India’s Impossible Alignment: When Geopolitical Reality Trumps Ideological Comfort

In the labyrinthine world of South Asian geopolitics, strange bedfellows are nothing new. But even by the region’s standards of strategic complexity, India’s recent positioning against the United States’ reported plans to reestablish a military presence at Bagram airbase represents a remarkable moment—one that finds New Delhi sharing common cause with an unholy quartet of Pakistan, the Taliban, China, and Russia. This alignment, however temporary and issue-specific, demands serious examination not as a betrayal of partnerships but as a sobering illustration of how dramatically the geopolitical landscape has shifted and how limited India’s options have become in an increasingly multipolar world order.

The Bagram Question

Reports suggest that the incoming Trump administration is exploring options to reestablish American military presence at Afghanistan’s Bagram airbase, abandoned during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal. The strategic logic from Washington’s perspective is straightforward: Bagram provides unparalleled positioning for monitoring and potentially intervening in Central Asian affairs, maintaining pressure on both Chinese western approaches and Russian southern periphery, and keeping watch over a Taliban-governed Afghanistan that continues to harbor terrorist elements.

For India, opposing this plan seems counterintuitive at first glance. After all, India has been among the most consistent advocates for international pressure on the Taliban, has deep concerns about Pakistan-backed terrorism emanating from Afghan soil, and has traditionally aligned with American interests in containing Chinese expansion. Yet India’s calculus on Bagram reveals the profound bind in which New Delhi finds itself—caught between competing imperatives that admit no easy resolution.

Why India Opposes American Presence

India’s opposition to a renewed American military presence in Afghanistan stems from hard-learned lessons and cold strategic calculation. First and foremost is the recognition that any U.S. military reentry into Afghanistan would be profoundly destabilizing to the region, potentially reigniting civil conflict and creating exactly the kind of chaos that Pakistan has historically exploited to deepen its strategic influence while maintaining plausible deniability.

India invested heavily in Afghanistan during the post-2001 period—over $3 billion in development assistance, infrastructure projects, and goodwill cultivation among Afghan civil society. The Taliban takeover represented not just a policy setback but the effective negation of two decades of Indian strategic investment. India’s nightmare scenario is a return to the 1990s dynamic: Afghanistan as a theater of proxy conflict where Pakistan’s intelligence services operate with impunity, training and directing jihadist elements that inevitably find their way to Kashmir and Indian cities.

A renewed American military presence, particularly one that India was not consulted about and cannot influence, risks creating precisely this instability. The last American adventure in Afghanistan, despite initial Indian hopes, ultimately strengthened rather than weakened Pakistan’s hand. Islamabad successfully played both sides—ostensibly partnering with Washington while providing sanctuary and support to Taliban leadership. The billions in American aid that flowed to Pakistan during this period helped sustain an economy that continues to fund anti-India terrorism.

The China Factor

Perhaps more critically, India recognizes that any American military move in Afghanistan will be primarily directed at China, not at the Taliban or regional terrorism. Beijing has invested heavily in its relationship with Taliban-governed Afghanistan, securing mining rights, establishing intelligence-sharing mechanisms, and integrating Afghanistan into its Belt and Road architecture. China’s interest is clear: stability on its restive western frontier, access to mineral resources, and prevention of Uighur militant activity.

An American base at Bagram, positioned to monitor and potentially interdict Chinese activities in Central Asia, would trigger a Chinese response that India cannot afford to ignore. Beijing would almost certainly double down on its Pakistan partnership, potentially accelerating military cooperation, infrastructure investment, and diplomatic support for Islamabad’s positions on Kashmir. For India, already managing a hostile two-front scenario with Pakistan and China, anything that tightens the Beijing-Islamabad axis represents an unacceptable strategic cost.

