‘Getting ties on track top priority for both India, US’: Former US national security official Lisa Curtis

US-India dealings were at 1 time described as one of booker taliaferro washington’s to the highest degree important strategic bets in the 21st century. But, over the past year, that partnership has come under serious strain — buffeted by trade disputes, sharp rhetoric, and deep disagreements over Pakistan and Kashmir.Former US national security official Lisa Curtis spoke about the turbulent state of US-India ties on a recent episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Curtis is the co-author (with Richard Fontaine) of a widely circulated essay in Foreign Affairs which argues that the current rupture is not just another rough patch, but rather a potentially consequential turning point.Curtis is the Director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. She is a foreign policy and national security expert with over 20 years of service in the US government, including at the National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, State Department, and Capitol Hill.Curtis spoke with host Milan Vaishnav about the “fit of presidential pride and pique” that has derailed bilateral ties, President Trump’s repeated desire to mediate between India and Pakistan, and the sudden revival in US-Pakistan ties. Plus, the two discussed the long-term consequences of a sustained rupture between the United States and India.“The crisis in the India–US relationship is mostly about President Trump and who he has become in his second term,” explained Curtis. “He’s very emboldened, he doesn’t look at situations from other countries’ points of view, and he expects other countries to do what he wants.” In the first Trump term, in which Curtis served as Senior Director for South and Central Asia at the National Security Council, he had advisers with experience and expertise who could shape the strategies he was pursuing in foreign policy, she said. This time around, “we don’t have that same depth of expertise surrounding him. We have a lot of yes-men — people shaping their advice based on what they think Trump wants to hear — and there’s an unwillingness to look seriously at what other countries care about and what their interests are.”Curtis said that the downswing in US-India ties began with the divergence over how Trump portrayed his role in getting a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May 2025, and India directly contradicting his version of events. “That kicked off the tensions in the relationship, and they’ve snowballed from there,” she suggested.Curtis urged that getting bilateral relations back on track was an urgent priority for both sides. “India is a major country, and the decisions it takes and the direction it moves in will have a huge impact on the Indo-Pacific. Other countries in Southeast Asia look to India and are watching where India goes. India is part of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — two organisations that Russia and China would love to see become stronger and help upend US global power and influence — and India can play a role in determining the direction those organisations go in,” she said. Above all, she warned that if “India seeks a more accommodationist role with China, the rest of the region will too — and that will undermine US global power and enhance China’s ability to become the hegemon it’s seeking to become.”