Chandigarh: The slapping of steep 50% tariffs on Indian exports, has triggered murmurs within India’s strategic circles over whether this punitive measure could undermine the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, whose four leaders, including President Donald Trump, are scheduled to convene in New Delhi later this year.And, though not publicly acknowledged, lingering suspicions are quietly resurfacing among senior policymakers in Delhi that the US still views India as a junior partner to be managed rather than an equal to be trusted – rekindling long-standing doubts about the true nature of their bilateral strategic partnership.Trump’s tariff dispute re-ignite old anxieties about strategically and militarily aligning too closely with USA cross-section of security officials, diplomats and analysts claimed that what began as Trump’s tariff dispute had re-ignited old anxieties about strategically and militarily aligning too closely with Washington through mechanisms like the Quad, the informal, but increasingly pivotal Indo-Pacific naval grouping comprising India, the US, Japan, and Australia.They interpreted the tariffs issue – especially the additional 25% levy imposed as a penalty for oil imports from Russia – as confirmation of old suspicions that Washington still viewed India through the lens of hierarchy and self-convenience, rather than of equal partnership.These long-dormant misgivings, somewhat subdued over two decades of warming bilateral ties between Washington and Delhi, seem presently to be gradually shaping India’s security discourse, and could well result in quietly eroding the foundations of its cooperation and participation within the Quad.“The key issue is not whether the Quad as an institution will collapse overnight, but whether the political capital that sustains it will be bled dry due to the tariffs fiasco,” said Brigadier Rahul Bhonsle of the Sasia Security-Risks consultancy in New Delhi.The Quad, he stated, was a strategic alignment, not a formal alliance and depended largely on consensus and trust. But when one member, especially the most powerful like the US, blatantly undercut another – India – over commercial interests and personal pique, the Quad’s credibility and cohesion were bound to be adversely impacted, he said.Other senior military veterans who had nurtured the Quad in its infancy and who requested anonymity, said long-standing reservations over the US regarding India as a ‘subordinate to be managed’, rather than an equal to be trusted, had accelerated in recent days amongst Delhi’s power elite.Consequently, even long-time advocates of closer ties with Washington in South Block in Delhi were now feeling sidelined, as a sense of being patronised – or strong-armed – by the US on pecuniary grounds gained institutional depth.For many, the post-2001-02 honeymoon with Washington – marked by the 2005/08 Civil Nuclear Deal, over $22 billion in defence trade, intelligence cooperation, and regular military exercises, now seemed to be ‘eclipsed’ by punitive tariffs and a harsh return to routine US ‘transactionalism’.Such adverse sentiments run deepest among officers shaped by decades of US indifference and hostility, from the 1970s through the early 2000s in an instance of old reflexes stirring once more over the Quad’s future.“Mutual political goodwill was the engine that powered the Quad, but the tariff standoff has now drained it” said a veteran two-star Indian Navy (IN) officer who had frequently participated in the annual Malabar exercises with the US Navy.Conceived in 2007, following joint disaster relief efforts after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Quad brought together its four-member countries as an informal forum focused on regional security and shared democratic values.Thereafter, it languished for a decade following Chinese opposition and internal hesitations, but was revived in 2017 amid rising concerns over Beijing’s military and economic assertiveness. In succeeding years, it gained strategic relevance, evolving into a key platform for cooperation on maritime security, infrastructure, technology, and vaccine supply chains across the Indo-Pacific, though still without formal alliance commitments.Joint US-Pakistan initiatives alarm IndiaFor its part India viewed the Quad as a useful mechanism to balance incipient military power and diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific region. But it remained reluctant to it becoming a military alliance like NATO, precisely because it did not intrinsically trust the US to stay the course if confronted with sustained Chinese pressure or military aggression. Washington’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, after two decades of chaotic presence in the war-ravaged country, and its flip-flop on sustaining military aid to Ukraine, for