THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
Seventy-five years of broken promises, double standards, and cold strategic calculation — why India must never mistake American interests for American friendship.
A Political Analysis
There is a lie that has been told to India for decades. It goes like this: America is a friend of democracy, a champion of the rules-based order, and a natural partner for the world’s largest democratic nation. It is a beautiful lie. And India has paid a heavy price every time it has believed it.
The truth, written not in diplomatic speeches but in the cold record of history, is far less flattering. The United States has never been a genuine friend of India. It has been a calculating power that has used, undermined, armed India’s enemies, protected terrorists, and lectured India on restraint — all while pursuing its own interests with ruthless consistency.
This is not anti-Americanism. This is history. And history does not lie.
America sent a nuclear-armed warship to threaten India while Pakistan was committing genocide. That is not the act of a friend. That is the act of a power that sees India as an obstacle.
The Bay of Bengal, December 1971
When America Chose Genocide Over Justice
Let us begin with the most damning chapter. In 1971, the Pakistani military launched one of the most brutal campaigns of mass murder in modern history against the Bengali people of East Pakistan. Conservative estimates place the death toll at 300,000. Other historians say it was three million. Women were raped in systematic campaigns. Intellectuals were executed. Villages were burned.
What did the United States do? It sent the USS Enterprise — a nuclear-armed aircraft carrier — into the Bay of Bengal. Not to stop the genocide. Not to protect civilians. But to intimidate India, which had intervened to stop the slaughter and liberate what would become Bangladesh.
President Nixon privately called Prime Minister Indira Gandhi names too offensive to repeat. His National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, who openly despised India, coordinated with China to pressure New Delhi. The CIA actively worked to destabilize India’s government. All of this is now on the public record — declassified documents, Kissinger’s own memoirs, Nixon’s tapes.
The reason? Cold War calculation. Pakistan was America’s bridge to China. India was in the way. Three million lives — or even 300,000 — were an acceptable price for geopolitical convenience. That is the America that stood against India in its finest hour.
The Terrorist’s Best Friend
For decades, the United States gave billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan — a state whose intelligence service, the ISI, was openly running terrorist training camps. This was not a secret. American senators knew. American generals knew. The CIA knew. They funded it anyway.
In the 1980s, America armed and trained the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Those same fighters became the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the global jihad movement that has since killed thousands — including nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. America created the monster that eventually bit it. India warned this would happen. Nobody listened.
Then came the masterpiece of hypocrisy. After the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008 — when Pakistani-trained terrorists killed 166 people including foreign nationals — the world watched evidence pile up linking the attacks to Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus. The Lashkar-e-Taiba handlers were traced. The training camps were identified. The phone calls were intercepted.
America’s response to India? Restraint. Dialogue. Do not escalate.
Compare this to America’s own response after 9/11. It invaded two countries. It launched drone strikes across six nations. It operated secret prisons across three continents. When America bleeds, the rules-based order demands immediate war. When India bleeds, the rules-based order demands patience.
The Nuclear Lie
In 1998, India tested nuclear weapons at Pokhran. It was a sovereign decision by a democratic nation facing real nuclear threats from both Pakistan and China. America’s response was immediate and punishing — crippling economic sanctions designed to bring India to its knees.
Meanwhile, Pakistan — which had also tested nuclear weapons — received gentler treatment. And Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, AQ Khan, was running the world’s most dangerous nuclear black market, selling bomb designs to North Korea, Libya, and Iran. When this was finally exposed, Pakistan placed Khan under comfortable house arrest. America accepted this arrangement. Khan died peacefully in 2021, a national hero in Pakistan.
The message to India was unmistakable: the rules apply to you, not to America’s clients.
The $686 Million Question
In December 2025, the United States approved a $686 million package to upgrade Pakistan’s F-16 fighter jets — including advanced radar systems, encrypted communications, and avionics that will keep these aircraft lethal until 2040. This announcement came in the shadow of India’s Operation Sindoor, following Pakistani-backed terror attacks on Indian soil.
The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency told Congress the deal “will not alter the basic military balance in the region.” This is the kind of statement that insults the intelligence of every Indian who reads it. You are arming a state that sponsors terrorism against India, upgrading its air force with cutting-edge American technology, and then telling India not to worry.
