What has become crystal clear to India is that the United States, regardless of who occupies the White House, remains fundamentally unreliable when it comes to India’s core interests.
In his address to the nation on 12 May 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated a decisive shift in India’s approach to national security. This shift has been building since the surgical strikes in 2016 but was unmistakably demonstrated through Operation Sindoor—targeted military action against nine terror sites in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan, and the action that followed. This operation was India’s calibrated response to the horrific Islamist terror attack in Pahalgam, where 26 people were killed after religious profiling.
PM Narendra Modi has made it crystal clear: any terror attack on Indian soil will be met with a befitting retaliation, carried out on India’s own terms by striking at the very roots of terrorism wherever they may be. He rejected nuclear blackmail as a shield for terror infrastructure. Most importantly, he asserted that no distinction will be made between state sponsors of terrorism and terrorist masterminds— thereby, hyphenating Pakistan with its terror proxies, and indicating that India will no longer play the dossier game. Citing the presence of senior Pakistani military officers at the funerals of terrorists, he emphasised what India and the world already knows—Pakistan uses terrorism as a tool of statecraft. He reiterated his government’s stance that talks with Pakistan will only be on terrorism and Pakistanoccupied Kashmir. He concluded with an unambiguous message that terror and talks, terror and trade, and blood and water cannot go together. This signalled to the world, particularly the United States, that India’s zero-tolerance policy demands global accountability and a reevaluation of indulgence towards Pakistan.
END OF STRATEGIC RESTRAINT
From the 2001 Parliament attack to 26/11, and from Pathankot to Pahalgam, the world offered statements of condolences. However, it never demanded accountability, let alone enforced severe costs on Pakistan for its state policy of bleeding India through a thousand cuts. Pakistan’s terror infrastructure bloomed and its military intelligence apparatus emboldened due to this global failure. The United States, in particular, continued to fund, militarily equip and diplomatically indulge the Pakistani deep state that was repressing its own people, had the blood of innocent Indians on its hands, and was also playing a duplicitous game with the US in its war on terror. This time, India has made it clear that its tolerance has limits, and those limits have long been crossed.
NO MORE FALSE EQUIVALENCE
For years, India has tried to achieve bilateral peace, only to be betrayed by Pakistan. For years, India has played by the international rulebook, presenting dossiers and evidence of Pakistan’s sponsorship of terror attacks and the presence of anti-India terror infrastructure on Pakistan’s soil. In response, the global community offered little else than sympathy. While many countries now recognise India’s right to defend against terror attacks, the post-strike template remains the same: a flurry of diplomatic activity, calls for restraint or de-escalation, and appeals for peace. This response is tone-deaf, and to be bluntly put, offending. India and Pakistan are not the same. One is a democracy; the other, an integrated terror hub run by a rogue deep state. One sends out humanitarian assistance and vaccines; the other exports terrorism. One is a top economy and a huge market; the other, a failing state dependent on loans that it uses to benefit its rulers and proxies, not its people.
PM Modi’s speech asserted that India will no longer allow outdated geopolitical balancing or arm-twisting when it comes to Pakistan, and it rejected the false distinctions between Pakistan’s terror-military complex. Operation Sindoor, in that sense, was India’s reply to decades of diplomatic or narrative gaslighting. And hopefully, in that sense, it will continue until India reaches a point, where it communicates to the world to choose between a democracy that is striving for global good, and a state that thrives on terror.
WASHINGTON’S LONG BETRAYAL
Since the 1971 India-Pakistan war, when the US deployed the Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal to rattle India and support a genocidal military regime in Pakistan that facilitated dialogue with China, to the post-9/11 decade when billions were funnelled to Islamabad despite evidence of Pakistan sponsoring cross-border terrorism against India, America has consistently prioritised its interests over principles. While India developed itself, the US continued to underwrite instability and terror in its neighbourhood. As India mourned the victims of Pakistan sponsored terror attacks, the US supplied F-16s to Pakistan under the guise of counterterrorism. During the Biden administration, Washington sought to portray India as a rogue nation, attempted to interfere in its elections through USAID, and undermined India’s strategic interests in Afghanistan and Bangladesh. President Donald Trump arrived promising a departure from past policies. His dismantling of USAID and his stance on non-intervention raised hopes that India-US relations might improve. However, rather than a course correction, Trump embodied many of the past American mistakes towards India. In recent days, his problematic approach extended beyond his undignified behaviour and his tariff threats. After initially supporting India’s right to selfdefence, he soon resorted to reckless rhetoric.
On 7 May, he flippantly remarked, “they’ve gone tit-for-tat, so hopefully they can stop now.” When India agreed to a temporary operational pause following a request from Pakistan, Trump rushed to claim credit for a ceasefire, before any official Indian statement. In the following days, he repeatedly took credit, boasted that his mediation and trade threats had succeeded, and claimed he had averted nuclear war—all of which were categorically rejected by India. While Trump’s penchant for self-aggrandisement is well known, it was compounded by US Secretary of State and acting National Security Adviser Marco Rubio’s social media post that crossed Indian red lines on Kashmir and dialogue with Pakistan. The credit seeking continued with the White House Press Secretary sharing a wildly fictional anecdote about a Kashmiri waiter in Doha thanking Trump for the ceasefire.
After Indian pushback, Trump somewhat softened his statements but resorted to expressing displeasure at Apple’s investment in India; not exactly a friendly move, especially while India had an uneasy operational pause at its border. As a sidebar, if Trump believes India is abusing tariffs, he may consider it as America paying up for the Indian lives and resources lost due to the US mistakes in 1971, in 1984 Bhopal, and every decade it chose to fund Pakistan while ignoring the consequences for India. What has become crystal clear to India is that the United States, regardless of who occupies the White House, remains fundamentally unreliable when it comes to India’s core interests. What should become crystal clear to Americans is that India has survived and thrived not because of the US, but despite it. India owes nothing to the superpower, and its desire to have mutually beneficial strategic ties should not be read as a weakness. India is the only nation in the world that has consistently defended itself against two hostile nuclear powers—both strong allies of each other—while simultaneously enduring the DC double game.
If Trump believes that such a nation can be threatened into signing off on anything, that too by the US that has historically enabled its suffering, he needs to relearn the art of dealmaking. The only thing Trump has managed to achieve with his disrespectful approach to India is drawing as much public ire as the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff at a time of heightened Indo-Pakistani tension—a feat neither Xi Jinping nor Recep Erdogan has managed, despite their open support for Islamabad.
INDIA’S SOVEREIGN TERMS
India has put forth its nonnegotiables: that there will be no distinctions between the state and its terror proxies and that every act of terror will be considered an act of war against India. This would naturally lead to nations that support Pakistan being viewed as untrustworthy, if not outright hostile. Turkish companies are facing consequences for supplying drones and drone pilots to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. Even if the government were not to act, voluntary boycotts of Turkey and its products had already begun. The Indian public may initiate boycotts of American products or compel a reassessment of allowing American companies like Starlink to operate in critical sectors if the US continues to prove unreliable, untrustworthy, and inimical to Indian interests. As the world recalibrates its understanding of India, it must do so on India’s terms—not as a counterbalance in a strategic theatre, but as a sovereign power with formidable economic and military strength; a nation with a proven record as a reliable partner to friendly countries, and home to onesixth of humanity.
Semu Bhatt is a strategic adviser, author, and founder of FuturisIndia