The G2 concept that Donald Trump has lately been touting is a highly unstable proposition, which could make the emergence of a unipolar Asia more likely. Fortunately, Japan remains committed to advancing the far more effective “free and open Indo-Pacific” framework, with India as an indispensable partner.

By Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

Grand foreign-policy strategies rarely disappear overnight. More often, they are dismantled gradually through subtle rhetorical shifts, bureaucratic adjustments, and changing diplomatic priorities. America’s Indo-Pacific strategy is no exception.

A decade ago, then-Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō unveiled the concept of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific. Based on the idea that the Indian and Pacific Oceans form a single strategic theater, he sought to build a coalition of democracies committed to preventing any one power from dominating the region.

The United States subsequently embraced this vision, reviving the Quad coalition and establishing its members—Australia, India, Japan, and the US—as the principal anchors of the regional balance of power. The underlying strategic logic was compelling. Like the alliance system more broadly, the Indo-Pacific coalition would amplify US influence by encouraging middle powers to shoulder greater responsibility for regional stability. Moreover, its multiple centers of power and shared objective would make it inherently resilient.

More recently, however, US President Donald Trump has advanced the idea of a “G2” comprising just the US and China. Unlike the free and open Indo-Pacific vision, which seeks to maintain stability by cultivating a broad network of like-minded partners, the G2 concept assumes that the world’s two leading powers should shape the regional and global order through direct negotiations.

The approach elevates bilateral deal-making at the expense of multilateral diplomacy, thereby diminishing the strategic weight of middle powers—and, by extension, US influence. Its durability largely rests on the personal chemistry and shifting calculations of leaders in Washington and Beijing. While Trump seems to be warming up to Chinese President Xi Jinping today, there is no telling what tomorrow will bring. Simply put, the G2 is a highly unstable proposition.

One might be tempted to dismiss this as just another example of Trump’s unconventional diplomacy, which often emphasizes bilateral bargaining over coalition-building. But his administration has also systematically deprioritized the Quad, with its latest National Security Strategy making just a single passing mention of the grouping. The US Department of Defense, for its part, has reverted to referring to its principal theater as the “Pacific,” instead of the “Indo-Pacific.”

Together, these developments suggest that this is no temporary bluff or brief diplomatic glitch. Under Trump, the free and open Indo-Pacific strategy is unraveling.

This carries grave risks for Japan. Over the past decade, Abe’s Indo-Pacific vision has anchored Japan’s national security strategy, with the goal of ensuring that China does not concentrate its military pressure in East Asia. If the US focuses exclusively on the Western Pacific, Japan would lose its strategic depth and risk finding itself face-to-face with China’s maritime might.

None of this is lost on Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has redoubled her commitment to the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific. In May, she unveiled an updated Indo-Pacific framework emphasizing regional economic resilience and enhanced security cooperation. Her government has been reinforcing the partnerships that give the strategy practical effect by deepening strategic ties with India and Australia and expanding “minilateral” arrangements, including the Japan-US-Philippines and Japan-US-South Korea trilateral groupings.

In Japan’s strategy for preserving Asia’s balance of power, India occupies a central position. This was apparent during Takaichi’s visit to New Delhi last month, when she and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed their commitment to the Indo-Pacific framework and agreed to expand cooperation in areas ranging from AI and critical minerals to defense technology. For Japan, India is not just another strategic partner. With its vast size, formidable military, dynamic economy, and commanding position astride the Indian Ocean, it is the indispensable western pillar of the Indo-Pacific architecture.

India presents China with a two-front dilemma, forcing Chinese military planners to split their attention and resources between the continental and maritime theaters. If China did not have to monitor its long, tense Himalayan frontier with India—where dozens of soldiers died after Chinese land grabs triggered clashes in 2020—and protect critical Indian Ocean trade routes, it would be able to concentrate overwhelming force in the Western Pacific.

By removing the “Indo” from “Indo-Pacific,” the Trump administration has exposed its lack of understanding of this critical dynamic. Together with its G2 vision, the shift amounts to an important symbolic and geopolitical victory for China. After all, Chinese leaders have long argued that the Indo-Pacific strategy’s real aim was to “contain China” and “make Asia-Pacific countries ‘pawns’ of US hegemony.” They would vastly prefer a Pacific-centric framework in which the US and China negotiate directly, and other regional powers do as they are told.

