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Topic: Diplomacy, Terrorism, and Trade Blog Brand: Silk Road Rivalries Region: Asia Tags: Bangladesh, China, Donald Trump, India, Pakistan, South Asia, Tariffs, and United States Why India Faces a Tough 2026 December 30, 2025 By: Mohammed Ayoob
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India has found itself critically exposed to China and Pakistan, without reliable support from either the United States or Russia.
It is said that when it rains, it pours. This aphorism fits India’s current foreign policy predicaments like a glove. Not since the Bangladesh crisis and war of 1971 has the Indian foreign policy establishment faced such a cumulation of challenges as it does now.
The Chinese threat to India’s national security continues unabated despite the current softening of rhetoric on both sides, thanks to the uncertainties introduced into their respective relationships with the US by President Trump’s unpredictable foreign policy. Despite temporary restraints at the rhetorical level, China remains the primary threat to India’s territorial integrity in both the northwest and the northeast, and to its aspirations to become a major power in Asia and beyond.
Discerning observers both within and outside the government have long recognized this fact. However, in order not to aggravate tensions with its militarily and economically stronger neighbor, the Indian rhetoric of threat perception has focused primarily on its smaller and weaker neighbor, Pakistan.
Several factors have contributed to this diversionary tactic.
First, the continuing Pakistani irredentism and support for terrorism in Kashmir capture media headlines, making it appear a larger threat than it is.
Second, visceral antagonism toward Pakistan, going back to the partition of British India in 1947, has created the perception in India that Pakistan is the “natural” enemy of the country.
Third, it is far more convenient for the government to flex its rhetorical muscles against Pakistan, since it can occasionally follow up with military action that boosts its domestic popularity. Highlighting the threat from a more assertive China without an adequate military response exposes the government’s weakness and undermines its credibility and legitimacy.
Fourth, China is India’s leading trade partner, with a trade deficit of nearly $100 billion during the 2024–5 fiscal year. Electronics, machinery, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals account for the bulk of imports. Cutting off, or even reducing, trade with China is bound to roil large segments of the growing Indian middle class, which has become accustomed to cheap Chinese products. This would create serious rifts in the political coalition of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
By contrast, India’s trade with Pakistan is negligible and much of it clandestine in the form of smuggled goods across the porous border. Official Indian trade statistics show $558 million in trade for FY 2024–5, with imports from Pakistan accounting for a minuscule share. With trade between the two countries officially limited since the Pahalgam terrorist attack in April, the Indian consumer has hardly noticed.
India’s proclaimed policy of multi-alignment, caught between the unpredictability of American policy and the reality of the Chinese threat, is under severe strain. This is not due to any missteps by New Delhi, but to President Donald Trump’s decision to retrench from strategic issues that do not bring immediate rewards for Washington. Transactional strategies have replaced policies of global involvement and long-term strategic planning. Also, the Trump administration’s softening stance on China has deprived New Delhi of the reassurance that Washington may come to its aid if relations with Beijing deteriorate to the point of open confrontation.
The American decision to impose 50 percent tariffs on Indian imports for the country’s purchases of Russian oil was not just an economic blow for New Delhi; it was a wake-up call that America’s rules of engagement with India had changed, and its value as a potential strategic counterweight to China no longer counted for much with Washington. This was driven home further when the Trump administration dramatically reduced tariffs imposed on China and suspended new export controls and port fees on Chinese goods.
This has left India in a double bind. It has immeasurably weakened its hand in its dealings with China and forced it to adopt a far more conciliatory policy toward Beijing at the strategic level than it would have liked. It has also forced it to publicly emphasize the positive aspects of its relationship with Russia to demonstrate to its domestic constituency that it was not totally beholden to the United States. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to New Delhi and the warm reception he received underscore this fact and convey to Washington and the domestic public that India has other options.
At the same time that the United States is sending signals that its policy has become transactional rather than based on long-term considerations, India’s policy of multi-alignment has left it open to criticism from the United States that it is abandoning any hope of a “special relationship” and, therefore, does not deserve to be treated as a potential ally or strategic asset. India is, therefore, caught between a rock and a hard place.
As if these problems at the global level were not enough, of late, India’s regional environment has also become more hostile than it has been for decades. India’s smaller neighbors, with the exception of Pakistan, had, by and large, been willing to accord India the respect it thought it deserved for its size, population, and economic heft. Beginning with the 1971 war that led to the liberation of Bangladesh from the Pakistani yoke, India has repeatedly acted as the security provider for its smaller neighbors, particularly Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Bhutan had been a virtual Indian protectorate, and landlocked Nepal, too, was economically dependent on India, making it too weak to pose a political challenge, even though, periodically, strains in their unequal relationship hit the headlines.
