Posted on 05/25/2026 8:29:06 AM PDT by cold start
I am angry. I’ve been relentlessly scrolling through social media and sundry reports tracking Marco Rubio’s statements throughout the day at various forums during his visit of India. It is Sunday, Day 2 of his four-day sojourn, and he has already kicked up quite a storm, telling the audience at an event in US embassy in New Delhi to mark America’s 250th Independence Day celebrations that “one of those relationships”… he is “so excited about going in to the 21st century, given the challenges and the opportunities of this new era, is India… one of those countries that I know that we have this very valuable strategic partnership with and we share so many values and so many common interests.”
“Valuable strategic partnership”? Of the kind that necessitates slapping the “strategic partner” with 50% tariffs while giving a free pass to the “adversary”? “Shared values” and “so many common interests”? The least the US secretary of state could do is spare us the duplicity.
Does Rubio expect Indians to have the memory of a goldfish? Social media is still rife with images of America’s top diplomat cracking up at the Oval Office in the presence of Shehbaz Sharif and Asim Munir, the man who orchestrated the Pahalgam terror attack, a few months after the heinous crime took place. As mature democracies and partners, both India and the US should be able to continue with their strategic partnership without demanding mutual exclusivity. America might be guided by legitimate national interests in keeping Pakistan close. India equally needs to maintain its close strategic ties, defence and energy partnership with Russia. What America cannot do, is expect India to work against its own national interest and sever ties with Russia while Trump hosts Pakistan’s military dictator at the Oval Office, the man India holds responsible for masterminding one of the worst terror attacks known to humanity. Trump calls Munir “an exceptional human being”, a “fantastic” man, his “favourite field marshal” thrice a week, almost as if to rub India’s nose in the dirt. The US president is entitled to his opinion, but it can’t be the defining principle of India-US ties.
As Evan A. Feigenbaum, a senior diplomat and former policy advisor in the George W Bush administration writes, “the United States and India often differ on Pakistan, but Washington had been sensitive to New Delhi’s equities and tried to shape US policies accordingly. Trump’s fulsome praise for Islamabad and dealmaking with Pakistan’s army and government now raise obvious concerns in New Delhi that this too has gone by the wayside. And these concerns have been amplified exponentially because Trump’s moves came within weeks of the April 22 terrorist attack that killed twenty-six Indian civilians in Pahalgam and led to a new outbreak of hostilities between the two countries.” Secretary Rubio is presumably here to smooth over a fraught relationship and resuscitate a moribund Quad. He should restrict himself to sounding thoroughly transactional, like asking India to buy more American oil and reminding Indian companies of their commitment to purchase $500 billion worth of American goods. That, at least, is an honest approach. Trump, with all his onerous behaviour might be more authentic about the state of the relationship.
Supposedly a frontrunner for 2029 US presidential campaign along with US vice-president JD Vance, Rubio is a clever man. Highly articulate, ‘wicked smart’ and a seasoned diplomat who has set about ‘repairing’ ties after his boss undid 25 years of painstaking diplomacy and took the US-India relationship to the cleaners. But he should not insult our intelligence. Let us not pretend that the past year did not happen, or Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones descended from the silver screen to wipe our collective memory clean with the ‘Neuralyzer’.
In its report ahead of Rubio’s visit to India, the New York Times observes, “Mr. Rubio is in India playing cleanup for Mr. Trump, who tried to cripple the country’s economy with high tariffs last summer after Mr. Modi, the prime minister, refused to nominate the American president for a Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Trump had insisted that he played a crucial role in getting India and Pakistan to reach a cease-fire after each country had carried out deadly military strikes against the other.”
To its credit, the American newspaper has got the framing right. The single most reason why Trump imposed tariffs on India for buying Russian oil, and did not in the case of China, the biggest buyer, or America’s European allies, was that he was mighty pissed at New Delhi denying him the fake credit for India-Pakistan ceasefire.
The reason was so incredibly petty, so utterly devoid of rationale or common sense that commentators, analysts, journalists and the like offered all sorts of other reasons, but the obvious one.
