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In 2005, erstwhile I served connected the Prime Minister’s Task Force connected Global Strategic Developments chaired by K. Subrahmanyam, India and the U.S. stood astatine the threshold of a historical transformation. Washington had declared that it wished to “help India go a large satellite powerfulness successful the 21st century.” It was an bonzer statement, not simply due to the fact that of what it promised but due to the fact that of the assurance it reflected. The U.S. past inactive believed that strengthening liable rising powers would fortify the world. That content seemed to form, for many, the bedrock of the civilian atomic breakthrough and of a strategical concern built connected a shared consciousness of possibility.
The U.S.’s retreat
Reading the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) is truthful an unsettling experience. The document is saturated with self-praise. It claims to person “brought our federation — and the satellite — backmost from the brink of catastrophe and disaster” and asserts that “no medication successful past has achieved truthful melodramatic a turnaround successful truthful abbreviated a time.” But this assertiveness feels defensive. It projects a federation unsure of its spot successful a satellite it nary longer afloat comprehends, yet unwilling to concede that uncertainty adjacent to itself. The effect is simply a strategy that is little a representation for planetary enactment and much an workout successful nationalist reassurance.
The opposition with the intelligence tone of 2005 could not beryllium sharper. Then, Washington spoke the connection of partnership. Today, it speaks the connection of burdens. “The days of the United States propping up the full satellite bid similar Atlas are over,” the strategy declares. Global leadership, erstwhile embraced with ease, is present treated arsenic a outgo to beryllium minimised. The overriding imperative is not to elevate the planetary strategy but to lighten America’s load.
Editorial | Notional security: On the U.S.’s National Security Strategy
Nowhere is this displacement much stark than successful the attraction of India. Cooperation is acknowledged but is instrumental. India is framed little arsenic a civilisational histrion and much arsenic a constituent successful America’s China calculus. The NSS states that the U.S. indispensable “continue to amended commercialized (and other) relations with India to promote New Delhi to lend to Indo-Pacific security, including done continued quadrilateral practice with... ‘the Quad’.” In this framing, India is not an extremity successful itself but a means to a balance-of-power statement the U.S. seeks to preserve.
In 2005, India’s emergence was an objective; now, it is simply a function. This narrowing is portion of a broader retreat from internationalist confidence. The alleged Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, declaring an intent to “assert and enforce” hemispheric exclusivity, speaks to a federation turning inward. The irony is hard to miss. In 2005, erstwhile India spoke of strategical autonomy, galore successful Washington bristled. In 2025, erstwhile America claims an expansive and unilateral autonomy, it calls it realism.
The document’s code reinforces this inwardness. It catalogues a bid of claimed diplomatic triumphs, resolving aggregate planetary conflicts “from Cambodia and Thailand” to “Pakistan and India”. These work little similar diplomatic achievements and much similar governmental assertions crafted for home effect. Strategy becomes performance, and show becomes a substitute for engagement with the world’s existent fissures.
For India, the implications are clear. The U.S. that sought to make strategical abstraction for India successful 2005 is not the U.S. reflected successful the NSS — it is preoccupied with its ain vulnerabilities, identity, and hierarchy of burdens. It demands much from partners yet offers little successful return. It speaks of shared interests portion retreating from shared responsibilities. It calls for burden-sharing but often means burden-shifting.
This does not diminish the value of India-U.S. cooperation. It simply changes its foundations. India cannot trust connected the presumption that Washington volition put successful India’s emergence arsenic a substance of strategical design. India’s emergence volition beryllium connected India. Partnership volition endure wherever interests converge and stay measured wherever they bash not. As the NSS itself insists, partners indispensable progressively “assume superior work for their regions,” a polite but unmistakable awesome that U.S. enactment volition beryllium conditional and limited.
The way forward
The acquisition of 2005 remains invaluable due to the fact that it reminds america of the conditions nether which strategical transformations occur: assurance connected some sides and a content that the other’s ascent strengthens one’s own. The 2025 strategy lacks that confidence. It is shaped by grievance astatine past overreach, suspicion of institutions, and a preoccupation with restoring an earlier conception of American primacy.
India truthful indispensable defy the temptation to construe this papers done the lens of earlier hopes. The epoch that produced the civilian atomic breakthrough was an epoch of widening horizons for some India and the U.S. The epoch that produced this strategy is 1 of contracting horizons for the U.S. and expanding responsibilities for India. If India is to beryllium a large satellite powerfulness successful the 21st century, it volition not beryllium due to the fact that immoderate outer histrion wills it. It volition beryllium due to the fact that India possesses the strategical assurance and worldly capableness to enactment independently wrong a fragmented planetary order.
Paradoxically, the 2025 strategy makes that world clearer than its authors intend. By reducing the scope of American commitments, it widens the abstraction for others. For India, the situation is not to capable a vacuum but to trade a relation suited to its scale, interests, and civilisational temperament. The assumptions of 2005 cannot return, but the aspiration that animated them is ours to pursue.
Amitabh Mattoo, Dean and Professor, School of International Studies, JNU and erstwhile Member National Security Advisory Board
