Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: The prospect of more stable U.S.-China relations raises questions for India, Pakistan’s main opposition party postpones a planned protest, and India’s Cockroach movement sets its eyes on a new target.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: The prospect of more stable U.S.-China relations raises questions for India, Pakistan’s main opposition party postpones a planned protest, and India’s Cockroach movement sets its eyes on a new target.

What Did the Trump-Xi Summit Mean for India?

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the White House and agreed to lower some tariffs, to partner on energy and trade, and to keep talking. Their summit showed that the rival superpowers are keen to ease bilateral tensions—or at least to better manage them.

What would relatively more stable U.S.-China relations mean for ties between Washington and New Delhi? Though a shifting status quo might pose new obstacles, it ultimately wouldn’t be an all-around bad thing for India.

To be sure, China is the glue that binds the strategic dimension of the U.S.-India partnership; Washington and New Delhi have long shared the view that Beijing’s growing power constitutes a threat. This has motivated growing U.S.-India defense cooperation and the resurgence of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, as well as stepped-up collaborations on technology.

With U.S.-India ties currently mired in tensions of their own and a persistent trust gap in New Delhi, undermining the strategic rationale for partnership could present more headaches.

However, the U.S.-India relationship is focused on a lot more than China. In recent years, bilateral ties have grown broader and more multifaceted. Trade, educational exchanges, and space are all significant areas of collaboration outside the strategic realm. One recent major achievement was the joint launch of a satellite last year.

Despite Russia-driven tensions over fuel, energy has long been a key area of U.S.-India cooperation, going back to the early 1990s, as bilateral ties were beginning to bounce back from a few decades of poor relations—well before the emergence of major competition with China.

Reduced U.S.-China tensions could also lessen the overall threat to Indian security interests. Effectively, China might feel less inclined to drag India into its rivalry with the United States.

That could translate to China refraining from provocations against India along their shared border or........

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