The U.S. Secretary of State is visiting India ahead of the QUAD foreign ministers’ meeting, which includes the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India. The visit focuses on repairing ties between New Delhi and Washington after a year of increasing tensions.

The strain began in April 2025, when Trump imposed universal tariffs. It deepened in May when he claimed to broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan; a claim New Delhi denied. Washington then imposed additional tariffs on India in August for buying Russian oil, raising the tariff rate to 50%. More importantly, Trump repeatedly praised Pakistan and its Army Chief as Washington and Islamabad worked together to create an off-ramp for the Iran War.

In February 2026, tariffs were reduced to 18% after Modi agreed to halt Russian oil purchases and committed to buying $500 billion in American products over five years. Yet the concession quickly lost importance because, after the Iran War, sanctions eased, allowing India to resume buying Russian oil.

For New Delhi, the lesson is the same as in other capitals: the United States has become an unreliable partner.

For Washington, however, India has a pivotal role in its Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China’s rise. New Delhi has long maintained a non-aligned policy but has been closer to Russia, officially, since the 1971 Treaty of Friendship, and has had limited engagement with the United States throughout the Cold War. This changed when President George W. Bush visited India in 2005; the trip led to a defense and civil nuclear partnership agreement between the two countries. This rapprochement culminated with both states signing the "Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region” during President Obama’s visit to India in 2015. With this bilateral agreement, both India and the United States cemented their willingness to cooperate to curb China’s rise in Asia. The QUAD – initially discussed in 2007 at the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit and then forgotten – was revived in 2017 for the same purpose. 

Though fleetingly, the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy also acknowledges that India and the QUAD are vital for the Indo-Pacific Strategy. Therefore, it should make little sense to jeopardize ties with India in the first place. But the Trump Administration has seldom made sense since assuming office in January 2025. This is yet another example of multiple voices narrating multiple foreign policy visions within the administration, resulting in incoherent ideas and actions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (though increasingly isolated) argues that America’s first and foremost priority should be to counter China, is now on a mission to revive ties. This trip underscores American vulnerability more than anything else. 

In the first year and a half of his presidency, President Trump has alienated key allies across nearly every region, with significant implications for U.S. interests. While great power status rests on military and economic strength, alliance networks are equally crucial — and often even more important — for achieving strategic objectives.

Trump has repeatedly criticized European allies and threatened to abandon NATO. He has also raised tensions within the alliance, including threats to use force to take control of Greenland. At the same time, he has warmed to Russia while publicly clashing with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the White House. European allies were not consulted prior to the attack on Iran, further deepening mistrust. And if all of this was not enough, Trump was also engaged in a public confrontation with the Pope.

At the same time, Trump has undermined the credibility of American security guarantees. He shifted the defense systems, aircraft carriers, and marines deployed in the Pacific for a potential confrontation with China to the Middle East theater. The U.S. burned through much of its military weapons in its senseless war against Iran, most of which may take years to replenish, reducing the American readiness for military engagement in the Pacific. But that is not all; after his visit to China, when asked about Taiwan, Trump remarked that the arms deal for Taiwan, currently withheld indefinitely, “could be a good bargaining chip” in U.S.-China engagements. The Pacific ‘allies’ were neither consulted nor consoled. 

However, the questionable credibility of American security guarantees is not something exclusive to the Trump Administration, as American allies in the Middle East would argue. When the Arab Spring roared across the Middle East in 2011, engulfing dictatorial regimes in multiple countries, the U.S. offered no support to leaders who were considered faithful U.S. allies. In 2019, when the two most significant Saudi oil facilities of Abqaiq and Khurais were attacked by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, Washington offered nothing but a muted response. The same happened when Israel attacked Qatar in 2025, allegedly to target Hamas officials. And again, when Iran repeatedly attacked the Gulf allies during the U.S.-Iran War in 2026.

America’s unreliability has created a power vacuum, prompting the so-called allies to scramble for short-term, interest-based alignments with other states. India practices a multi-alignment foreign policy anyway; it allows India to develop alignments with multiple actors. In the last year, India signed a Free Trade Agreement with the United Kingdom in May, finalized a $68 billion investment framework with Japan in August, and signed trade agreements with New Zealand and ‌Oman.

This year, in January, it signed an energy and trade agreement with the UAE, committing to do the same in the areas of defense and security. It signed a Free Trade Agreement, dubbed as ‘mother of all deals’, along with a less hyped security and defense agreement with the European Union. In February, French President Emmanuel Macron visited India to expand the military partnership. Many of these successes were possible because other states are seeking potential economic and security partners in the absence of credible American commitments. 

To what extent these trade agreements would withstand India’s protectionist economy, riddled with bureaucratic red tape, is another issue. However, it signals the shift in geopolitical alignments as America continues to undermine its credibility. Indeed, a complete decoupling is difficult for American ‘allies’ such as those in Western Europe, but such realignments have certainly weakened the American alliance system. The rather bland Xi-Trump Summit clearly demonstrated the Chinese upper hand. 

In Washington, there are still people who think that the U.S. must make strides to assert itself, to show that it still has friends and can exercise a degree of influence over them. But could Secretary Rubio achieve anything meaningful? And could QUAD help the U.S. assert itself in the region?

It is rather difficult. For starters, Marco Rubio’s expressed “disappointment in European and NATO allies for failing to step up during the Iran War” while trying to “repair ties” with India does not help reestablish confidence in the United States.
Additionally, the QUAD has not held a summit since July 2025, primarily due to high tensions between the United States and India, and its leaders’ summit in Australia later this year remains uncertain. It is not just India, but even Japan is skeptical of American commitments and is actively seeking remilitarization. The Japanese premier has even signalled that Tokyo intends to respond militarily to any Chinese aggression in the region. 

While each member has an interest in countering China’s rise, each has a different reason to do so. With so many contradictions and uncertainties, it will be difficult for QUAD to achieve anything of geopolitical significance, especially when none of its members finds the United States reliable.

India may welcome the thawing of relations with the United States, but this will hardly ‘repair’ the American unreliability.

We do not yet know what the outcome of Rubio’s trip, or the QUAD meeting of foreign ministers in India next week, would be, but it does establish two things: China remains a strategic competitor to a declining America, and there is still a faction in the U.S. that wants to signal to the world that it still cares about alignments.