Whatever the Pentagon names its strategic theater, the geography will not change. China’s most important energy and trade lifelines still pass through the Indian Ocean, and the Himalayan frontier still constrains Chinese military planning. Preventing the emergence of a unipolar Asia, therefore, still depends on maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, underpinned by a broad coalition of democracies committed to that objective.

Whether the US returns to this framework remains to be seen. Japan, however, has already made its choice.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center 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, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2026.

Why can’t Indian immigrants influence policy in America? As U.S.-India ties fray, America’s most successful immigrants still lack a voice in Washington.

By Brahma Chellaney
The Japan Times

As America’s congressional midterm campaigns gather momentum, politicians from both parties will once again court Indian-American voters, donors and volunteers. They have good reason to do so.

Indian Americans have become one of the greatest immigrant success stories in American history. They are among the country’s wealthiest and most highly-educated communities. They lead Silicon Valley, dominate large segments of the medical profession, head some of America’s iconic corporations like Google and Microsoft, and are emerging as an increasingly visible force in electoral politics, with growing influence in several battleground states that could determine control of Congress.

Yet, despite this remarkable ascent, Indian Americans have failed where it arguably matters most for a diaspora: influencing Washington’s policy toward their country of origin — or even preventing a succession of U.S. actions since last year that have disproportionately hurt Indians.

Over the past four years, the U.S.-India relationship has steadily deteriorated under two successive American administrations. The Biden administration allowed bilateral frictions to accentuate and strain ties. President Donald Trump’s second administration has accelerated the decline through trade and energy coercion, tighter restrictions on student and work visas, and a more openly transactional approach that is effectively demoting India in American grand strategy.

Taken together, these measures represent the most sustained period of policy setbacks affecting India and Indians in decades. Yet they have encountered little organized resistance from the increasingly influential Indian-American community.

This paradox deserves attention because it exposes a central reality of Washington: economic success and political visibility do not automatically translate into foreign-policy influence.

Measured by conventional indicators, Indian Americans should possess considerable leverage. Numbering just over five million, they have the highest median household income of any major ethnic group in America. They have impressive voter participation and growing electoral significance in battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan. Members of Congress, governors, mayors and nationally known political figures now come from the Indian-American community across both parties.

Indian Americans have mastered nearly every arena of American life except the one that matters most in foreign policy — organized political power. Consequently, there is no effective India lobby.

Unlike the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) or the influential Cuban-American organizations, Indian Americans have never built a durable, bipartisan, single-issue lobbying infrastructure capable of changing political incentives in Congress or the White House.

Instead, the community is represented by an assortment of business councils, cultural associations, advocacy groups and political action committees pursuing multiple, sometimes competing, objectives. They excel at networking, philanthropy and promoting commercial ties, but they have never developed the institutional cohesion needed to influence high-stakes decisions on trade, immigration or strategic policy.

Washington rewards focus. The most successful foreign-policy lobbies do not merely contribute campaign money. They create political consequences. They identify a small number of priorities, cultivate relationships with lawmakers of both parties, and reward — or punish — politicians according to how they vote. Most importantly, they persuade American policymakers that supporting their objectives advances U.S. national interests, not simply the interests of another country. Indian-American advocacy has rarely operated that way.

The community also suffers from an internal divergence of interests. Naturalized citizens and second-generation Indian Americans understandably vote like other Americans. Their priorities are inflation, taxes, crime, healthcare, schools and local governance — not bilateral diplomacy or immigration policy. The Indians most directly affected by recent policy changes — professionals on H-1B visas, students (the largest from any country) and green-card applicants — cannot vote.

This creates an unusual political asymmetry. The people with electoral influence are often insulated from the policies affecting Indians most severely. Those bearing the greatest burden possess virtually no electoral leverage.

Trump’s second presidency has made this structural weakness increasingly evident. His administration no longer treats India primarily as a strategic counterweight to China. Instead, it increasingly views India through a transactional commercial lens — as a fast-growing market for American exports and an economic competitor whose technological rise should be carefully managed through tariffs and tech-transfer controls. U.S. restrictions affecting skilled immigration, tighter student visa rules, pressure over energy imports, and disputes over technology transfers all reflect that recalibration.

Nor can Democrats claim a better record. The once-blossoming bilateral relationship began losing momentum before Trump returned to office.

