By Karan Bhatia

NEW DELHI, India: The United States cannot afford illusions any longer. What we are witnessing is not a minor diplomatic setback with India. It is a strategic collapse born of arrogance, mismanagement, and self-inflicted wounds. 

India, once hailed as America’s natural partner in the Indo-Pacific, is drawing closer to Moscow and even Beijing—not because it wants to, but because Washington has made cooperation intolerable. Every blunder, every tariff, every heavy-handed attempt at control drives New Delhi further away. 

And with India drifting, America is not just losing a partner. It is empowering China.

This is a matter of survival.

The Trump-era tariffs exemplify the rot. They were supposed to protect American workers. Instead, they became a legal and diplomatic disaster—punishing allies, triggering retaliation, and leaving China relatively unscathed. India bore the brunt. 

Washington treated the world’s largest democracy like a trade adversary rather than a partner, slapping tariffs on steel and aluminum, then feigning surprise when New Delhi responded in kind. 

What followed was predictable: distrust, resentment, and a turn toward strategic autonomy. Now, India trades in rupees and rubles, signs energy deals with Russia, and experiments with BRICS mechanisms designed to bypass the dollar.

Washington’s arrogance goes deeper than tariffs. It lectures partners on democracy while ignoring its own hypocrisies. It demands loyalty while offering little beyond sanctions and empty rhetoric. 

Meanwhile, China plays the long game—offering infrastructure, markets, and the respect of treating others as equals. 

For India, as for many in the Global South, the contrast is stark: Washington talks down; Beijing shows up.

But the real disaster looms in Southeast Asia. If India’s drift represents a strategic loss, the erosion of ASEAN partnerships would be catastrophic. 

ASEAN is not just another regional bloc; it is the hinge of the Indo-Pacific, sitting astride the world’s busiest sea lanes and hosting the economies where China and America collide most directly. 

For years, Washington has claimed ASEAN is “central” to its strategy. Yet in practice, ASEAN leaders see neglect, arrogance, and distraction.

Malaysia is a prime example. In recent years, Kuala Lumpur has leaned toward Beijing on trade, investment, and technology. Chinese capital is financing major infrastructure, from ports to railways, while U.S. engagement has been sporadic and largely rhetorical. Instead of strengthening ties, Washington has undermined its credibility by prioritizing secondary theaters like Ukraine over its so-called Indo-Pacific pivot. Every missed opportunity pushes Malaysia further into Beijing’s embrace.

Indonesia tells a similar story. Jakarta has openly pursued multipolar diplomacy and deepened cooperation with BRICS. It has no appetite for becoming Washington’s pawn, especially when U.S. “partnership” comes laced with demands and conditionalities. At the very moment Indonesia is asserting itself as a leader of the Global South, Washington’s heavy-handedness and fixation on China containment risk alienating the world’s fourth-largest nation. China, by contrast, has embedded itself as Indonesia’s top trading partner and a major investor in nickel, energy, and digital infrastructure.

Thailand, long considered a U.S. treaty ally, has also shifted toward hedging. Bangkok’s military and economic elites see more opportunities in Chinese trade, technology, and investment than in American lectures about democracy or security. While Washington obsesses over naval drills in the South China Sea, Beijing is quietly becoming Thailand’s indispensable partner in commerce and connectivity. This is the new reality: even formal allies are recalibrating toward Beijing because U.S. arrogance has made partnership costly.

The danger is clear. If America loses ASEAN, it loses the Indo-Pacific. Without ASEAN, the “pivot” to Asia collapses. Without ASEAN, China gains uncontested access to maritime chokepoints from the Malacca Strait to the South China Sea. 

Without ASEAN, America loses the very geography that defines its strategy. And if India and ASEAN both drift away, the U.S. will be left shouting into the void while China consolidates a new order.

The survival of U.S. influence demands immediate course correction. Tariffs and economic coercion must be abandoned. Protectionism has not weakened China; it has weakened America’s coalition. 

Diplomacy must be recalibrated around humility, not paternalism. India is not a pawn. ASEAN is not a set of chess pieces. Africa is not a lecture hall. These are sovereign powers, and treating them otherwise guarantees they will hedge toward China and Russia.

If Washington cannot learn humility, it will lose the Global South. And once it loses the Global South, it will lose the contest with China—because Beijing’s strength lies not only in its own power, but in America’s mistakes.

The clock is ticking. America still has unmatched assets—technology, finance, military reach—but they are being squandered. 

Tariffs, arrogance, and mismanagement are handing the world to China without a fight. Survival requires a complete reset: practical policies, genuine partnerships, and the humility to accept that the U.S. cannot dictate terms in a multipolar world.

Fail to adapt, and the story of America’s decline will be written not in Beijing, but in Washington’s own hubris.

*Karan Bhatia is a political observer of South Asian and Indo-Pacific affairs based in New Delhi.*