Moreover, India has painstakingly built diplomatic and economic relationships across Central Asia—relationships that would be jeopardized by appearing to support what Russia and China (and the Central Asian republics themselves) would characterize as American neo-imperialism on their doorstep. India’s membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, its energy partnerships with Russia and Central Asian states, and its careful cultivation of multipolarity all constrain how closely it can align with unilateral American military action in the region.

The Russia Dimension

India’s relationship with Russia, though evolving, remains strategically vital. Moscow supplies the bulk of India’s military hardware, provides diplomatic cover at the United Nations, and represents a crucial counterweight to Chinese influence in multilateral forums. Russia views American military presence in Central Asia as an existential threat to its claimed sphere of influence—a red line that has only hardened since the Ukraine conflict began.

For India to support American plans at Bagram would represent a direct affront to Russian interests at precisely the moment when New Delhi needs Moscow’s cooperation on multiple fronts: from defense technology transfer to energy security to balancing China in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The strategic cost would be immediate and severe, potentially pushing Russia into even closer alignment with China and Pakistan—an outcome that serves no Indian interest whatsoever.

The Pakistani Paradox

Perhaps most paradoxical is India finding itself aligned with Pakistan on this issue. Yet the logic is clear: while India and Pakistan disagree on virtually everything else, both have learned that American military involvement in Afghanistan tends to create opportunities for asymmetric warfare that ultimately benefit non-state actors and their state sponsors. Pakistan fears losing its regained influence over the Taliban; India fears the return of chaos that Pakistan historically exploits.

This alignment is purely circumstantial and tactical—there is no love lost between New Delhi and Islamabad. But it reflects a shared recognition that the current status quo in Afghanistan, however unsatisfactory, is preferable to renewed conflict that neither can control.

The Limitations of Alignment

None of this should be interpreted as India embracing the Taliban, trusting China, or abandoning strategic partnership with the United States. Rather, it represents the painful reality of operating in a multipolar world where no single relationship can meet all security needs and where every choice involves compromising some interest.

India’s opposition to Bagram plans is defensive, not offensive. It reflects an assessment that American military reentry would make India’s security situation worse, not better, by destabilizing the region in ways that benefit India’s adversaries and constrain its own options. This is a far cry from the ideological anti-Americanism that characterizes some nations’ foreign policies.

What This Reveals About Global Order

The Bagram question illuminates broader trends in international relations. The post-Cold War era of unchallenged American hegemony is definitively over. Middle powers like India increasingly find themselves in situations where aligning with Washington on one issue would compromise vital interests elsewhere. The clean Cold War divisions—free world versus communist bloc—have given way to a much messier multipolar reality where interests align and diverge issue by issue, partner by partner.

For the United States, this represents a strategic challenge. The assumption that partners will reflexively support American initiatives is outdated. Building coalitions now requires genuine consultation, attention to partners’ regional interests, and recognition that countries like India operate under constraints that Washington may not fully appreciate.

For India, the Bagram question is a preview of harder choices ahead. As U.S.-China competition intensifies, New Delhi will face increasing pressure to choose sides on issues where its interests point in multiple directions simultaneously. The comfortable ambiguity of non-alignment is becoming harder to sustain even as the costs of firm alignment grow more prohibitive.

The Path Forward

India’s position on Bagram should serve as a wake-up call to American strategic planners. Rebuilding influence in Afghanistan cannot succeed without buy-in from regional powers whose cooperation is essential. Any plan that arrays India, Pakistan, China, and Russia in opposition is almost certainly doomed to failure regardless of its tactical military merits.

A more productive approach would involve genuine multilateral consultation, addressing regional powers’ legitimate security concerns, and crafting arrangements that provide counterterrorism benefits without triggering regional destabilization. This requires humility about the limits of military power and recognition that in today’s multipolar world, even superpowers need partners who feel heard rather than merely enlisted.

The strange alignment against Bagram plans is not India’s preference—it is India’s necessity. Understanding why reveals much about the world we now inhabit and the compromises that even aspiring great powers must make.