Opinion Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: India-US deal is one-sided. It creates vulnerabilities

The second is the economic pragmatists. The agreement is better than the status quo. It removes Russia-related punitive tariffs. It gives India renewed access to the US market, potentially restoring competitiveness for Indian exports. It may consolidate India’s trajectory toward openness and allow a China-plus-one strategy to come back into play. As a bonus, it might even induce reforms, shaking up entrenched positions on GMOs and non-food agriculture. How all this plays out is anyone’s guess. There is no detailed agreement yet, and its success will depend as much on domestic reforms, competitor behaviour, and the evolution of Sino-US relations as on anything written on paper.

But even if we acknowledge that the agreement has some pragmatic economic potential, it does not pass the smell test. For starters, this is not a reciprocal free-trade agreement. As Trump has made clear, America is not playing for reciprocal equality; it is playing for imperial domination. Even on its own terms, the agreement reflects this asymmetry. The new tariff regime is worse for India than what existed before Trump came to power. In a manner reminiscent of 19th-century imperial trade, the tariff structure favours the United States: India cuts tariffs to zero, while the US imposes rates as high as 18 per cent. More astonishing still, India has committed to purchasing $500 billion worth of American goods over five years. Which free-trade agreement contains a one-way obligation by one party to massively purchase goods from the other?

This commitment can also distort India’s policy choices. Purchase targets of this magnitude risk reshaping industrial strategy and building resilience by fiat rather than design. They are also likely to be met only through a major reorientation of defence procurement, with profound strategic consequences. This is not an agreement for free trade and openness, despite the ideologically mystifying language of our economists. It is an agreement for mercantilist extraction, one that increases vulnerability.

Trade is never just about trade. India’s strategic abdications are already visible. India’s position on the Ukraine war was a classic case of evasion. But being compelled under duress to do what one might have chosen on principle, namely, to stop purchases of Russian oil, is something else altogether.

Does anyone remember when our government proudly declared that no power would be allowed to define India’s relations with third countries? That claim now rings hollow. We routinely allow it to happen. The ultimate repercussions for India-Russia relations will depend on many contingencies, including the outcome of the war in Ukraine. But the blunt truth is already evident: India’s relations with other states are increasingly determined not by its own judgement, but by external pressure. We are now putting ourselves formally under surveillance on this score.

As long as both India and America remain open societies, the organic sinews of connection between them can be powerful. These connections are real, and they matter. But they should not be confused with strategic alignment at the level that counts for national security.

The designs and political economy of the American state are something else altogether. The United States does not see India as a strategic partner in the arenas that matter most to India’s security, its immediate neighbourhood. On Pakistan, Washington has repeatedly subordinated Indian concerns to short-term American objectives, and will continue to do so. Historically, the United States has frequently had an interest in managing, rather than resolving, regional conflict, keeping them below the threshold of explosion while retaining leverage over all parties.

Even on China, the supposed cornerstone of Indo-US convergence, the jury remains out. The United States’ primary objective is not to secure India’s rise, but to manage China’s power on terms favourable to itself. India figures in this strategy less as an autonomous pole and more as an instrument, useful when pressure is needed, dispensable when expedient. The history of great-power politics suggests that such instrumental alignments are reversible, and often abruptly so. To call this agreement a strategic breakthrough is a gross abuse of language.

Liberal internationalist wars in the name of democracy promotion have indeed receded. But this should not be mistaken for a retreat from imperial power. What has replaced them is a more arbitrary and transactional assertion of dominance, one that relies on sanctions, tariffs, regulatory coercion, financial leverage and even military intervention. The United States increasingly demands regulatory conformity even in domains that ought to fall squarely within domestic jurisdiction: Regulatory regimes, trade standards, data regimes. In its engagement with others, sovereignty is not denied in principle, but hollowed out in practice.

American agreements are no longer anchored in stable institutional commitments. The framework agreement reflects this reality. Formally, it gives both sides room to renegotiate. Substantively, however, it embeds asymmetries that favour American leverage. Recent experience has shown that when pressure is applied, it is India that blinks.

Acknowledging power asymmetry is realism. To internalise it so completely that one relinquishes independent judgement is something else. We might want to, in the name of pragmatism, give in; we could even make the best of this deal in a way that the consequences are not bad. But this is not a triumph. The perfume of official announcements cannot disguise the stench of our own diminishment.

The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express