The Continuing US Attack on Indian Non-Alignment

S Jaishankar in Vienna (2023). Photograph Dean Calma / IAEA, Wikimedia Commons

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“We are very much wedded to strategic autonomy because it’s very much a part of our history and our evolution. It’s something which is very deep, and it’s something which cuts across the political spectrum as well.”

— S. Jaishankar at the Munich Security Conference

by Richard Steinhardt

The objective of US corporate imperialism is constant: to end India’s strategic autonomy and non-alignment and absorb it into a US-led front in opposition to the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. The United States, a ruthless global capitalist power, now sees India not as a partner but as a replacement for China: a source of cheap labour, a manufacturing base where costs can be affordably externalised, a market for US-owned (if not manufactured) goods, and a future proxy against the China–Russia alliance.

The historical record from the 1950s to the present demonstrates that the US has made continual efforts to compromise India’s sovereignty. Multipolarity has arrived, it seems, but Washington’s war-gamers are hoping for a last-minute trick shot in their basketball game of geopolitics. The US is currently deploying every tool in the box (though it is somewhat distracted by its many wars and subterfuge campaigns elsewhere) to attempt to extract India from BRICS and integrate it into the unconvincing fantasy of a future world order dominated by the clearly unhinged US foreign policy establishment.

CIA operations have been deployed, and a wide range of pressures applied (up to and including assassination) against India’s strategic independence since the 1950s. John Foster Dulles declared in June 1956 that neutrality was ‘an immoral and short-sighted conception.’ India, as a founding member of The Non-Aligned Movement, became a primary target of systematic American efforts to undermine its independent foreign policy. During the Cold War, the US prioritised its alliance with Pakistan, signing the 1954 Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement with Pakistan to provide military and economic aid. The USA viewed India’s non-alignment as a refusal to side with the West. This military aid to Pakistan was later used by India’s Muslim neighbour against India in the 1965 and 1971 wars.

CIA operations were mounted to prevent communist electoral victories in Indian states. When the Communist Party came to power in Kerala in 1957, the CIA attempted to undermine the Keralan government. Harry A. Rositzke, the first chief of the CIA’s Soviet division, was moved to New Delhi as station chief. CIA officer Duane Clarridge arrived in 1960 with a clear mandate to “stop the Communist advance.”

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In 1967, a Ramparts magazine exposé revealed CIA funding to anti-communist parties and individuals in India. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former US Ambassador to India, explicitly confirmed in his 1978 memoir that the CIA had intervened in Indian domestic politics on at least two occasions by funnelling money to the ruling Congress party to thwart communist electoral victories in West Bengal and Kerala.

The Nixon administration’s hostility during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, included the deployment of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal. America was willing to confront India directly and India saw this move as an attempt to intimidate India in support of Pakistan. Pakistan became the frontline of the US strategy to destabilise the Soviet Union with a $3.2 billion military and economic assistance package in 1981. The US–Pakistan alliance was against non-aligned India that refused to side with US strategic interests and a base of operations for the USA military and intelligence operating in Afghanistan.

The US attempted destabilisation of India in the 1970s must be seen in the context of the destabilisation of Afghanistan, when the unwritten compacts of non interference in the region, respecting the independence and sovereignty of non-aligned states were definitively torn up. The Total Revolution movement in 1974-75 (with the cooperation of useful idiots like Raj Narain) posed a significant challenge to governability of India and were the key factor in creating the political instability that led Indira Gandhi to declare a state of emergency in 1975. Jayaprakash Narayan was the central figure in this movement and it is no coincidence that he was previously honorary president of the Congress for Cultural Freedom’s India chapter, a well known CIA-front.

Neither was it a coincidence that Indira Gandhi, who declared the Emergency to stabilise India, was later assassinated by agents of the Khalistan Sikh extremist movement. Separatists, led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, had been supported since 1971 by the CIA. Indira Gandhi had told foreign leaders that the CIA was involved in causing unrest in Punjab.

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The United States perceives BRICS and non-alignment as direct challenges to its global dominance and aggressively pressures key members of BRICS like India to sever strategic ties with Russia through threatened and imposed tariffs, sanctions legislation like CAATSA, and demands to stop purchasing Russian oil and military equipment.

