New Delhi: US under secretary of war for policy Elbridge Colby dismissed the rules-based international order as a “gauzy abstraction” in New Delhi on Tuesday (March 24), the second senior Trump administration official this month to deliver pointed messaging about the terms of the India-US relationship in the Indian capital this month.Speaking at the Ananta Centre during his first visit to India in his current role, Colby said peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific would not be “founded in naivete or gauzy abstractions like the rules-based international order, but in strength, reason and hard-nosed collaboration”.The remarks came three weeks after US deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau, speaking at the Raisina Dialogue on March 5, said the US would not repeat “the same mistakes” it made with China two decades ago when dealing with India, warning that Washington would ensure any economic engagement remained “fair to our people”.Those remarks drew immediate criticism in India. External affairs minister S. Jaishankar, on the final day of the Raisina Dialogue, said without directly naming Landau that the rise of a country is ultimately determined by that country itself.The two episodes come against the backdrop of a turbulent bilateral relationship. In August 2025, the US imposed 50% tariffs on India, a 25% ‘reciprocal’ tariff compounded by an additional 25% ‘penalty’ tied to India’s continued purchases of Russian crude, among the highest levied on any US trading partner.After India’s brief military confrontation with Pakistan in May 2025, President Donald Trump claimed he had mediated the ceasefire, which is anathema to Indian foreign policy. At the same time, India has not publicly criticised Trump for his statements.The relationship appeared to stabilise after both sides reached an interim trade agreement in February this year. The US reduced tariffs on Indian goods to 18%. In return, India committed to scaling down Russian oil purchases and expanding imports of US energy, aircraft and high-technology products.Meanwhile, Islamabad has grown closer to Washington, with Trump publicly trumpeting his relationship with Pakistani Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir. In its latest move, Pakistan has offered to host a meeting between US and Iranian officials to de-escalate the current ongoing Iran war, a move that has received the backing of the US president.Colby’s dismissal of the rules-based order, which the US-led West had established after the Second World War, was delivered at the close of a speech that repeatedly emphasised realism and interests. It marked a notable departure from the language that has consistently framed India-US engagement over the past two decades.He drew a pointed contrast between the approach of “hard-nosed” partnership and what he called “gauzy aspirations or detached idealism”, and invoked Jaishankar’s own critiques of the Western foreign policy establishment in his book to suggest alignment between the two countries’ worldviews.The speech set out what he described as a “logical, coherent framework” for defence cooperation between India and the US amid what he called “tectonic strategic changes”.He said the US views India “with deep respect” as “a republic of continental scale” whose decisions will “profoundly shape the future of the Indo-Pacific and the international landscape more broadly”.Describing India as a “waxing power”, Colby said its role was “indispensable” to maintaining a favourable balance of power in Asia, arguing that “no single country can sustain a stable balance of power in Asia” and that stability would depend on “the collective contributions of capable states”.Notably, the speech made no reference to the Quad, the four-nation grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States that China has long viewed as an effort to contain its rise. India had hoped to host a leaders’ summit last year, but the plan did not materialise.He added that “a strong, confident India is not only good for the Indian people” but “for Americans as well”, indicating that Washington continues to see India’s rise as aligned with its own strategic interests.The senior US official also took aim at some of Washington’s traditional partners, saying the US was “not in decline” but “rising under President Trump’s leadership”, while adding that “we cannot confidently say the same for some of our traditional partners”, in an apparent reference to Europe.At the same time, the senior Pentagon official repeatedly framed the India-US relationship in essentially transactional terms, underscoring what he described as a more hard-edged approach.He said the US approach to India is “interests-based and realistic, shaped by geopolitics and incentives as opposed to gauzy aspirations or detached idealism”, and emphasised that Washington seeks “partnerships with vigorous, self-assured states, not with dependencies”.In that context, he said the relationship rests on a “hard-headed, clear-eyed recognition of overlapping interests” rather than on “dusty formalities and unchallengeable shibboleths”.He also drew an explicit parallel between the US doctrine of “flexible realism” and Jaishankar’s articulation of “Bharat First” and the “India Way”, quoting from the minister’s writings on the need for a “hard-headed national perspective” and a “results-oriented mindset” in foreign policy.Colby, who chairs the Defence Policy Group alongside defence secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh on Wednesday, identified several priorities for the defence partnership, including long-range precision fires, resilient logistics, maritime domain awareness, anti-submarine warfare and advanced technologies.He also said that the US supported India’s ambition to expand its indigenous defence industry, calling a strong domestic industrial base an enhancement of sovereignty and resilience. “Regulatory barriers, bureaucratic inertia and differences in procurement systems are real challenges. But they are not insurmountable and we should overcome them.”