US Secretary of State Marco Rubio landed in India on Saturday for his four-day official visit. This high-profile diplomatic visit is being interpreted as a deliberate effort by the US to mend bilateral ties that have experienced unprecedented friction over the past year and rescue the traditional US-India alliance from various challenges.
Relations between the two democracies got complicated after US President Donald Trump imposed severe tariffs on Indian imports, creating significant economic and strategic strain. Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), foreign policy expert Sadanand Dhume noted that Rubio will find an Indian foreign policy establishment and commentariat "more wary of the United States than at any other time this century." Rubio's packed agenda, which spans economic cooperation, trade negotiations and strategic security, appears to be a concerted push by the US to re-anchor a pivotal partnership that had begun to drift under a highly transactional American foreign policy.
