Countries that partnered with the United States over the decades subordinated their strategic autonomy, and even national sovereignty, for the benefits that came with it. In its America First era under Donald J. Trump, partners of the U.S. are being asked to bend according to U.S. priorities, but not necessarily with any accompanying benefits. For India, this approach manifested in two developments in quick succession in recent days: the U.S. extended export controls on AI technologies, which will only expand further in the coming days; and it made clear that it cared little for Indian concerns while waging its arbitrary war on Iran along with Israel. And this came after a series of American moves that has had an impact on India’s oil imports.

Countries that signed up at various levels of cooperation with the U.S. got, in return for compromising their strategic autonomy, a security umbrella — nuclear, in the case of Japan, South Korea, and NATO partners; access to capital, technology, and global markets; and U.S. protection in international bodies. For instance, Japan and Germany forfeited an independent military posture and built two of the world’s largest economies within the American framework. South Korea emerged from war to become a technology and manufacturing power under the same umbrella. The Gulf Cooperation Council states accepted U.S. forces on their soil in exchange for security guarantees.

Supremacy and dominance

There was an ideological and moral argument that the U.S. held in support of its own dominant role in world affairs, that it helped promote a combination of electoral democracy and market economics, self-certified by the U.S. as the superior and universally applicable model for human organisation.

The democracy and free market argument has always been weak, as U.S. alliances with GCC countries and Pakistan show. The U.S. leadership of the global commons — freedom of navigation, the international financial system, non-proliferation regimes, pandemic management — advanced American interests but also created stability in the international order. The moral claims of the market-democracy duet have weakened, and even within the U.S. and all advanced economies, there is a widening gap between what the model promised and what it delivered.

America First formally abandoned that ideological facade and announced to the world that all that mattered to the U.S. was its own supremacy and dominance.

Subordination without gains

The isolationism associated with America First politics is valid only in its withdrawal from international commitments — for instance in tackling global crises such as pandemics or climate change. Its more consequential manifestation is the assertion of American dominance without hegemony. The statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissing Indian concerns over the killing of Indian seafarers in the Strait of Hormuz is a stark demonstration of this approach.

Opponents of India’s strategic autonomy always pointed to the benefits of coming under the U.S. umbrella, arguing that the gains would justify even a significant surrender of autonomy. America First has removed the fig leaf of such claims and states it upfront: demanding subordination without any commensurate advantage.

Even the fable of the American security umbrella, for countries that counted on it, is now turning not merely useless but counterproductive, as it is for the Gulf countries. GCC countries are experiencing the cost, not the benefits, of hosting U.S. bases on their soil. Meanwhile, Ukraine, which ended up as a frontline of global power rivalry, is paying a huge cost, though it has a strategic elite that is profiting from it.

What makes America First distinct from conventional U.S. foreign policy is the formal denunciation of any hegemonic veneer and the unfiltered articulation of dominance — power exercised without the obligation of doing good. The notion of exceptionalism and the willingness to assert its own supremacy at all costs has always been a matter of political consensus in the U.S., and remains so even today.

The bitter domestic battle for power masks this consensus, but on questions of using technology, trade, and military means to control the world, Democrats and Republicans, Trumpers and non-Trumpers alike, all seem to agree. What American partners are encountering is a largely bipartisan reality: as the market-democracy compact loses its persuasive power, sheer power takes centre stage in America’s global posture.

Access to technology, capital and markets has been the main attraction of joining the U.S. bandwagon. The U.S. now has little patience to wield these as leverage, and instead uses them as a sledgehammer. Where arguments fail to sustain American power, power becomes the argument.

At the receiving end

India is not particularly unique in being at the receiving end of American unilateralism while trying to keep a straight face as its partner. Closer European allies such as Germany have, in recent years, been forced to completely surrender their strategic autonomy to the swinging moods of the U.S. under Joseph Biden and Donald Trump. The old bargain was friendship with benefits, as the title of Seema Sirohi’s book on India-U.S. relations suggests.

What is on offer now is a partnership that is costly to maintain and costly to leave — like a bad marriage. India’s strategic autonomy — its insistence on independent judgement, its refusal to join alliances, its maintenance of relationships across geopolitical divides — was never mere ideology, as its detractors have argued over the decades. It was a considered assessment of a world where great powers pursue their own interests relentlessly, and often at the cost of their partners.

The case against autonomy has been progressively weakened by the evidence. America First has completed the argument — not by turning U.S. foreign policy on its head, but by removing the filter through which it was previously communicated. India should open its eyes to this reality. Strategic autonomy is not ideology, but a matter of elementary realism.