The Great Power Show: Unequal Expectations - What Does America Really Want from India?
America is heading into the midterm elections with a foreign policy problem. The war in Iran has dragged on far longer than promised. Trump’s trade war has produced more disruption than results. And across the political spectrum, there is a growing unease about what American power is supposed to achieve, and how Washington should deal with the rest of the world.
Few countries have been caught quite as awkwardly in this moment as India.
When Donald Trump returned to the White House, there was considerable optimism in Delhi. The relationship had survived his first term. Modi was among the few world leaders who seemed to have a good rapport with Trump. But then came the tariffs, the sudden courtship of Pakistan, the immigration crackdown and an increasingly ugly strain of anti-Indian rhetoric in American politics.
So what actually happened? Is this simply the Trump effect? Or has Delhi been operating on some rather misplaced assumptions about how important India really is to Washington?
In the last episode of the show, Manoj spoke to Rajesh Rajagopalan about how India sees the growing fissures in its relationship with the United States. This time, he wanted to turn the question around and understand how things look from the American side.
Manoj's guest for this conversion is Paul Staniland, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and he offers a remarkably candid assessment. He argues that while there remains considerable goodwill towards India in Washington, India rarely commands the attention that Delhi assumes it does. More strikingly, there is surprisingly little serious public debate in America about what it actually wants from India, or what kind of relationship it hopes to build.
They discuss the growing nativism in American politics, the changing place of India across the Republican and Democratic parties, Pakistan’s renewed relevance, and the danger of making the entire relationship contingent on a shared anxiety about China.
But they also get into something more fundamental: the expectations both sides bring to this relationship, why they need to be more realistic and explicit, and what a more durable partnership might look like beyond Trump. And perhaps most importantly, why India needs to look beyond Washington if it wants Americans to understand India.
Access the full podcast here on Substack
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