This forceful approach by the USA led to a February 2026 agreement where India committed to purchasing $500 billion in US goods and tariff reductions on US goods in exchange for relief from Trump’s tariffs on India. According to Trump, ‘Tariff’ is one of the most beautiful words in the dictionary. Effectively US tariffs are a protection payment. The US continues its long-term push to dismantle India’s own defence industry and India’s defence relationship with Russia, offering India in return the possibility of purchasing costly and high maintenance F-35 jets.

Despite US pressure, India maintains strong defence cooperation with Russia, including BrahMos missiles, AK-203 production, S-400 systems, Sukhoi licensed production, and a nuclear submarine lease agreed in December 2025. The Russian Federation and India have long-standing military-technical cooperation, with the T-72 and T-90 tanks which are the backbone of India’s armoured forces and licensed production of Su-30 fighters. In addition, India and Russia jointly produce the PJ-10 BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, and Indo-Russian Rifles Private Limited has been producing AK-203 assault rifles in India since 2019 for the Indian army.

In September 2025, the fourth meeting of the working subgroup of the Russian-Indian intergovernmental commission was held in St. Petersburg to develop action plans for bilateral military cooperation for 2025–2026, covering defence cooperation, military training, and joint exercises.

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Bilateral trade between India and the Russian Federation reached $68.7 billion in 2024–25, primarily in Russian oil, with January 2026 still showing significant imports. Despite the February 2026 trade deal, India has issued no formal commitment on halting Russian oil, maintained deliberate vagueness on implementation, and has revised the $500 billion commitment from a firm promise to an intent.

India’s response to US pressure to abandon non-alignment must be strategic: resist where necessary, modify where possible, and never mistake US pressure for an equal respectful partnership. The danger is that the US might decide to carry out a regime change operation in India itself if the Indian government shows insufficient concessions to US interests. The USA recently leveraged such regime change operations successfully against both Imran Khan of Pakistan and Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh.

Despite US pressure, the geopolitical reality of India demands cautious non-alignment. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stated:

“Despite geopolitical challenges and great pressure on India both in public and in private, India has made a conscious decision that the country will not only continue close contacts with Russia but will also deepen and expand our interaction.”

There is now the additional consideration: the insurrectionary soft power of NGOs funded by CIA cut-outs like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). US deployment of AI and satellite technology as a tool of influence, subversion and hostile intelligence gathering must be taken into account.

Indian security analysts have raised urgent warnings about Starlink’s proposed India launch. The government has tightened security oversight following incidents where Starlink equipment was found to have been operated in Iran in order to coordinate attempted regime change there, and where Starlink routers and antennas were discovered to be in use by militant groups in Manipur in December 2024. .

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India is at the technological frontier of strategic vulnerability. Starlink and AI are serious potential weapons of intrusion and manipulation the USA can use against India. The use of these tools, and of uprisings catalysed by US-funded NGOs, has been exposed in other countries like Iran and Ukraine. The question for India now is how to ensure that a foreign satellite providing commercial service is not secretly acting as a spying satellite for the USA and US allies like Pakistan.

Both Russia and China block Starlink outright, judging that the risks of US-controlled infrastructure outweigh commercial benefits. India’s democratic polity and deep tech sector integration with the US make outright blocking politically costly, creating a security dilemma.

A deeper problem is whether India can transform its domestic political economy to serve its masses rather than its elites, economically powerful elites who are increasingly aligned with US interests. In India, a globally integrated elite class pursues policies that benefit US and Western corporate interests at the expense of domestic majorities.

For example, the farmers’ protests against the February 2026 US trade deal reveal the comprador dynamic: elite decision-makers make concessions that serve US interests despite mass opposition. The $500 billion commitment (intended) and agricultural tariff reductions were negotiated without parliamentary scrutiny and against farmers’ expressed interests. Such policies benefit the Indian ruling class and not the masses, and they are typical of the behaviours of comprador elites. Shamefully, Narendra Modi recently declared that India was siding with Israel.

While India can boast a mature democracy, a space programme, some of the most powerful corporations on earth, a growing economy, impressive educational institutions, expertise in advanced technology and a mature nuclear programme, Indian democracy is undermined and manipulated by powerful economic forces, some of whom are bonded to US interests. The struggle for India’s independent, non-aligned, strategic soul continues.

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Richard Steinhardt is a committed socialist and a radical humanist and has published in the Morning Star and a variety of other communist and socialist publications. He believes that human conscience and understanding should always precede dogma and deterministic formulas posturing as ‘social science’.