The United States’ regional strategy is marked by a fragmented, command-based approach that creates structural contradictions for India. While INDOPACOM elevates India as a vital partner to balance China, CENTCOM prioritises Pakistan for operational needs in Afghanistan and West Asia. This systemic duality often undermines India's security, as Washington has historically overlooked Pakistan’s nuclear programme and provided military hardware used against India to secure tactical cooperation. India faces the challenge of reconciling its maritime role with immediate land-border threats, necessitating clearer communication of its "red lines" to ensure US policy coherence across geographic commands.
One pattern that has become increasingly evident in the India–US relationship is the United States’ tendency to view global politics through fragmented, command-based strategic compartments, where different regions are governed by distinct military and geopolitical logics. The world is divided into geographic commands such as CENTCOM, which covers West Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of South Asia including Pakistan and Afghanistan, and INDOPACOM, which focuses primarily on maritime Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific. This institutional separation produces structurally different and at times competing hierarchies of strategic priority within US foreign policy. As a result, Pakistan tends to gain salience within CENTCOM’s operational logic due to its relevance in Afghanistan, West Asia, and Iran-related contingencies, while India is primarily elevated within INDOPACOM as a key partner in balancing China. This duality is not episodic but systemic, and it has remained broadly consistent across administrations, shaping both the limits and contradictions of US engagement in South Asia.
US Strategic Engagement with Pakistan and Its Implications for India
This pattern continues today under the Trump administration as well, as Pakistan under Field Marshal Asif Munir has become much more important for him in the context of West Asian dynamics and the ongoing US-Iran crisis. Previously also, under his first Trump presidency, to please Pakistan and get its support in reaching out to a deal with the Taliban, he brought up the idea of mediating on the Kashmir issue multiple times. Similarly, during his term, Obama also at times hyphenated India and Pakistan within a broader regional security context linked to what was often referred to as the Af-Pak framework, with statements and diplomatic communications from his administration at that time suggesting that the US could “nudge the Indians toward those negotiations on Kashmir.” This was aimed at pleasing Pakistan and securing Pakistan’s support in Afghanistan. In all this, India’s interests have been repeatedly been undermined. Importantly, it was during the Bush administration that India’s strategic elevation was started when he saw China as a strategic competitor and took a balance of power approach to engage and elevate partnership with India. India’s importance, therefore, has largely been constructed through the lens of great-power competition in the Indo-Pacific region rather than South Asia itself.
During the Cold War, Pakistan became central to US strategy primarily because of its alignment with Washington. Its proximity to the Soviet Union and potential role in containing communism made it a significant recipient of US military and financial assistance. It also became part of key US-led security architectures such as SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) and CENTO (Central Treaty Organization), etc., which were designed within the broader logic of containing Soviet influence across Asia and the Middle East. This alignment was further consolidated through the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement in the mid-1950s, which institutionalised Pakistan’s role within the US-led Cold War security framework.
For the United States, however, although during the Cold War the primary objective remained the broader containment of communism, this engagement with Pakistan indirectly harmed India’s interests in the region, and the US largely overlooked this, as it was generously providing extensive military and financial assistance to Pakistan throughout the Cold War period. Moreover, importantly, this strategic imperative led Washington to overlook, and strategically under-prioritise, concerns regarding Pakistan’s development of a nuclear weapons programme as well as other strategic capabilities, including its missile programme, which was steadily advancing under its very nose. In fact, under the Pressler Amendment, successive US presidents were required to annually certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device in order for aid to continue, and such certifications were repeatedly provided despite growing intelligence concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear trajectory.
Declassified US intelligence assessments later confirmed that Washington was aware of Pakistan’s advancing nuclear trajectory, but continued to calibrate its response in line with broader geopolitical priorities of the Cold War, particularly containment and later the Afghanistan theatre. The Arms Control Association directly documents this policy approach, noting that during the Soviet–Afghan war the United States adopted a “consciously adopted blind eye” toward Pakistan’s nuclear programme in order to sustain cooperation in Afghanistan.