This is not an accident. This is policy. Pakistan is a lever — a tool America uses to ensure India never becomes too independent, too powerful, too confident in charting its own course. A strong, self-reliant India that answers to no one is America’s strategic nightmare. A South Asia kept perpetually unstable by the India-Pakistan conflict is far more manageable.
America does not have friends. It has interests. And India has never been an American interest — only an American instrument.
The Fundamental Truth of US Foreign Policy
(1) The Hypocrisy Is the Point
What makes American duplicity uniquely infuriating is not the self-interest — every great power acts in its own interest. It is the relentless moral posturing that accompanies every act of cynicism.
America invaded Iraq in 2003 on fabricated evidence, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and destroying an entire civilization — while lecturing the world about democracy and human rights. It destabilized Libya, leaving a failed state where open slave markets operate today — while talking about freedom and dignity. It spent twenty years and two trillion dollars in Afghanistan, left the Taliban stronger than ever — while preaching about nation-building and women’s rights.
And through all of this, whenever India faced cross-border terrorism, whenever Pakistani-sponsored attacks killed Indian citizens, America’s message was the same: be calm, be measured, engage in dialogue. The superpower that bombed seven countries simultaneously was counselling the victim of terrorism to show restraint.
(2) Then Why Does India Engage With America At All?
This is the right question. And the answer reveals India’s growing strategic maturity.
India engages with America not out of trust, but out of calculation. America is the world’s largest economy. Its technology sector is irreplaceable. Its universities educate Indian engineers who drive global innovation. Its markets absorb Indian exports. The QUAD framework, whatever its limitations, provides diplomatic ballast against Chinese aggression.
India takes from America what is useful. It buys weapons — and simultaneously buys Russian weapons, French weapons, Israeli weapons. It joins American-led forums — and simultaneously sits in BRICS, the SCO, and maintains warm ties with Russia. It welcomes American investment — and protects its strategic industries from American dominance.
This is not hypocrisy. This is wisdom. This is what civilizational confidence looks like.
(3) India Is Not Pakistan — And America Is Learning This
For decades, America treated India the way it treated its other partners — as a nation that could be managed with carrots and sticks. Offer aid, threaten sanctions, apply pressure, expect compliance. It worked with Pakistan. It worked with Saudi Arabia. It worked across much of the developing world.
It has never worked with India. Not under Nehru, who created Non-Alignment and defied both superpowers. Not under Indira Gandhi, who faced down Nixon’s nuclear threat and won. Not under Vajpayee, who tested nuclear weapons despite American warnings. Not under Modi, who refused to sanction Russia despite enormous Western pressure, and who launched Operation Sindoor without seeking Washington’s permission.
India’s strategic autonomy is not a policy position. It is a civilizational value — rooted in thousands of years of history, in the knowledge that this land has survived empires that no longer exist. India does not need validation from Washington. India needs respect. And respect, in the language of geopolitics, must be earned through strength, not requested through friendship.
Final Verdict
The United States has never been a friend of India. The historical record — from the genocide of 1971 to the F-16 deals of 2025 — is unambiguous. America has armed India’s enemies, shielded state sponsors of terrorism, applied double standards on nuclear weapons, and consistently told India to accept what no self-respecting nation should accept.
But India’s answer is not anger. It is not isolation. It is something far more powerful: clarity. Clarity about who America is. Clarity about what India needs. And the quiet, unshakeable confidence of a civilization that has outlasted every empire that ever tried to manage it.
America needs India far more than India needs America’s friendship. The sooner Washington understands this, the more honest — and perhaps more genuinely productive — the relationship between these two great nations can become.
Until then, India’s position is simple: We will engage. We will trade. We will cooperate where interests align. But we will not be managed. We will not be bullied. And we will never, ever mistake American interests for Indian friendship.
References
1.https://www.indiandefensenews.in/2026/05/us-clears-686-million-f-16-radar.html?m=1
2.https://soldierspeaks.org/us-f-16-upgrade-for-pakistan-us-dollars-686m-deal/
3.https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/us-approves-686-million-f-16-fighter-jet-support-package-for-pakistan-2025-12-11-1021260
4.https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/02-May-2026/pakistans-f-16-jets-to-stay-operational-till-2040-under-new-488mn-us-deal
5.https://www.rt.com/india/629316-us-approves-sale-of-f/amp/