The comforting assumption that the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership would inevitably deepen has proved misplaced. For all the talk of an “indispensable partnership” with India, Washington has shown that diaspora goodwill carries little weight when it conflicts with electoral or strategic priorities.

If Indian Americans wish to acquire greater influence over Washington’s India policy, they may need to rethink their approach fundamentally.

That does not mean replicating another community’s political model. Every diaspora has its own history and priorities. But successful lobbying in Washington invariably requires certain ingredients: bipartisan engagement, institutional continuity, disciplined messaging, coordinated fundraising and, above all, a willingness to frame policy objectives as advancing America’s own strategic interests.

Indian Americans already possess the financial resources, professional networks and intellectual capital needed to build political infrastructure. What they lack is sustained collective action.

That distinction helps explain why a community that has become indispensable to America’s innovation economy remains largely dispensable when Washington makes decisions affecting India.

Until that changes, Indian Americans are likely to remain a political paradox: one of America’s most accomplished immigrant communities, yet unable to translate that success into meaningful influence over one of the world’s most important bilateral relationships.

Brahma Chellaney, a longstanding contributor to The Japan Times, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battlefield,” which won the Bernard Schwartz Award.

By Brahma Chellaney
The Japan Times

For nearly a quarter century, a rare bipartisan consensus guided American policy toward India. Washington believed that helping the world’s largest democracy become stronger — economically, technologically and militarily — served U.S. interests by creating a durable counterweight to an increasingly assertive China.

Washington’s India consensus is now quietly unraveling.

The clearest indication came not from a leaked strategy paper but from U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau speaking in New Delhi. Declaring that Washington “will not repeat its China mistake,” Landau said the U.S. would not allow India to “develop all these markets” only to outcompete America commercially.

Those remarks deserve far more attention than they received. They amount to a remarkably candid acknowledgment that Washington no longer views India’s rise as an unqualified strategic asset. Instead, it increasingly sees India through the same prism that now shapes its approach toward China: as an emerging economic giant whose technological ascent must be carefully managed.

It marks a structural shift in American strategy.

The shift is also visible in American strategic vocabulary. The Pentagon’s recent decision to drop the “Indo” from “Indo-Pacific” is far more than bureaucratic rebranding. Names in strategy reveal priorities.

For nearly a decade, the Indo-Pacific concept placed India at the heart of America’s vision for balancing China’s rise across two oceans. It reflected the belief that India’s emergence as a major power was indispensable to ensuring a stable balance in Asia.

Removing “Indo” sends a different signal. It suggests that Washington is narrowing its strategic horizon, placing greater emphasis on managing relations directly with Beijing while downgrading India’s role in its larger regional calculus. The change also aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s more conciliatory approach to Beijing since mid-2025 and his repeated references to a U.S.-China “Group of Two,” a framework in which the world’s two largest powers bargain directly over global affairs rather than relying on broad coalitions of partners.

Successive U.S. administrations in this century promoted India’s emergence through expanding defense cooperation, a civil nuclear deal, growing technology partnerships and repeated invocations of shared democratic values. They believed India’s rise would strengthen, not challenge, American leadership. Today that assumption is giving way to a different strategic calculation.

The lesson many policymakers in Washington drew from China’s ascent is not simply that Beijing became militarily formidable. It is that the U.S. aided the rise of an industrial and technological rival capable of dominating global manufacturing, critical supply chains and advanced technologies and challenging American primacy.

America’s new objective is to avoid repeating that experience with India. Landau merely articulated publicly what American policy has begun to reflect.

Trump’s 50% punitive tariffs on Indian exports were more than trade measures. They conveyed that “America First” applies as much to strategic partners as to competitors. His administration increasingly treats India less as a geopolitical pillar than as a market for American goods and investment. Indeed, Trump’s National Security Strategy frames the relationship in transactional commercial terms rather than as a long-term geopolitical investment.

Even more revealing are the growing obstacles surrounding the transfer of advanced jet-engine technology.

The agreement between General Electric and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics was celebrated as a watershed because it promised unprecedented technology transfer for engines to power India’s three separate indigenous fighter programs: Tejas Mk1A, Tejas Mk2 and Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft. The multibillion-dollar deal was never simply about supplying engines. It represented a potential breakthrough for India’s ambition to become an independent aerospace power.

Instead, implementation has become bogged down in unexpected roadblocks. Engine deliveries have stalled, delaying fighter production and leaving completed Indian-built aircraft stranded without propulsion systems.

