Grand Tamasha

For a quarter century, Washington policymakers made a strategic bet on India premised on the belief that shared values, shared interests, and a shared strategic convergence in Asia would bind these two countries together as ‘natural allies’ in the twenty-first century. All of this optimistic talk came crashing down to Earth a few months ago with the Trump administration’s decision to slap 25 percent tariffs on Indian exports. This was exacerbated by a second decision to add an additional 25 percent tariff on India for its import of Russia oil. Taken together, these policy measures plunged U.S.-India relations into their most significant crisis since the late 1990s and the era of U.S. sanctions on India in the wake of the latter’s nuclear tests.How did we get here? Where are we now? And where might we be going? These are the questions Milan takes up on this week’s show with guest Ashley J. Tellis. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is well-known