Pakistan used US-supplied military hardware in its conflicts with India, including the wars of 1962 and 1965, reinforcing India’s perception of US–Pakistan cooperation as indirectly affecting its security concerns. And importantly, in 1971, the United States openly supported Pakistan, as Pakistan itself was able to convince the US of such support during this time because earlier, after 1965, following Pakistan’s use of US weapons against India, the US had imposed an arms embargo on both countries. However, this time in 1971, the US openly supported Pakistan, sent an aircraft carrier into the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India and even encouraged China to attack India, as was revealed recently. As the recently declassified report stated, “At the height of the 1971 India–Pakistan war, as Indian forces moved decisively in East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh became inevitable, US President Richard Nixon privately assured China that Washington would support Beijing if it chose to attack India,” reflecting the depth of US–China–Pakistan strategic alignment against India at that time.
Similarly, again in the post-9/11 period, Pakistan once again became important due to its geographic proximity to Afghanistan and its logistical utility in the US-led war on terror, and Pakistan again started a diplomatic offensive against India. In recent times as well, when India conducted strikes in Balakot, Pakistan once again used US-supplied F-16s against India, further underscoring the continuing strategic complications arising from US military assistance to Pakistan across different phases of the bilateral relationship.
Fragmented Strategic Compartmentalisation and Asymmetric Alignment
Pakistan has always perceived its relationship with US through a different lens—viewing US support as a strategic resource that could be leveraged against India. In this sense, Pakistan has consistently sought to internationalise the Kashmir issue within its engagement with the United States and to translate US-origin military assistance into a relative advantage vis-à -vis India. Its objective has always been to use US support against India, harm it, and bolster its own standing. More importantly, it becomes emboldened whenever it becomes important for the US in any geopolitical calculation, and that creates problems for India. There is a pattern: whenever the US increases its engagement with Pakistan, Pakistan tends to initiate a diplomatic offensive on Kashmir and adopt a more assertive posture toward India, which has at times been accompanied by concerns over cross-border terrorism, as it perceives greater strategic space under US engagement.
From India’s perspective, this US fragmentation in its approach is particularly concerning because it does not take India’s security interests into account, and India’s security challenges are not confined to maritime domains. India simultaneously faces land-border challenges with both Pakistan and China, while US strategic discourse—especially within frameworks like the Quad—tends to focus predominantly on maritime security in the Indo-Pacific. These initiatives focus on sea lanes, connectivity, and balance of power in the maritime domain. When there is any statement from the Quad, it primarily refers to the challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. As a result, India’s most immediate security concerns—land-border threats and broader South Asian challenges—are not always fully integrated into US strategic thinking, despite the deepening partnership between the two countries. This creates a partial alignment between US priorities and India’s broader security realities.
The central issue, therefore, is how this structural dynamic is generating pressures that undermine India’s interests along its borders and within South Asia. If the United States expects India to balance China in the Indo-Pacific, it cannot simultaneously weaken India’s position in its immediate neighbourhood by engaging its adversaries in ways that affect its security environment. The question, then, is how India can effectively balance a more formidable strategic rival like China while facing persistent constraints on its borders and in South Asia. It is true that India is indispensable for Indo-Pacific stability and China balancing, but the question remains how this strategic role can be sustained without coherence across different US regional approaches.
India’s Strategic Imperative
For India, the strategic challenge now lies in clearly communicating how these fragmented US policy domains interact and how decisions taken in one theatre directly undermine its interests in another. There is also a need to highlight how sustained military and financial assistance to Pakistan—regardless of its stated purpose—has historically contributed to reinforcing adversarial dynamics against India. India must clearly and consistently communicate its interests in the region and its red lines to the United States. It also needs to be assertive and unambiguous in its strategic communication to safeguard its national interests, rather than adopting a defensive posture. Although India is a maritime power, its challenges are not limited to the Indian Ocean region.
At the same time, India must continue to strengthen its position within the Indo-Pacific framework, which represents a natural evolution of its expanding strategic role and geopolitical outlook. However, this cannot be fully separated from developments in South Asia, given the interconnected nature of regional security.
Ultimately, the United States faces a structural challenge in reconciling its compartmentalised regional approach with the interconnected realities of South Asia and the Indo-Pacific. Without greater policy coherence across CENTCOM and INDOPACOM, tactical alignments risk generating long-term strategic contradictions—particularly in a region where India remains central to stability, and where China’s rise adds an additional layer of complexity.
* Dr Imran Khurshid is Associate Fellow at Centre for Peace Studies, New Delhi. The views expressed here are his own.
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