That, in turn, has placed the Indian Air Force under severe operational strain, with its active strength plummeting to approximately 29 operational squadrons, as against the required 42.5 combat squadrons to effectively counter a dual-front threat from nuclear-armed allies China and Pakistan.

Whatever the official explanations, the broader strategic message is difficult to miss. Washington appears increasingly reluctant to facilitate technologies that could enable India eventually to compete at the highest end of advanced industrial manufacturing.

The U.S. shift extends to India’s own strategic backyard. If India is no longer viewed as the indispensable anchor of America’s Asian strategy, it becomes easier for Washington to pursue regional policies that diverge from New Delhi’s interests.

For much of the past decade, New Delhi assumed that growing strategic ties with Washington would naturally translate into greater American sensitivity toward India’s concerns in its immediate neighborhood. That assumption no longer holds.

In Bangladesh, Washington supported the violent overthrow of the India-friendly government of Sheikh Hasina in August 2024. Bangladesh’s consequent descent into violent Islamism threatens the security of India, which is already home to millions of illegally settled Bangladeshis.

Myanmar presents another example of how policies conceived in Washington carry direct security consequences for India. Washington’s stringent sanctions against Myanmar’s military government and “nonlethal” military aid for anti-junta forces may reflect broader American objectives, but they have contributed to instability along India’s sensitive northeastern frontier, where insurgent movements have long exploited cross-border sanctuaries.

While seeking to topple Myanmar’s junta, Washington has embraced Pakistan’s military-backed regime, feting the country’s de facto ruler, Field Marshal Asim Munir.

The U.S. modernization of Pakistan’s F-16 fleet, expanding military contacts and repeated statements by senior American officials that U.S. policy seeks to prevent any single power from dominating the Indian subcontinent have revived uncomfortable memories in New Delhi of Cold War-era balancing. Many in India see that objective as closely mirroring China’s own interest in keeping India boxed in.

America’s changing attitude toward India suggests that it is now being guided by a different strategic logic. Washington is no longer asking whether its regional policies strengthen India’s position. Instead, it appears increasingly comfortable limiting India’s geopolitical room for maneuver while simultaneously restricting the technologies that would underpin its long-term industrial ascent.

The irony is striking. For two decades, Washington encouraged India’s rise because it believed a powerful democratic India would reinforce American strategy in Asia. Today, many U.S. policymakers appear to fear that helping India become too successful economically could recreate the very mistake they believe Washington made with China.

That does not mean America seeks to contain India as it seeks to contain China. Rather, it suggests something subtler but no less consequential. Washington wants India strong enough to complicate Chinese strategy, wealthy enough to remain an attractive market for American exports and influential enough to contribute to Indian Ocean security — but not so technologically advanced or economically competitive that it eventually becomes another global economic challenger.

That is a far narrower conception of partnership than the one that guided U.S. policy for much of this century. India should recognize that this is not a passing disagreement over tariffs, energy purchases or defense contracts. It reflects a deeper reordering of American strategic priorities.

The relationship with India is consequently becoming more transactional, with Washington primarily interested in securing a larger share of the world’s fastest-growing major market.

The U.S. now views India’s rise no longer as an inherently benign development, but as a phenomenon to be carefully managed, moderated and, where necessary, constrained.

The quiet demotion of India in America’s grand strategy represents the most significant shift in U.S. policy since Washington embraced New Delhi as a strategic partner at the turn of the century.

Brahma Chellaney, a longstanding contributor to The Japan Times, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battlefield,” which won the Bernard Schwartz Award.

Once firmly in New Delhi’s orbit, Nepal is now a three-way contest

Brahma Chellaney

Nikkei Asia

India has long viewed Nepal as lying firmly within its natural sphere of influence. The two countries are bound together by geography, culture, religion and an open border. Nepal’s economy remains deeply intertwined with India’s.

Few international relationships anywhere in Asia combine such extensive people-to-people contact, cultural affinity and freedom of movement as that between India and Nepal.

Today, however, Nepal is no longer defined solely by its ties to India. China has spent the past two decades steadily expanding its political and economic footprint there. Now the U.S. is emerging as a significant third player.

The era when New Delhi could be regarded as Nepal’s indispensable external partner is quietly drawing to a close.

