India’s US Policy 1991–2019: The Gradual Loss of Strategic Autonomy

Abstract

This chapter explores India’s US connection from 1991 up to the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic. It argues that the US connection became the mainstay of India’s foreign policy soon after and as a consequence of the demise of the USSR. The initiative in pursuing a privileged relationship with Washington was taken and eagerly pursued by New Delhi, which aimed at avoiding international isolation and supporting its new neoliberal economic policy while preserving its own strategic autonomy. Washington responded positively to New Delhi’s entreaties, but up to 2003 or 2004, it did not appear overly interested in its relationship with India. Things changed following the US invasion of Iraq, when Washington, realizing India’s newly acquired geopolitical relevance, completely changed its approach to India, proactively pursuing the project to insert it in the arc of containment around Iran and China. At the closing of the period under review, India, in exchange for an increasingly conspicuous supply of US weapon systems and military technology appeared to have de facto given up its strategic autonomy, including the pursuit of a foreign policy aimed at promoting its own economic interests. The Indian government justified this shift in policy as necessary to contain China, namely a country whose relations with India had dipped in or around 2006, as a direct consequence of the US-sponsored insertion of India into the US-built anti-China arc of containment.