India’s Indo-Pacific Strategy Is Becoming More Networked as U.S. Reliability Becomes Less Certain

For much of the past decade, India’s Indo-Pacific strategy rested on a familiar assumption: the United States would remain the main external power around which regional security cooperation could be built.

This did not mean that India wanted an alliance. India continued to protect its strategic autonomy, resisted forming a formal military bloc against China, and maintained relations with countries beyond the American camp. The United States provided much of the strategic strength, Japan and Australia added important capabilities, and India contributed its geographical position, maritime reach and growing regional influence. The Quad became the political centre of this arrangement.

That structure is now changing.

The key change is not that India is abandoning the United States or that the Quad has collapsed. Instead, India is placing greater importance on a network of partnerships that can continue working even when the political reliability of one partner becomes uncertain.

A country that relies on one major power to organise its regional strategy builds it differently from a country that depends on several partners for different purposes.

India increasingly appears to be moving towards the second approach.

The original logic of the Quad

The Quad’s revival in 2017 coincided with a wider change in how countries viewed the Indo-Pacific. The United States, Japan, Australia and India began treating the region not simply as a geographical area, but as a connected strategic system. Maritime security, economic resilience, technology and supply chains were becoming closely linked.

The Quad was therefore never just a military grouping. Its stated goals included a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific, with cooperation covering maritime security, infrastructure, technology, disaster response and economic resilience.

For India, this arrangement addressed an important strategic challenge. New Delhi could work with Washington while also strengthening ties with Tokyo and Canberra. It could do so without becoming dependent on the United States or isolating itself strategically.

However, the arrangement still relied on one underlying assumption: Washington would continue to give the framework enough political attention and diplomatic support to keep it moving.

That assumption has become less certain.

The clearest sign is the growing gap between political momentum and practical activity.

The Quad held six leaders’ summits between 2021 and 2024. However, the leaders’ meeting that India was expected to host in 2025 did not take place. At the same time, ministerial meetings and practical cooperation continued. The Quad’s official record shows that foreign ministers and senior officials continued working on maritime security, economic security, critical and emerging technologies, and humanitarian response.

The Quad has therefore neither continued exactly as before nor disappeared. India’s challenge is to preserve its practical benefits while ensuring that its wider regional strategy does not depend on the Quad maintaining the same political momentum.

From one platform to several overlapping platforms

A networked strategy does not mean replacing the Quad. It means making India’s regional strategy less dependent on the Quad working in one particular way.

Japan is especially important in this effort.

India-Japan cooperation is expanding beyond traditional security ties to include economic security, infrastructure, technology and stronger supply chains. A proposed economic-security framework covers semiconductors, critical minerals, pharmaceuticals and clean energy. Cooperation is also growing in artificial intelligence and start-up ecosystems. Separately, Japan has announced a target of ¥10 trillion in private investment in India over the next decade, covering infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and technology.

The importance of these developments goes beyond the value of any single investment.

They give India another source of strategic strength.

Japan can provide capital, technology, manufacturing capacity and cooperation on economic security without requiring the entire relationship to operate through Washington.

Australia plays a different but equally useful role.

Its importance is particularly clear in critical minerals and supply-chain resilience. The Quad is also developing a separate framework for cooperation on critical-mineral supply chains. Australia brings access to resources, Japan contributes technology and manufacturing capabilities, the United States provides technological and financial strength, and India offers a large market, industrial capacity and geographical reach.

The result is not a replacement for American power. It is a wider system in which American power remains one important part.

The deeper driver is Washington’s changing relationship with Beijing

Uncertainty surrounding the Quad cannot be separated from the changing relationship between the United States and China.

India’s Indo-Pacific strategy developed during a period when Washington increasingly viewed China as its main strategic competitor in Asia. The Quad benefited from this shared concern because all four members had reasons to strengthen regional resilience in response to China’s growing power.

But if Washington changes its approach towards Beijing, India’s strategic calculations become more complicated.

The issue is not whether competition between the United States and China has ended. Their deeper rivalry remains. The question is whether India can assume that Washington’s priorities will always match its own.

Recent U.S. engagement with China has therefore attracted attention in New Delhi. Trump’s visit to Beijing in May 2026 and Xi Jinping’s planned visit to the United States later that year were accompanied by discussions about a possible restructuring of the relationship. One analysis in India’s strategic debate argued that these developments raised questions about the Quad’s future importance.