Recent high-level visits by senior American and Chinese officials to Kathmandu underscore a broader reality: Nepal has become an arena of strategic competition among Asia’s two great powers and the world’s leading superpower. With the three competing for influence, investment and strategic access, Nepal has become one of the clearest examples of how India’s traditional dominance on the subcontinent is increasingly under serious challenge.

The U.S. and India remain partners globally yet, as Nepal illustrates, Washington increasingly pursues policies that diverge from New Delhi’s interests on the subcontinent. Before visiting Nepal in April, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs S. Paul Kapur bluntly stated that a primary American regional objective is to “prevent the dominance of any single power in South Asia.”

Nepal, wedged between India and Chinese-ruled Tibet, remains uniquely important to New Delhi, including for internal security, given the nearly 1,800-kilometer open border that allows Nepalis and Indians to move freely without passports. Millions of Nepalis live and work in India. Hindu and Buddhist traditions connect communities on both sides of the frontier. No other power enjoys such deep historical, cultural and societal ties.

Yet such ties alone no longer guarantee political influence.

China recognized this reality before most others. Through infrastructure investments, political engagement and sustained diplomatic outreach, Beijing gradually established itself as a major player in Nepal. It built close relations with Nepal’s two, long-dominant communist parties to help cultivate a friendly government there and expand its influence along India’s northern frontier.

The communists’ crushing defeat in the March national elections has left Beijing’s preferred political channels in Nepal marginalized. Yet Chinese influence may not erode significantly as Nepal’s new Gen Z rulers realize the risks of relying too heavily on a single partner, India.

For Beijing, Nepal’s significance extends beyond economics. The country sits astride China’s sensitive Tibetan frontier and occupies a strategic position between the world’s two most populous nations. Maintaining influence in Kathmandu has become an important element of China’s broader regional strategy.

What is new is the growing American role. While both Washington and New Delhi seek to limit Chinese influence in Nepal, the U.S. is also helping create a regional environment in which India’s privileged position becomes less exclusive.

The result is not outright rivalry between the U.S. and India. Rather, it is subtle differences in outlook and strategy that suggest Washington and New Delhi do not share identical interests in India’s immediate neighborhood, including Nepal.

Washington increasingly treats Kathmandu as an independent strategic actor whose external relationships should not be constrained by any regional power. High-level American engagement with Nepal has become more frequent, while U.S.-backed development initiatives and investment programs have sharply raised Washington’s profile in Kathmandu.

America’s growing strategic footprint, however, has alarmed Beijing, which opposes U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) projects, warning Kathmandu of potential “ramifications” and “outside interference,” especially if the five-year MCC grant program were extended beyond 2028. It has also cautioned Nepal against joining the U.S. State Partnership Program or allowing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network to operate in Nepal, viewing the former as implicit strategic alignment with Washington and the latter as a security risk.

Yet focusing solely on the external powers misses the most important part of the story: Nepal itself.

Kathmandu is not merely the object of great-power competition. Successive Nepali governments have become increasingly adept at leveraging rivalries among India, China and the U.S. to expand their diplomatic room for maneuver. Rather than choosing sides, Nepal seeks to maximize opportunities from all three relationships.

This reflects a broader shift in the country’s foreign policy. Nepal’s leaders increasingly view India, China and the U.S. not as mutually exclusive partners but as complementary sources of investment, technology, development assistance and diplomatic support. What appears from New Delhi as a loss of influence often appears from Kathmandu as an expansion of strategic options.

That dynamic is likely to endure. Nepal’s political class recognizes that competition among larger powers creates opportunities that did not exist when India exercised near-exclusive influence. By maintaining ties with all major players, Kathmandu can extract benefits from each while securing greater autonomy.

For New Delhi, this changing landscape presents a challenge. India retains enormous advantages in Nepal that neither China nor the U.S. can replicate. But influence and exclusivity are not the same thing.

China has already ended India’s near-monopoly on strategic influence in Nepal. The growing American presence is further diversifying Kathmandu’s external partnerships. Nepal is becoming a genuinely competitive geopolitical space.

The real lesson is not that India is being displaced. It is that the age when New Delhi could assume primacy in its strategic backyard is fading. Across the subcontinent, influence increasingly must be earned through sustained engagement and competitive statecraft rather than inherited through geography and history.

Few countries illustrate that transformation more clearly than Nepal.

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,” which won the Bernard Schwartz Book Award.