At the ninth Carnegie Global Technology Summit, as global tech and policy leaders converged in New Delhi to discuss digital futures, the conversation inevitably turned to geopolitics. And when Dr Ashley Tellis speaks on this subject, people listen. As the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Tellis has long been a keen observer—and architect—of the US-India relationship.
In a candid conversation, he unpacked the growing dissonance between India’s public optimism about its relationship with the United States and the more nuanced, occasionally uneasy, reality underneath.
“India is making a really concerted effort to protect the relationship with the United States,” Tellis said, noting that this sometimes translates into a level of enthusiasm that might seem “exaggerated.” But the reason, he emphasized, isn’t duplicity—it’s diplomacy. “The optimism is not fake. But it is exaggerated… to protect the relationship.”
This strategic optimism, Tellis argued, becomes especially salient under administrations like Donald Trump’s, where policy coherence is often sacrificed at the altar of personal instinct. “Trump represents a remarkable deviation from the baseline,” Tellis noted. “It is not obvious to me that he cares very much about preserving a favorable balance of power in Asia.”
According to Tellis, where past presidents—Clinton, Bush, Obama—saw India as a crucial part of the Indo-Pacific balance and an ideological partner, Trump’s vision was narrower: a transactional view centered on trade and bilateral optics, with only a vague sense of strategic benefit. “He thinks of the relationship in very narrow bilateral terms… commercial opportunities, maybe some vague strategic benefits because India is a democracy,” he said.
And yet, India remains hopeful—particularly when it comes to technology. With long-stalled defence technology deals potentially moving forward, New Delhi is once again looking to Washington for a breakthrough.
Tellis, cautiously optimistic, believes the trend line is positive. “The willingness to sell more and more advanced technology to India has been growing for 20 years.” But he didn’t mince words about the caveats.
One major hurdle is operational compatibility. “The US is most liberal with technology transfers if we are actually operating with the recipient of the technologies. Which is why our allies get first dibs,” he explained. For India to truly benefit, it must do more than buy American hardware—it must drill, train, and think operationally alongside the US military.
Then there’s the money. “US technology is expensive—it’s designed for a first-world military. India’s defence budget, while large in absolute terms, is modest in comparison to NATO countries or even Saudi Arabia.”
So what’s the way forward? For Tellis, the answer lies in “high-value, low-density” assets—technologies that offer strategic leverage without breaking the bank. “India might buy four P-8 anti-submarine platforms, not a hundred. It’s not going to replace 3,000 Russian tanks with US-made ones.”
He cited the Stryker armoured vehicle program as a test case. “If India does a one-for-one replacement of its BMPs and BTRs with US Strykers, that would be quite remarkable.”
But all this progress exists within a relationship still shadowed by history. When asked if it’s valid for India to worry that the US might walk away in a crisis, Tellis didn’t equivocate. “If I were in India’s place, I would have that fear.”
The core issue, he said, is structural: “The United States is a global hegemonic power. It has interests all over the world. The US-India relationship is just one dimension of those interests.”
And this complexity is not going away. “We will never be perfectly congruent. There will be dissonance. And we have to constantly be looking for ways to manage that dissonance when it arrives.”
In closing, Tellis commented on a geopolitical wildcard: the rumor that former President Trump might appear in Moscow alongside Vladimir Putin on May 9. Would it happen?
“If it does,” Tellis said bluntly, “it would be a very tragic day for us.” Watch the full interview to get more candid insights from an expert insider known for speaking his mind.
