Editor’s Note: In June 2026, India’s World published an essay by its Editor, Happymon Jacob, arguing that India’s grand strategy should be “de-Americanised”. The essay contended that New Delhi has increasingly viewed the world through a strategic framework shaped by Washington and that changing geopolitical realities call for a reassessment of those assumptions. To broaden the discussion, India’s World invited five distinguished scholars and practitioners to engage with Jacob’s central argument. Published over the past several weeks, these essays have brought different perspectives to the debate over the direction of India’s grand strategy. In this fifth and final contribution, Chen Zhuo offers a Chinese perspective on the debate, examining what “de-Americanisation” could mean for India and arguing that New Delhi needs to reassess the extent to which its strategic outlook has become shaped by Washington and place greater emphasis on building its own economic, technological and strategic capabilities.
The recent debate in India over “de-Americanisation” has an immediate cause: since Donald Trump returned to office, years of American courtship have given way to pressure and extraction. The Modi government has tried to placate Trump, only to face growing demands and blunt ridicule. Many Indian commentators conclude that the United States is no longer reliable, or that Trump is excessively transactional. The deeper question is why a country that has long championed strategic autonomy now feels so vulnerable to a change in Washington’s attitude.
My central argument is that some Indian policy elites mistook the status conferred by American courtship for a rise in India’s own power. Washington gave India greater visibility while drawing it into a strategic role defined by the US. India’s current anxiety can only be understood by recognising the price attached to that status.
The American Price
Washington wanted a stronger India, but only strong enough to serve American strategy. It called India a democratic partner and a pivotal power in the Indo-Pacific. Under President Joe Biden, it also promoted India as a leader of the Global South. These flattering labels served a clear purpose. Washington wanted India to make the containment of China appear less like an American project and more like an international order chosen by developing countries.
India’s mistake was to treat this elevation as the product of its own growing capabilities. Washington encouraged India to claim leadership because it needed help in rallying developing countries. India gained prestige but was pushed into a role it could not easily fulfil. Many of these countries compete with India for the same industrial relocation and development opportunities. India can share its experience, but cannot naturally speak for their common economic interests.
India’s close relationship with Israel creates another difficulty. That relationship serves India’s security and technological interests, but is also connected to US-led security arrangements. Many developing countries hold firm positions on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The more India presents itself as the leader of the Global South, the harder it becomes to reconcile that claim with its ties to Israel. Status bestowed from outside can leave a country exposed when real choices have to be made.
This is the price of the status Washington gave India. When the US needed India, it pushed the country into a more prominent position. As American pressures mounted at home and abroad, that prominence became the basis for concrete demands. Trump has merely made the bargain explicit. He extracts concessions through pressure and no longer bothers to protect India’s self-perception as a major power.
The Autonomy Test
India’s strategic autonomy faced its real test when Washington stopped tolerating its version of autonomy and began demanding direct returns. In earlier years, American indulgence allowed India to enjoy exceptions that looked like strategic freedom. Now Washington has combined pressure over trade, energy, and security to demand greater purchases of American energy and weapons, higher levels of Indian investment in the US, and Indian acceptance of costs created by American strategic failures, including the energy shock caused by the US-Israel war with Iran. A country’s autonomy cannot be judged only by how it explains its choices in normal times. The real test is whether it can continue to act in its own interests under pressure, and whether it has the resolve to bear the consequences.
Russian oil offers the clearest example. India once portrayed its purchases of Russian crude as proof that national interests came first and that ties with Moscow embodied strategic autonomy. Yet after the Trump administration imposed punitive pressure over Russian oil in August 2025, India sharply curtailed its purchases. When the war with Iran drove up oil prices and Washington itself needed more supply on the global market, it temporarily allowed India to buy some Russian oil again. India’s policy appeared autonomous, but it was ultimately reshaped by American pressure and American needs.
Status bestowed from outside can leave a country exposed when real choices have to be made
China exposes a deeper contradiction in Indian strategic thinking. India has a genuine border dispute with China and serious security concerns. Yet it has increasingly adopted the language of America’s global competition with China and folded that language into its own strategic narrative. The economic relationship is different. China has become an indispensable external condition for India’s industrialisation. Indian manufacturers rely heavily on Chinese intermediate goods, machinery, and critical inputs. Without them, much of India’s export production for Europe and the US would not exist.
China’s export controls on rare-earth materials and magnets were aimed at the US, but they quickly disrupted India’s electric vehicle plans and forced Indian firms to accelerate tests of alternative motors. India can call this a risk, but the episode also reveals its actual position in global value chains. The US has supplied India with flattering strategic labels and heightened anxiety about China. China’s industrial system supplies many of the things Indian manufacturing actually needs.
India has joined the US in seeking to reduce economic dependence on China in the name of “de-risking”. But the two countries differ greatly in their ability to find alternatives to Chinese supply chains. India can reduce risk by building its own industrial capabilities. If those capabilities do not yet exist, adopting America’s timetable for decoupling will impose excessive costs. China continued to deepen its integration with US supply chains even after becoming the world’s second-largest economy in 2010. It also ran trade deficits with Japan and South Korea for more than four decades, turning to a trade surplus only in the past three years. Beijing did not treat that integration as a humiliation. It saw it as serving China’s development.
Indian strategists have long discussed the obvious path to greater national power: domestic reform and stronger manufacturing, defence, and technological capabilities. There is no shortage of proposals. The real obstacle is political. A generation of politicians and officials has benefited from the pro-American course and tied its interests to the narrative that sustained it. De-Americanising Indian strategy will test whether India is willing to admit that the old approach has failed, and whether it has the political determination to genuinely change course.
