WASHINGTON, May 21 — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio heads to India this weekend doing something he has not done yet — a multi-city tour of a country where he will seek to build ties beyond government meetings in the capital.
But in the backdrop to Rubio’s visit lies a question — how does India, long courted by the United States, figure in the norms-shattering and highly personalised worldview of President Donald Trump?
Since the late 1990s, US presidents across party lines have put a top priority on wooing India, overlooking disagreements out of a conviction, believed firmly if stated discreetly, that the world’s largest democracy would serve as an ideal counterweight to a rising China.
Trump has shifted that playbook, hailing the reception he received last week on a state visit to China, despite limited tangible outcomes, and previously slapping punitive tariffs on India.
Rubio’s deputy, Christopher Landau, even in March said that China was a lesson not to make “the same mistakes with India” by letting another country best the United States commercially.
Pakistan, India’s historic adversary, has also re-emerged into the calculation, decades after the United States unceremoniously pulled back from a partnership with Islamabad for the sake of ties with India.
Pakistani leaders have ceaselessly flattered Trump and credited his diplomacy with ending a brief war last year with India and, returning to their Cold War role as a US wingman, have led mediation on the Iran war, leading to a visit last month by Vice President JD Vance.
When the Trump administration released a national security strategy, there was barely a mention of India, with the focus on promoting US primacy in Latin America and battling Europeans on cultural issues.
India-US relations have still been growing, with trade and military purchases expanding, said Aparna Pande, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
“But the strategic dimension is lacking,” she said. “All the points of friction from the Cold War are back again.”
“The strategic aspect which ensured that these stress points were never allowed to damage the relationship is no longer there.”
Extensive visit
Rubio, whose travels as the top US diplomat have been swift and business-like, will visit four Indian cities starting Saturday and attend a gala reception in New Delhi for the 250th anniversary of US independence.
Rubio will visit Kolkata, home to Mother Teresa and one of the oldest US consulates, as well as the world-iconic Taj Mahal in Agra and palace-filled Jaipur.
Rubio will also meet in New Delhi with counterparts from the Quad — Australia, India and Japan — a grouping that China has long viewed as a way to encircle it.
Driving Rubio’s extensive trip has been the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, who wields unusually high influence owing to his earlier job in charge of stacking the second Trump administration with loyalists.
Gor on arriving in New Delhi in January quickly engineered a trade deal that eased Trump’s tariffs. The 39-year-old has been at Rubio’s side even on trips with no direct India connection, including flying to Rome to meet Pope Leo XIV earlier this month.
Trump had initially formed a close bond with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who thrilled Trump in his first term by inviting him to address a huge rally at a cricket stadium.
Both leaders are right-wing populists who rose to power championing grievances of their country’s majority communities against minorities.
But Modi annoyed Trump by playing down his role mediating with Pakistan in last year’s war, launched after a massacre of mostly Hindu civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan, by contrast, said Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said India has been careful not to engage in a tit-for-tat with Trump, including over tariffs, believing its long-term interests were served by strong US ties.
“The India-US relationship had benefited from competition with China being almost an organising principle” for US foreign policy in Trump’s first term and under Joe Biden, she said.
On Rubio’s visit, she said, “I think India will want a better sense of how much that strategic convergence that had persisted for several years is going to continue to drive this relationship.” — AFP