And that was just the beginning of a comprehensive assault on bilateral ties authored by Trump whose callous disregard for what Rubio claimed on Sunday a “very solid and strong, strategic partnership… one of the most important ones in the world” is matched only by his limitless ability to set the floor consistently lower till it completely collapsed.
Rubio should not expect Indians to forget so soon how his boss through a social media post, announced “Remember, while India is our friend, we have, over the years, done relatively little business with them because their Tariffs are far too high, among the highest in the World, and they have the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary Trade Barriers of any Country. Also, they have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of ENERGY, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE — ALL THINGS NOT GOOD! INDIA WILL THEREFORE BE PAYING A TARIFF OF 25%, PLUS A PENALTY FOR THE ABOVE, STARTING ON AUGUST FIRST. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. MAGA!”
India pointed out that the US and EU continue to do big business with Russia in terms of fertilizers, mining products, chemicals, iron and steel and machinery and transport equipment, and that the “targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable.”
A few days later Trump followed it up with another 25% hike in tariffs, holding India solely responsible for bankrolling Russian war, all the while giving a free pass to China, the biggest buyer by far of Russian hydrocarbons. When Trump singled out India, several European nations were still actively buying Russian energy, specifically LNG and pipeline gas worth billions of dollars. While the EU had largely banned seaborne crude, it had not yet banned Russian LNG or pipeline gas. In 2025, the EU spent approximately $7.8 billion on Russian LNG alone.
So, India was singled out not only for refusing to acknowledge Trump’s mythical role in the India-Pakistan ceasefire, or refusal to nominate him for the Nobel prize, but also because Trump wanted to show New Delhi its place. His interventionism in India’s foreign policy, his coercive measures to dictate India’s energy procurement were designed to simultaneously display his awesome power, and he sought to do so by repeatedly humiliating New Delhi with harsh words and juvenile insults.
India chose reticence over retaliation. But that does not mean we have forgotten everything.
It is not just about the juvenile behaviour, or the racist characterisations about India and Indians that Trump and senior figures around him made commonplace. The structural underpinnings of the ties are now under threat that no amount of smooth talking from Rubio may fix.
Trump is messing with India’s effort to ensure plentiful and cheap energy to its people. He has drawn Pakistan closer in an ever-tightening embrace, made it the fulcrum of America’s West Asia policy. He is seeking a détente with China, treating its own allies and partners as supplicants (including India) to be squeezed for resources, and his reckless war against Iran has struck a body blow to India’s macroeconomic stability.
Trump’s war has severely disrupted India’s energy security by effectively shutting down transit through the Strait of Hormuz. This maritime chokepoint facilitates nearly half of India’s crude imports and 90% of its LPG needs. The conflict has forced India into emergency supply diversification, triggered domestic shortages of LPG and LNG, and heightened macroeconomic risks like inflation, widening of current account deficit and downward pressure on the rupee. Each of these actions, by itself, is enough to interfere with the stability of India-US ties and cause a fatal rupture.
During his remarks at the US embassy event on Sunday, Rubio told the audience – with India’s foreign minister Jaishankar in the room – that “I want you to know that part of my visit here is also to reinforce how important this relationship is, how exciting it is, and how many opportunities we have to do things together. If I think about all of the key issues and all of the key opportunities of the modern economy, India and the United States together are perfectly positioned, are perfectly positioned to work together on these issues to achieve a better life for the people of the United States, for the people of India, and frankly for the people of other countries working together as well.”
These tall words sit uneasy with the fact that under Trump Washington might be inching towards what former foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale calls a “de facto G2” where an ascendant China and accommodative US may “increasingly behave like major powers setting the terms of the global order.”
The US-India strategic partnership in the post-Cold War order was built on the central premise of shared concern over China’s rise. From the 2008 Civil Nuclear Agreement, the Quad, the iCET, TRUST, Pax Silica, and deepening of defence cooperation, every major institutional advance in the partnership was underwritten by a common interest in preventing Chinese dominance of the Indo-Pacific. Trump’s accommodation with Beijing removes the foundational logic of this partnership.
