Marco Rubio Goes to India in Repair Mode

(Sadanand Dhume – Council on Foreign Relations) What a difference a year can make. In April 2025, U.S.-India relations appeared as solid as they had ever been. India had rolled out the red carpet for Vice President JD Vance and his family, a visit that highlighted not just the strength of the bilateral relationship, but also a degree of personal warmth that characterized early interactions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the second Trump administration. Before Vance’s trip to India, Modi had visited President Donald Trump in the White House in February, only the second Asian leader to do so in the president’s second term after Japan’s former Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru. With his characteristic love of slogans, Modi declared that MAGA (Make America Great Again) and MIGA (Make India Great Again) would together result in a “mega partnership for prosperity”. At the time, Indian optimism about ties with the United States appeared justified. Since the turn of the century, Washington and New Delhi had drawn closer to each other both rhetorically and substantively. In India, unlike in several traditional U.S. allies, government officials and pundits alike had welcomed Trump’s election in 2024. They looked forward to an administration staffed by China hawks such as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. They recalled Trump’s skepticism toward Pakistan during his first term, when he publicly blasted the Islamic Republic for having given the United States “nothing but lies & deceit.” They believed a potential U.S. thaw with Russia would ease pressure on India’s traditionally close ties with Moscow. They were confident that the new administration would care much less than its predecessor about human rights, press freedom, and democratic backsliding. (They were right about the last one). Fast forward to this week. When Rubio visits May 23–26, he will find an Indian foreign policy establishment and commentariat more wary of the United States than at any other time this century. – Marco Rubio Goes to India in Repair Mode | Council on Foreign Relations