Landau Warns India: No 'China Mistake' on Capabilities
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- Christopher Landau told the Raisina Dialogue on March 5 that the U.S. "is not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago" in terms of letting India develop markets that then outcompete the U.S.
- External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar responded on the conference's final day that "India's rise will be determined solely by India," without explicitly mentioning Landau's speech.
- The Indian National Congress, India's main opposition party, called Landau's remarks "not only insulting but also anti-India," criticizing the Modi government's recently concluded trade agreement with the U.S.
- A day before Landau's speech, a U.S. submarine sank the Iranian naval vessel IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka's coast, killing at least 87 people; the ship was returning from a multilateral naval exercise hosted by India featuring 18 ships, in which the U.S. itself was a participant.
- India's nonaligned foreign policy has "suffered a body blow," the article argues, with the country hosting a substantial domestic Shiite population, receiving large remittances from Middle East expatriate workers, and importing significant oil from the region.
- Under George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told New Delhi the U.S. wanted India to rise as a great power — a stance that contrasts sharply with the current Trump administration's approach under Landau.
- A February U.S.-India trade agreement is now "in abeyance" following a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Trump's tariffs, adding economic uncertainty to the diplomatic strain.
Why it matters: Two concrete U.S. actions in a single week — a submarine strike on the IRIS Dena and Landau's 'no China mistake' warning — have broken with decades of bipartisan U.S. policy that backed India's rise, from Rice's great-power endorsement to Trump's first-term defense pact. The stakes for New Delhi are immediate: a February trade deal now in limbo after the Supreme Court tariff ruling, defense ties under question, and Modi's credibility as a 'net security provider' in Indian Ocean waters dented as domestic political criticism spreads beyond opposition ranks.
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