New Delhi perceived Bangladesh as a loyal friend. Under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party, Bangladesh cooperated with India to crack down on anti-India insurgents seeking refuge in that country, helped resolve connectivity issues between the Indian northeast and the rest of India, and, overall, expanded defense and counter-terror cooperation. The Awami League’s crackdown on Islamist extremists and its generally secular orientation also suited Indian preferences.
Pakistan has always been an exception to the rule that neighbors defer to India. The main objective of Pakistan’s foreign policy has long remained military and diplomatic parity with India. Since Islamabad could not achieve this on its own due to India’s advantages in size, population, and resources, it has relied on foreign powers, especially the United States and China. Its capacity to do so from the United States has varied depending upon Washington’s strategic calculations about the region.
The United States’ increasingly warm relations with India during the past two decades have led to a depletion of Pakistan’s leverage with American decision-makers. However, the second Trump administration has reversed this trend with the president himself emphasizing the importance of Pakistan in American foreign policy and publicly praising Asim Munir, Pakistan’s defense chief, who is the real power behind the throne in his country.
This has upset Indian calculations about America’s role in any future conflict with Pakistan. Based on past experience, New Delhi expected Washington to put pressure on Islamabad to desist from escalating any conflict with India. But now, with the convergence of American and Chinese support for Pakistan, India is worried that it could be a rerun of the 1971 movie when both Beijing and Washington supported Pakistan in its confrontation with India over the liberation of Bangladesh. India successfully met the joint threat because it had the Soviet Union’s support. This factor is missing today because Russia is China’s junior partner in Asia and mired in a bloody war in Ukraine.
If China and Pakistan are long-term threats to Indian security, the most immediate challenge comes from recent events in Bangladesh, long considered India’s firm ally in South Asia. The ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last year, following a youth-led popular revolt, and her flight to New Delhi and asylum in India have upended these calculations. India’s support to the increasingly authoritarian and unpopular Awami League government during its time in power and its decision to give Hasina refuge have not only become impediments to developing friendly relations with Dhaka, but they have also led to the outpouring of unprecedented anti-Indian sentiments in Bangladesh.
The Islamist parties, such as the Jamaat-i-Islami, which have always harbored pro-Pakistan sentiments, have taken advantage of this situation and further fanned the flames of hostility toward India. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), founded as the opposition to the Awami League and the family of Sheikh Hasina, is likely to form the government in Dhaka after the next election in February 2026, either on its own or in coalition with anti-Indian parties such as the more explicitly Islamist Jamaat-i-Islami.
The BNP has thrived on the current wave of anti-Indian sentiment in the country. It is also more pro-Pakistan in its orientation and committed to emphasizing Bangladesh’s Islamic identity and distinctiveness from the contiguous Hindu-majority Indian state of West Bengal.
Recent events and current trends in Bangladesh are therefore a source of great concern for India, as they have derailed New Delhi’s assessment of its security environment in the eastern theater. This is especially the case because they threaten to isolate or even cut off access to its vulnerable northeastern states, which are connected to the rest of the country through the small Siliguri corridor (also known as the “chicken’s neck”), a narrow strip of land between Bangladesh and Nepal.
This Indian security concern is heightened because the post-Hasina interim government has shown a distinct bias in favor of China and against India, a tilt likely to be continued by the post-election government in Dhaka. On a recent visit to Beijing, Mohammed Yunus, the head of the interim government, invited China to use Bangladesh as its gateway to the region, noted that India’s northeastern states are landlocked, and touted Bangladesh as the “sole guardian of the ocean.”
This was interpreted in India as a proposal for a security linkage between China and Bangladesh that would isolate and encircle the vulnerable Indian northeast and potentially could cut it off from the mainland. India finds this very threatening since China has a longstanding territorial claim on the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls Southern Tibet, and refuses to recognize it as a part of India. There has also been talk of a China-Pakistan-Bangladesh security pact in some political circles in Bangladesh, which adds to Indian concerns about strategic encirclement.
Taken together, there is a convergence of global and regional factors that has created a conundrum for Indian foreign policy makers and military planners not seen since the Bangladesh War of 1971. How New Delhi comes to grips with these simultaneous and overlapping problems will define the future trajectory of Indian foreign policy and its self-perceived role as the pivotal power in South Asia and a putative great power in the international system.
About the Author: Mohammed Ayoob
Mohammed Ayoob is a university distinguished professor emeritus of international relations at Michigan State University and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy. His books include The Many Faces of Political Islam (University of Michigan Press, 2008), Will the Middle East Implode (2014), and, most recently, From Regional Security to Global IR: An Intellectual Journey (2024). He was also the editor of Assessing the War on Terror (2013).
Image: Pradeep Gaurs / Shutterstock.com.
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Источник: nationalinterest.org