America: The Unseen Hurdle in India’s Path to Power
When we think of obstacles to India’s rise as a developed nation by 2047 and as a global superpower today, the usual names—Pakistan and China—dominate the discourse. Yet, the subtler and more consequential hurdle has often been the United States, not through open hostility, but by constraining India’s strategic autonomy and spoiling its relations with natural partners.
Let me tell you why I think so.
Deteriorating relations with friendly countries from Afghanistan to Bangladesh to Russia to Iran
1. India–Iran Relations: From Trusted Ally to Strategic Dilemma
• Once a reliable partner: Iran was not just a cultural and civilizational ally but also India’s third-largest crude supplier, offering cheaper and flexible energy options.
• Gateway to Central Asia: Iran was the golden gate to Central Asia and Eurasia. With Pakistan blocking land access, Iran was India’s natural corridor for trade expansion.
• Chabahar Port Potential: The Chabahar project could have been India’s answer to China’s Gwadar Port, enabling India to project influence in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Middle East. It was also a strategic lever to balance China’s growing footprint.
But then United states entry and situation went south
• America’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA (2018) and the imposition of CAATSA sanctions forced India to halt Iranian crude imports.
• Bilateral trade declined, energy cooperation collapsed, and strategic projects like rail and road networks linked to Chabahar stalled.
• China’s Gain: Into this vacuum stepped Beijing, signing a 25-year comprehensive cooperation agreement with Iran in 2021, securing energy supplies and infrastructure projects that India once had its eyes on.
Just saw the news that Manav’s father passed away. Terrible sad. In 2020, I had interviewed him about his ordeal and the fight for justice for his young son, who had committed suicide because of false allegations of sexual harassment. My heart bleeds
https://t.co/WTJoYZ12bC
BRICS summit just discuss ed de-dollarisation, alternative trade corridors, and reshaping global finance yet Western lenses somehow only manage to focus through the spokes of a bicycle passing a billboard.
Their cameras literally zoom past high-speed rail, digital public infrastructure, and trillion-dollar economies just to capture that one curated frame of "slumdog nostalgia."
If a bicycle passing a poster is all their 4K lenses can register, the problem isn’t India's pace it’s that their journalism is permanently stuck in pedal gear.
@RakeshK32229480 Until people will get civilized it won't happen. People are uncivilized here. 99% of the problem is due to uncivilized people. Nothing else.