The military operation by the United States of America in Venezuela, the publication of the new National Security Strategy under Donald Trump, and the growing influence of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 are not isolated events. They are parts of a single strategic worldview now moving from paper to practice. That worldview is blunt, hierarchical, sceptical of multilateral restraint, and increasingly comfortable with the open exercise of power.

What is striking is not the clarity of America’s message, but how long many of its partners — India included — have not anticipated the global consequences.

The latest NSS is short, ideological, and unusually direct. It revives a hemispheric logic reminiscent of the Monroe Doctrine reframed as a Trumpian corollary: the Western Hemisphere is America’s enforcement zone; hostile powers will not be tolerated there; and US interests will be defended pre-emptively if necessary. Europe is treated with impatience, Russia with transactional pragmatism, China as the principal, long-term rival, and multilateral institutions as optional instruments rather than binding constraints.

This worldview did not emerge overnight. It mirrors almost verbatim the arguments long articulated in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a blueprint that envisages a powerful executive, diminished faith in global institutions, ideological consolidation at home, and an external posture rooted in civilisational self-assertion rather than liberal universalism. The NSS is not merely a strategy document; it is the foreign-policy expression of a domestic political project.

Seen through this lens, the recent developments in Venezuela are not an aberration. They are a demonstration signalling that regime change — long treated as taboo after Iraq and Libya — is, once again, thinkable if it serves clearly-defined US interests and carries low perceived cost. Legal debates will follow, as they always do, but the strategic message has already been sent: American power remains unmatched in its immediate sphere, and Washington is willing to use it.

For most, the instinctive response has been to compartmentalise. Venezuela is ‘Latin America’s problem’. Trump is ‘idiosyncratic’. The NSS is ‘rhetoric’. This reflex is no longer tenable.

The deeper issue is not Venezuela per se, nor Trump’s personality. It is the re-emergence of spheres of influence, the erosion of the post-Cold War consensus on sovereignty and non-intervention, and the return of great-power discretion as the organising principle of international politics. In such a world, ambiguity becomes expensive.

India’s diplomatic vocabulary — sovereignty, territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes — is not ornamental. It is protective. When these norms are weakened anywhere, they are weakened everywhere. At the same time, India cannot afford moralism detached from reality. Power still matters. Deterrence still works. The US remains the only military power with sustained global reach and combat experience. What has changed is not capability, but intent.

This brings us to an uncomfortable but necessary reassessment of India-US relations — one illuminated sharply by recent Chinese strategic commentary, including the recent essay by Mao Keji on sinification.org, “From Darling to Discarded”. The argument is not that India has suddenly fallen out of favour in Washington, but that Washington itself has changed how it evaluates partners.

For decades, US policy toward India was shaped by what analysts once called ‘strategic altruism’ — a willingness to invest in India’s rise because it was seen as advancing long-term American interests, particularly in balancing China. India’s success was not viewed as a threat, but as a stabilising asset.

That logic has weakened dramatically under Trump’s second term. The US is now more inwardly focused, more anxious about relative economic and political decline, and far less willing to invest strategic capital without immediate returns. Alliances are no longer primarily about shaping long-term balance; they are increasingly about short-term delivery.

This shift explains a great deal that otherwise appears puzzling: steep tariffs on Indian goods, higher visa costs, tighter service-sector rules, rhetorical attacks, and persistent pressure over India’s energy choices. These are not tactical irritants. They are symptoms of a deeper transformation in US strategic thinking — one where domestic pressures and perceptions of competition increasingly shape external policy.

More significantly, as India’s economic success becomes more visible, it is no longer seen only as a counterweight to China. In certain domains — services, technology, skilled labour — it is also perceived as a competitor. That does not end the strategic partnership, but it fundamentally alters its texture. The relationship becomes more transactional, more conditional, and more exposed to US domestic politics.

India should not be surprised by this. The warning signs were visible during Trump’s first term: the weaponisation of tariffs and sanctions, the erosion of the authority of the World Trade Organization, the casual use of extraterritorial jurisdiction, and the clear signals that alliances would be judged by cost-benefit calculations rather than sentiment or shared values. Project 2025 and similar treatises were never marginal documents; they were incubators of policy.

The mistake was assuming continuity where disruption was being openly advertised.

None of this argues for disengagement from the US. On the contrary, India has strong strategic convergences with Washington, particularly on China, maritime security, and emerging technologies. But convergence is not congruence. And partnership cannot be built on outdated assumptions of altruism.

India’s task now is to operationalise strategic autonomy, not merely invoke it. In a world of resurgent spheres and transactional alliances, autonomy requires capability,
clarity, and coalition-building. It means reducing critical dependencies, investing in indigenous technology and defence production, and shaping rules with other middle powers rather than reacting to great-power moves.

It also requires intellectual honesty. The US has told the world — through its NSS, through Project 2025, and through actions like Venezuela — what kind of power it intends to be. The question is whether India adjusts its expectations accordingly.

India should respond to this moment by doing four things clearly. First, state principles consistently, without sermonising. Sovereignty and non-intervention must be affirmed not selectively, but as systemic interests. Second, diversify partnerships beyond binaries — Europe, Japan, ASEAN, the Gulf, Africa, and Latin America matter more in a fragmented order than in a hierarchical one. Third, invest in coalitions of middle powers that can act as stabilisers on trade, technology standards, maritime security, and climate finance. Finally, prepare domestically. Strategic autonomy abroad is inseparable from economic resilience, technological depth, and political cohesion at home.

History rarely announces turning points with clarity. This one has. America has told us what it is becoming. India’s challenge is not to react late again, but to lead
with open eyes in a world that has moved decisively from reassurance to raw power.

Nirupama Rao is a former Foreign Secretary and Ambassador of India. She is a member of the Council and the Court of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Views are personal