White House meeting with Modi follows close on the heels of Ishiba’s visit

Brahma Chellaney

Nikkei Asia

Donald Trump and Narendra Modi prepare to shake hands as they attend a joint press conference at the White House in Washington on Feb. 13, 2025.  © Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to swiftly reorient foreign policy in his second term, shifting America’s strategic focus from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific — an increasingly pivotal region in shaping the global order. Trump has already hosted the prime ministers of India and Japan separately and initiated efforts to end the Ukraine war, a conflict that has diverted U.S. attention from pressing Indo-Pacific challenges and made China the big winner.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on his first day in office, held a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Quad, a strategic alliance of leading Indo-Pacific democracies that Trump revived in his first term after a decade-long dormancy. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking in Brussels on Feb. 12, warned Europe that “the U.S. will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency” and that Europe must take “responsibility for its own security” by leading “from the front” so that America prioritizes “deterring war with China” in the Indo-Pacific.

Vice President JD Vance followed up from European soil in Munich by reinforcing Hegseth’s warning — Europe needs to shape up before many of the more than 100,000 American troops stationed there begin to be shipped out. Vance’s statement that Europe’s main security threat is “from within” suggests the fraying transatlantic alliance is headed toward a fundamental transformation.

The U.S.-India strategic partnership was a cornerstone of Washington’s strategy from Trump’s first term for a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” a vision originally conceived by then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a shorthand for a rules-based, liberal order. The China-Russia “no-limits partnership,” which developed during Joe Biden’s presidency, has only intensified the U.S. strategic imperative to forge a “soft” alliance with another nuclear-armed power: India.

Against this backdrop, Trump’s Feb. 13 meeting in Washington with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi underscored both leaders’ commitment to revitalizing the U.S.-India relationship.

Successive American presidents since Bill Clinton have left bilateral ties with India stronger than they inherited. However, under Biden, momentum stalled as differences cropped up, including over New Delhi’s reluctance to take sides in the Ukraine war and U.S. policies toward India’s neighbors, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and PakistanA Quad meeting is held on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, in May 2023.   © Reuters

The outcome of Modi’s White House visit attests to a good start toward rebuilding mutual trust. Trump and Modi, maintaining the warm rapport they developed in their first terms, exchanged a bear hug and projected unity at a joint news conference. Notably, they avoided discord over Trump’s hot-button issues like trade and immigration.

As he did with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Feb. 7, Trump touted strong bilateral ties while pressing Modi for “fair” and balanced trade, including increased Indian imports of American hydrocarbons and weapons. In his trademark style of blending some public flattery with hard bargaining, Trump called Modi “a much tougher” and “much better negotiator than me,” just as he had said Ishiba is “a very strong person, I wish he wasn’t so strong.”

Trump, along with the Japanese and Australian prime ministers, is set to visit India in the fall for the Quad leaders’ summit, by which time he hopes significant progress will have been made by negotiators on the U.S.-India trade agreement to which Modi committed in Washington. This strategy mirrors Trump’s previous approach in leveraging tariffs to secure a trade pact with Japan in 2019.

As the U.S. pivots to the Indo-Pacific, stronger ties have become essential with India and Japan, China’s main Asian rivals strategically located on its opposite flanks. The balance of power in the Indo-Pacific will be largely shaped by developments in East Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Japan, hosting over 80 U.S. military facilities and more American troops than any other U.S. ally, is critical to the defense of Taiwan, whose annexation by China would mark the end of U.S. global dominance. Meanwhile, India, locked in a lingering military standoff with China, has actively challenged Beijing’s power and capabilities in a way no other nation has in this century.

Long before Trump entered national politics, U.S. policymakers recognized the need to shift strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific, a region emerging as the world’s economic and geopolitical hub. In 2011, then-President Barack Obama unveiled a “pivot to Asia” strategy, but it remained largely rhetorical, lacking substantive strategic initiatives.

When Trump took office in 2017, he replaced Obama’s symbolic pivot with a comprehensive strategy for a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” He also fundamentally redefined U.S. policy toward Beijing, reversing a four-decade-old U.S. approach of aiding China’s economic rise by classifying that communist behemoth as a strategic rival and threat.

Biden maintained this approach, preserving the free and open Indo-Pacific strategy, including the Quad as a key pillar, while acknowledging China as America’s primary challenger that is bent on world dominance. However, his administration’s entanglement in conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East left little space for a genuine pivot to the Indo-Pacific.

Trump’s new administration is prioritizing the resolution of these conflicts to focus on the Indo-Pacific, where U.S. global primacy is at stake. Ending involvement in the conflicts would free military resources for the Indo-Pacific, particularly from Europe.

More broadly, America’s grand strategy has long centered on driving a wedge between Moscow and Beijing — a strategy that helped the West win the Cold War without direct military confrontation. However, thanks to Biden-era policies, the U.S. has become the bridge that unites Russia and China.

Ending the Ukraine war could provide an opportunity for Washington to peel Moscow away from Beijing or weaken the Sino-Russian partnership to help isolate China.

More importantly, it would allow the U.S. to concentrate on countering the challenge from a globally ascendant China, with support from allies like Japan and strategic partners like India, whose rise as an independent power meshes with the Trump administration’s aversion to friends’ dependency on the U.S.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the independent New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground” (Georgetown University Press), which won the Bernard Schwartz Book Award.