These developments do not prove that Washington is abandoning the Indo-Pacific.

They do, however, highlight an important reality for India: the United States has its own priorities, and those priorities can change.

If India’s security strategy depends too heavily on the assumption that Washington will always give the Indo-Pacific the same level of attention, any change in U.S. priorities could create a major shock. Stronger ties with Japan, Australia and other regional partners can help India absorb that shock.

The PACOM episode illustrates the problem—but does not prove a retreat

The reported U.S. decision to change the name of its regional military command from Indo-Pacific Command back to Pacific Command has attracted attention. The reason is that the 2018 change from Pacific to Indo-Pacific had symbolised the growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean, India and the wider region.

However, current U.S. Department of Defense records continue to identify the command as U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. The available official record therefore does not establish that the name was changed back to Pacific Command.

The name alone cannot prove that the United States is withdrawing from the region.

This distinction matters because strategic analysis can mistake symbols for actual changes in policy or military structure. India should pay attention to political signals, but it cannot build its regional strategy around them. The more important question is which capabilities, institutions and partnerships will remain available when political attention changes.

India’s answer is increasingly visible in the relationships around the Quad

The emerging pattern involves more than stronger cooperation with Japan and Australia. It involves building overlapping networks that serve different purposes.

Some focus on security. Malabar strengthens cooperation and coordination between participating navies.

Some focus on the economy. India-Japan cooperation increasingly links infrastructure, manufacturing and technology.

Some focus on resources. The Quad’s critical-minerals cooperation aims to reduce vulnerabilities in strategic supply chains.

Others focus on technology. Emerging initiatives connect countries through semiconductors, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.

As a result, the same country can participate in several partnerships without requiring all of them to move forward together.

That is the essence of a networked strategy.

A traditional alliance tends to concentrate security commitments around a central institutional relationship. A networked system spreads cooperation across several partnerships. Each can remain useful even when another temporarily weakens.

India’s diplomatic behaviour increasingly reflects this approach.

The country continues to work with the United States while deepening ties with Japan and Australia, maintaining other smaller-group arrangements and managing its relationship with China at the same time. The India-Japan relationship, for example, is increasingly being presented in terms of economic security and reducing strategic dependence, rather than simply as an extension of a regional order led by the United States.

This gives India something it has long valued: room to manoeuvre.

But networks have a weakness of their own

There is a danger in assuming that diversification automatically makes India more secure.

Working with more partners reduces dependence on any one country, but it does not automatically ensure that those partners work towards the same goals.

The United States remains a major source of military capability, technology and strategic strength. Japan and Australia cannot simply replace American capabilities. Nor can a collection of bilateral and smaller-group partnerships automatically match the political influence of a coordinated regional system led by the United States.

The aim, therefore, is not to make the United States irrelevant. It is to make India’s Indo-Pacific strategy less vulnerable to changes in American attention.

The Quad’s continued institutional activity still matters. Its practical mechanisms can remain useful even when momentum at the leaders’ level slows, while India’s other partnerships provide additional ways to cooperate.

India has little reason to choose between maintaining the Quad and building other partnerships around it.

It can do both.

The strategy is shifting from dependence on an anchor to resilience across a network

This is the larger change taking place.

For much of the post-Cold War period, India’s strategic autonomy was mainly about avoiding dependence. New Delhi wanted relationships with several major powers so that no single external actor could dictate its choices.

India’s emerging Indo-Pacific strategy adds another layer. It is increasingly about building backup options.

If one relationship slows, another can continue. If one institution loses political momentum, another can take on part of the work. If Washington and Beijing temporarily ease tensions, India’s partnerships with Japan and Australia still remain valuable.

If the Quad’s political activity weakens, maritime exercises, critical-mineral arrangements, technology partnerships and bilateral security ties do not have to stop.

This goes beyond maintaining a variety of partnerships. It means designing the system so that it can withstand disruption.

It also changes how India should view the Quad.

The Quad can remain an important part of India’s Indo-Pacific strategy without becoming the entire structure.

That may ultimately be a more durable model for India: not a region organised around one indispensable partner, but a network of partnerships that strengthen one another while allowing India to maintain its freedom of action.

The United States will remain central to this network. But being central is not the same as being the only indispensable partner.

That distinction may define India’s Indo-Pacific strategy in the years ahead.