instance, only reinforced these trepidations and Washington’s lack of long-term mission-steadfastness.Besides, India’s commitment to strategic autonomy clashed with the US tendency to cast the Quad as a democratic alliance countering China – raising Delhi’s concern that it could be co-opted into Washington’s containment strategy, compromising its sovereign decision-making.The tariffs also come at a juncture when the US was once more, overtly warming up to Pakistan, resuming military engagements and signalling a transactional openness and a ‘hyphenation’ in its dealings with Delhi and Pakistan that India viewed with suspicion and a sense of betrayal. India’s muscle memory recalled decades of perceived US duplicity – from siding with Pakistan during the Cold War decades, as well as the 1971 war, to imposing crippling sanctions on Delhi after the 1998 nuclear tests.India was also uneasily watching the US in recent months, resume military training programs for Pakistani officers, revived defence assistance mechanisms and signal increased engagement with Islamabad on counterterrorism.This was despite a high-level Indian parliamentary delegation’s recent visit to Washington to highlight the April killing of 25 civilians in Pahalgam. Joint US-Pakistan initiatives in oil and gas exploration, rare earths cooperation, expanded crypto-financial dealings and trade in critical other sectors further alarmed Delhi.And though framed feebly by Washington as efforts to stabilise Pakistan’s economy and promote regional development, Indian policymakers privately viewed these moves as rekindling Cold War-era policies, when US aid and military assistance routinely flowed to Islamabad, even as it sponsored anti-India insurgencies and even provoked war in Kargil in 1999.Complicating Quad matters further was Australia’s role in AUKUS – the 2021 trilateral pact with the US and UK focused on nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) and advanced military technologies to counterbalance China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.And though AUKUS does not formally compete with the Quad, both aim to counter China’s naval assertiveness and uphold a rules-based Indo-Pacific order. The key difference lies in form: AUKUS is a tightly integrated, tech-heavy military alliance; the Quad remains a looser, values-driven forum.AUKUS also reflects a preference for exclusive, Anglo-centric security frameworks that side-line India and Japan–raising concerns in Delhi that Canberra sees the Quad as a secondary alliance. If so, the clear asymmetry in platforms and defence integration risks reducing India and Japan to peripheral players in Indo-Pacific strategy.Furthermore, the Quad-AUKUS divide is not merely structural but also psychological. AUKUS rests on deep historical, cultural, and institutional bonds, while the Quad must constantly reaffirm its shared purpose–made harder after the India-US tariff row. Within some Indian strategic circles, the Quad has also fuelled apprehensions that India remains a secondary player in Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategic script.Tariff row threatens to imminently stall several pending India-US defence initiativesIn the meantime, the tariff row threatens to imminently stall several pending India-US defence initiatives.These potentially included pacts like iCET (Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology), the INDUS-X (India-US Defence Acceleration Ecosystem) military innovation platform project and the transfer of General Electric GE F-414 jet engine technology to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to locally build the power packs.Also awaiting approval is the domestic assembly of 31 General Atomics MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones–part of a $3.5 billion deal signed in late 2024, with 15–30% indigenous content – along with plans for their maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facilities. Similarly, the INs procurement of six additional Boeing P-8I maritime surveillance aircraft, to supplement the 12 already in service, remains pending.“The concern isn’t cancellation,” said a senior defence industry official in Bangalore, requesting anonymity. “But the tariff dispute could introduce bureaucratic hesitation or political friction, slowing or stalling implementation on either side.” Economic tension, he added, undermines trust and disrupts the bureaucratic tempo vital for joint manufacturing and hi-tech ventures.Ultimately, the Quad’s future may hinge less on summit declarations than on what unfolds in corporate boardrooms across India and the US. Trade disputes ripple across all dimensions of bilateral ties and if Delhi and Washington fail to arrest this drift, they risk not only losing each other’s trust, but possibly ceding the Indo-Pacific to Chinese hegemony.