India, consequently, finds itself simultaneously penalised with punitive tariffs and deprived of the strategic cover that Washington’s posture had provided. Trump has also demonstrated a profound disregard for India’s core security and economic interests through his senseless Iran war. For India, a stable West Asia is not a remote foreign policy abstraction, but an absolute necessity for energy security, maritime trade, and the safety of millions of its diaspora workers.
For Trump to suddenly appear over the phone during the live event in New Delhi and in his characteristic bombast, claim that he “loves India”, that he is a “big fan of Prime Minister Modi”, and that “we’ve never been closer to India… anything India wants, they get…” is not just discourteous, it’s condescending.
In his infinite hubris, Trump might think that base flattery can fix broken relationships, but that’s not how it rolls here in this part of the world. Stay transactional, Mr secretary of state. Tell us what we can do for you
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Jim
Then vote for Kamala. Piss off complaining.
Don’t waste your time smearing our future President. Rubio has balls - he has shown that clear as day. Rubio has spoken truth in the face of the enemy and not backed down.
Vance, on the other hand, is alledgedlly married to an ACTUAL person of Indian descent whose kids are learning how to worship a blue elephant. So that and his weakness on so many other things cancel out his hypnotic blue eyes.
Vance is a no-go. Rubio is the next nominee and President.
India is rife with corruption. That is the main reason it can not become a rich country. Corruption strangles competition. Although things have improved a bit since Modi’s party has taken over from the socialist Congress party. Modi is a capitalist through and through.
ANOTHER F ING FOREIGNER WRITING GARBAGS....GET OUT .
Rubio has already declared he will not be running for president if VP Vance is running. I don’t expect Rubio to go back on his words.
The Ukrainians are deadly serious about drones and Russian oil exports.
Indians should consider pipeline construction on the Arabian Peninsula.
He must be over the target...
Yet another example of national interest in which the power structure has forgotten nothing, but also has learned nothing.
They recount all the slights and actions taken against their interests, yet never do anything to compromise on criticisms or disagreements with others on their own actions and the impact it has on active trading partners.
Time for the Indian governing powers to put on their big boy pants and grow up. They are no longer a satrapy of the British Empire. Stop blaming the Anglophile world for all your woes.
I thought I read that the Vance’s kids are being raised Catholic.
Of the kind that necessitates slapping the “strategic partner” with 50% tariffs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That was to balance the high tariffs that India imposed on US goods that had gone unanswered for years, IIRC.
You’re a big country, on friendly terms with Russia; why don’t you fix your problems with Pakistan, instead of blaming us for them? And if you’d get rid of your supposedly illegal caste system, maybe your country wouldn’t be such a hell-hole.
Then the Ukranians should expect nuclear weapons to be used.There is a limit to how far Ukraine can push before that is a consideration. Russia came close to using a tactical nuke before. Biden got Modi & Xi to talk to Putin and stop that. If Ukraine seriously threatens Russia, nukes will come into play and the recent attack using Oreshnik hypersonic missiles were a warning that no air defence would be enough if Russia upped the ante.
We need to stop importing sub-continent trash scammers.
If India’s Deep State are not happy campers...
I am delighted.
“That was to balance the high tariffs that India imposed on US goods that had gone unanswered for years, IIRC.”
25% of the tariff was for the purchase of Russian oil which wasn’t put on China - the biggest purchaser, Turkey or the EU. India was singled out. Cant call a country your strategic partner, put sanctions and then expect no pushback.
I would never insult a liberals inteligence.
I would first have to establish that they do infact have inteligence.
JD has a remarkable 3-D grasp of domestic and international situations and risks, and possesses an ability to articulate, most clearly and concisely, what challenges we face, by whom, and what we are (or should be) doing about them.
I like Marco, but he's a bit more of a vague schmoozer (good talent for a diplomat) and does not have the Military gravitas that only comes with the wearing of the uniform.
JD for POTUS, and I'll go for Marco or Ron as Veep.
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