‘2026 will be the year of hard decisions’: Brahma Chellaney says India can no longer afford reactive diplomacy

India’s long-prided nonalignment policy has run its course, with the year 2025 exposing the fragility of these ties, said geostrategist Brahma Chellaney. He said for long India’s independent course in world affairs seemed effective, as its nonalignment ensured warm ties with rival powers.

In a column for Nikkei Asia, Chellaney said that a series of external shocks this year revealed India’s structural weaknesses in India’s foreign policy. The cumulative effect of these shocks was a broader loss of strategic room for maneuver, said Chellaney.

The “most jarring shock” came from Washington, said Chellaney, adding that US President Donald Trump’s policy towards a “rising India turned overtly punitive”. The 50 per cent tariff was more than a trade dispute, he said, adding that it was a political signal that India was less of a strategic partner and more of an economic rival to be squeezed.

Chellaney said that Trump’s claims that it mediated the India-Pakistan ceasefire was “diplomatically humiliating” for New Delhi that had invested years in projecting itself as a responsible regional power and net security provider.

The bomhomie enjoyed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump had also evaporated, he said. While Washington showed similar brusqueness towards its other allies including Germany and Japan, the sting was sharper for India, he added.

The freezing of ties with the US immediately impacted India’s neighbourhood too. New Delhi’s assumptions that sustained engagement and economic outreach could manage most relations in the neighbourhood collapsed in 2025.

As the Western pressure doubled, India had to reach out to China to mend relations.

“If 2025 was the year of shocks, 2026 will be the year of hard decisions. India can no longer afford reactive diplomacy cloaked in reassuring slogans,” wrote Chellaney.

He said that the relation with the US remains vital to India’s interests. While Indian officials have said that they won’t negotiate a trade deal with a gun to their head, India has found itself doing exactly that, said Chellaney. India’s BRICS presidency in 2026 will test its diplomatic agility, he said.

“The world has changed faster than India's foreign-policy machinery has adapted,” he said, adding that India should abandon complacency, question its own assumptions and return to principles that once underpinned its diplomatic success.