An article, in Foreign Affairs, titled “India’s Great Power Delusions – How New Delhi’s Grand Strategy Thwarts Its Grand Ambitions” (July/August 2025), is creating a storm in the proverbial tea cup. The article’s key point is that India had ‘delusions’ of grandeur, and about becoming a Great Power, and that this lacked substance. More to the point, the article talks disparagingly about India, stating that it stood nowhere in the race between China and the United States, as far as the Great Power sweepstakes are concerned.
Not unexpectedly, this has ruffled feathers, at a time when India had begun to believe that it was on the cusp of overcoming the ‘middle income trap’ and emerging into the category of a Big Power. This may be termed delusional by some, but India’s belief in its future is not new and has strong foundations. What may be faulted is the writer’s premise that India and China are on the cusp of a conflict, and that India would need the United States’ assistance to counter Chinese aggression. Both India and China are civilisational powers, though they have adopted different paths to progress. Neither country is, however, ready for a round of conflict, notwithstanding the existence of certain border issues between them. However, given India’s experience in 1962 and 1971, when the U.S. went out of its way to remove any doubts that India might have had about U.S. support, the former is not looking for its aid in any future conflict.
The tenor of this article would suggest that the U.S. currently thinks that it can wield the big stick of the ‘tariff war’ to compel India to fall in line with its wishes. Lost in translation, however, is that Donald Trump’s America is unable to comprehend the fact that the more advanced civilisations of the east, such as India and China, are not thinking of war or conflict at this time. Recent events and the meetings in Tianjin confirm this, and further demonstrate that India and China, along with Russia, constitute a strong phalanx against those anxious to disrupt the current world order — at least as far as Asia is concerned.
A closer look at the India story
It may, nevertheless, be worth analysing whether India’s Big Power ambitions are indeed out of sync with reality. Also, whether it is wrong for India to start believing that achieving Great Power status is within reach. The first mistake made by critics is that India has never made the claim that it was about to overtake China in the near future. Or that it was within striking distance of the U.S. The worst that India can be accused of is to start believing that it had indeed pulled well ahead of a pack of nations that had started with similar hopes, and that India had succeeded in overcoming the ‘middle income trap’ — reaching striking distance of their main objective.
The derisive tone adopted by the writer of the article does seem to reflect an element of outrage at India’s claims to progress. There is, however, a great deal to be said in favour of India’s growth story, and, even more so, in the manner in which it has been achieved, in sharp contrast to that of countries such as China.
The Americans cannot be faulted for not reading or understanding history since this is not in their DNA. But India’s spectacular transformation, from a ‘famine affected’ nation, through the Green Revolution, to becoming an exporter of food grains is, perhaps, unrivalled in the history of modern or even ancient times. Economic progress, rather than accumulating military strength, was the sine qua non of India’s existence during its early years of independence, and provided the backbone for future progress. Butter before guns was the motto.
Nevertheless, and throughout this period, India exercised a degree of moral authority — that most countries including the U.S. have seldom exercised — to emerge as a balancing factor in international relations. This has few, if any, equals in politics post the Second World War. It is India that coined and propagated a new philosophy in international relations, viz., the concept of Non Alignment, at a time when the world was split into two rival and conflicting orthodoxies; it helped safeguard the identity and hopes of newer nations post 1945, that did not wish to be aligned with either of the two rival blocs headed by the U.S. and Russia, respectively. India often acted as an arbiter in conflicts at the time (such as the Korean War in the 1950s), gaining international acclaim.
In the eyes of the West
The U.S.-China ‘bromance’ in the 1970s — achieved through the mesmerising diplomacy of then U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and his friendship with China’s Deng Xiaoping — which transformed the attitude of the U.S. and of the West to China’s potential as a market, had the effect of diminishing India’s importance in western eyes, especially that of the U.S. Simultaneously, India’s close friendship with Russia proved to be an irritant, further cemented with the signing of the India-Soviet Treaty of 1971. The 1974 nuclear test in the Pokhran desert — ‘Buddha is Smiling’ — aggravated this situation further.
The imperious tone of the Foreign Affairs article betrays a lack of understanding about India’s ability to manage contradictions of every kind. India’s relations with the U.S. vastly improved since the turn of the century, reaching a high point following the India-U.S. Civil Nuclear Agreement in 2008. But this happened even as India-U.S. relations were still far from warm. Many irritants remain, the most nagging of them being India’s reliance on Russian weapons, and, more recently, Russian oil, despite U.S. opposition.
This is despite India having more than made up for this by joining the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, the U.S.). Managing contradictions is among the key strengths that this country has derived from its civilisational past, which is little understood by countries in the West, specially those in the far West such as the U.S. The mandarins in the U.S. are, hence, unable to comprehend how India and China, despite being embroiled in a border dispute, can also be friends, as evidenced during the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit. Even more confusing for the West is the ‘entente cordiale’ between China, India and Russia, as demonstrated on this occasion.
Technological superiority is the driver
What is truly delusional, however, is the failure of the West to recognise the real impetus in world affairs today, which stems from the ‘empires of the mind’. In this respect, the U.S. today has far fewer cards to deal. This is the age of the ‘cybernated generation’ and the digital fortress is being breached today by countries with evolved civilisations such as China, India, Japan and Vietnam.
Harvesting data is today the main weapon of choice — and this is very different from employing ‘laser weapons’. Technological superiority is leading to new digital colonies, and the U.S. can at best, and only for now, claim a marginal advantage over countries such as India. India’s intrinsic capacity in this area, meanwhile, shows strong and steady growth. Those like the writer of the Foreign Affairs article, who scoff at India’s strength may, hence, have to repent at leisure.
Rather than casting stones at India, the U.S. and the West would do well to contemplate whether their current lead in critical technologies may soon prove illusory. As a new wave of technology ‘geeks’ storm and overturn the citadels of the past, and usher in a new world order, this is a real possibility. The West would also do well to realise that the ‘Sherpas’ that dominate Silicon Valley today, are mainly of Indian and Asian origin.
The U.S.’s lead of today is, thus, at best, ephemeral. India, for its part, is betting on this leap of faith as far as technologies of the future are concerned, and the West would do well to understand them rather than depend on hackneyed themes of countries seeking U.S. support to protect themselves. The sun may well set on the U.S., and much earlier than it realises, even as an India, steeped in the virtues of an ancient civilisation and based on knowledge derived from centuries of civilisational existence, gains ground. Better positioning is more important today rather than indulging in vague concerns.
M.K. Narayanan is a former Director, Intelligence Bureau, a former National Security Adviser, and a former Governor of West Bengal