trump’s tariff salvos. There is utter chaos and confusion around Washington’s terms of engagements with partner countries in the region.
At the core of US Indo-Pacific strategy, apart from force projection and US-China bilateral dynamics, lies the network of allies and partners, some that have endured since the end of World War II through the Cold War to current times, and some that are relatively new but robustly developing in recent times. Perhaps ranking high as a strategic partner for the Indo-Pacific region through successive presidencies including Trump’s first term itself, is the case of India.
However, Trump’s public name calling and imposition of skyrocketing tariffs on India have caught supporters of the India-US relationship in both Washington and Delhi by surprise. Although Trump’s mercurial temperament and his logic defying decisions were known to all, his style of personal diplomacy was largely perceived as one that suited Prime Minister Modi’s own style of leveraging personal rapport for strategic bilateral gains.
In fact, Prime Minister Modi paid a very early visit to Washington in February and was one of the first foreign leaders to be warmly received in the White House, producing a positive joint statement with continuity and new initiatives. Moreover, right after Trump’s inauguration for the second term in January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened a Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting reaffirming the salience and centrality of the IndoPacific in US foreign policy priorities. In fact, it will not be too off the mark to say that the positive arc of India-US partnership was one of the brightest spots of Trump’s tumultuous first term in the White House.
While relations with many allies and partners tanked, Washington and Delhi seemed to be riding the right wave despite minor economic hurdles. But just eight months into his second term, Trump has slapped skyrocketing tariffs on India, berated India of buying Russian oil and weapons, even as Trump’s interlocutors were shuttling around, to put together the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska. Trump in his second term, has also opened another Pandora’s box and an Achilles heel in India-US ties, that of a growing embrace between the White House and Pakistan’s military leadership.
Simultaneously, a new shake up in the Indo-Pacific is underway, wherein the outreach between Moscow and Delhi, and more consequently, between Delhi and Beijing gets underway with high level visits among the foreign policy and national security teams. While the structural constraints in the regional security complex, plus China’s claims on India’s sovereign territory will circumscribe any long-term breakthrough in the relationship, the churn in major power relations cannot be underestimated and Trump’s imprints on the rapidly changing dynamics is unmistakable.
The India-US partnership, despite many layers of institutional partnerships and a growing whole of nation approach to building ties, is undergoing a kind of stress test that introduces unpredictability and uncertainty at the highest level of decisionmaking and not just on the “nuts and bolts” level of bureaucratic wrangling.
The leadership chemistry and rapport, that understood the strategic rationale of the relationship vis-à-vis the Indo-Pacific region, took the positive arc ahead, despite temporary and persistent hurdles. The new low in India-US partnership might be one of the biggest challenges, that might run the risk of the “Indo” in Indo-Pacific fast losing its tempo and energy, and that will be a major setback in the quest for a “free, open, inclusive and rules based” Indo-Pacific.
Monish Tourangbam is a Senior Research Consultant at the Chintan Research Foundation (CRF), New Delhi
