When Marco Rubio was confirmed as US Secretary of State last year, fireworks of optimism went off in New Delhi. Given his years as a senator championing a pro-India, staunchly anti-China posture, policymakers anticipated an unprecedented alignment.
However, as Rubio arrives in India on Saturday for a four-day visit spanning Kolkata, Agra, Jaipur and New Delhi, he enters a relationship strained by transactional politics, structural deadlock and mounting strategic unease over Washington’s recent moves.
While the Indian Embassy in Washington has hailed Rubio’s trip as a “new chapter” in bilateral ties, Rubio’s first visit to India as US President Donald Trump’s top diplomat and national security adviser is expected to focus largely on damage control.
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That includes briefing Indo Pacific partner New Delhi on Trump’s high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month, an event that left India rather prominently on the outside looking in.
India received no such call. Instead, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government was left to parse a stark shift from the adversarial, anti-China posture India relied upon during the previous Joe Biden administration.
