In geopolitics, there is this kind of flattery: the type packaged in strategic rhetoric that assures you of the wealth of your value, just because the flatterer requires you to act that way. On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, said that New Delhi is a pillar of stability in the Indo-Pacific, adding that India is a "critical anchor to hold the line" in South Asia. The language was friendly. The numbers they were using were more chilling and more serious.

This was not empty flattery. Hegseth was very clear about that strategy: "A Pacific dominated by any hegemon would unravel the regional balance of power. No state, including China, can impose its hegemony and hold the security or prosperity of our nation and our allies in question. That's where the compliment to India turns into a different story altogether a keystone of Washington's overall strategy to counter Beijing.

Part of the story was told by the setting itself. The absence of China's defence minister marked the second consecutive year that Beijing appeared to be uncomfortable with the forum anchored in Washington, or at least with dealing with Hegseth in particular. Beijing sent scholars and academics from military universities, not a high-table Chinese interlocutor. The juxtaposition with Hegseth's headline slot couldn't have been more intentional. This takes place as a tale of an unequal triangle: the United States at the top; China is militarily strong but diplomatically in retreat; and India for only the second time in 23 years is sitting at the main table in the 2026 Shangri-la Dialogue.

The fact that India has now become a focal point of American strategic considerations in Asia is no novelty. What Hegseth's comments underlined is the extent to which Washington views Indian hard power not just diplomacy as the functional "currency" of this partnership.

India is building the industrial and logistical base to maintain and repair such advanced military platforms as the US Navy's ships in the region, Hegseth said. “This type of industrial muscle isn't a long-term goal, it's an operational imperative.”

Read the above carefully again. Washington is not just paying lip service to India's modernisation programme as a bilaterality courtesy. It is betting openly on the Indian shipyards, MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) and defence manufacturing ecosystems as force-multipliers for the US Navy in the Indian Ocean. It is a very big operational request – and with a big economic opportunity.

Although the timeline isn't real, the money is.

India's defence budget for 2026-27 is Rs 7.85 trillion, or about $83 billion, an increase of 15 per cent compared to the previous financial year. That puts India as the fourth biggest spender on the world's militaries, after the United States, China, and Russia, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. It is a significant change for a nation that for much of the past 30 years has pondered the question of whether defence spending forced a reduction in social programs.

With a cumulative defence expenditure of $415.9 billion over the next five years (2025-29), this pipeline of procurement is being reckoned at by all major defence contractors around the world. The US has progressed the fastest. India has purchased almost $20 billion worth of U.S.-made military equipment in the past 20 years, from C-17 Globemaster and C-130J cargo aircraft, to Apache helicopters and M777 Howitzers. India has become the third largest supplier of arms to the United States in the world with near zero in the early 2000s.

Some numbers in the latest episode of that saga pop out. India ordered another 113 F404 jet engines for the country's indigenous combat aircraft for approximately $1 billion, and is said to be buying six more P-8I maritime patrol aircraft for approximately $3 billion. The approximately $4 billion 31 MQ-9B armed surveillance drones, approved in 2023, will be delivered starting in 2029. A Rs 3.25 trillion deal for 114 Rafale fighter jets with France is also in the pipeline.

Hegseth cited co-production of Javelin anti-tank guided munitions as a tangible example of increased defence-industrial cooperation, saying they represent "real, tangible steps to improve the collective readiness of our forces.

However, there's an enduring problem with the translation of rhetoric to action that makes Washington's enthusiastic rhetoric difficult to swallow. Almost all the major defence deals announced from the United States in recent years are still far from fruition. GE-404 jet engine deliveries key to India's indigenous Tejas fighter programme have been delayed, which has cost the project at least two years. The Indian Air Force Chief is no silent fretter: He recently said that he didn't remember a single time when a HAL project was completed on time. The contract for 31 MQ-9B drones is valued at $3.5 billion and provides for local assembly and the establishment of a global MQ-9B MRO hub both of which are still under development.

This gap is significant not in its absoluteness but in the way that it is the texture of the partnership. Hegseth referred to India's "industrial muscle" as an "immediate operational imperative. The industrial muscle is found in ambitions and in budget lines. Turning it into something real is a longer and dirtier process, which no amount of applause at Shangri-la can speed up.

The China variable and the silent thinking in India.

Hegseth's China comments at the summit were the toughest he has made to date: “The threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent. Beijing is credibly preparing potentially to use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, with PLA forces training daily to take military action against Taiwan.” He has said the PLA is preparing by 2027 to go into Taiwan and that China is “building the military force to do it,” Xi Jinping has warned.

This characterization of China as a threatening imminent doomsday, demanding “burden sharing” with allied countries, is the central thrust of the American argument. However, it has one tricky aspect: India does not purchase it, at least not completely. New Delhi's enmity with Beijing is not a new phenomenon the border standoff in Galwan Valley in 2020 has changed Indian strategic outlook on China forever. Yet, India is threatened on the ground, as well as in the Indian Ocean, and the Himalayas are the concern, not the Taiwan Strait. Washington has been pushing India towards a Taiwan-centric security arrangement without taking the plunge to say so, and New Delhi has been adept at sidestepping the push.

In short, "not many" countries in this corner of the world see China as an imminent threat, and would increase their defence spending on Washington's cue, an analyst at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University wrote bluntly. The fact of India's spending spree on defence is true, but it is for India's own calculation and not under American pressure or threat assessment.

This tension is reflected in the forum of the Shangri-Las. Multilateral security dialogue remains strongest in the Indo-Pacific, and is largely centred around the frameworks Washington leads. China militarily is strong, but diplomatically is weak. For all its newfound confidence, India is still stumbling and trying to get its footing on a stage it arguably belonged on a decade ago. This is a nation which wants to receive the advantages of proximity with Washington– access to technology, co-production of defence equipment, intelligence sharing– but not the commitments of a formal alliance. Strategic autonomy" in Indian parlance. In everyone else's case, strategic ambiguity.

A $1.5 trillion demand and what it demands of partners

Hegseth didn't stop at praising India. He also clearly explained Washington's financial pledge and what it hoped for: "President Trump, who last year spent $1 trillion on defence, has proposed spending $1.5 trillion on defence this year to unleash America's arsenal of freedom and extend America's military dominance for decades to come.

Then he looked to allies and partners: "We're asking 3.5 per cent of GDP from our allies and partners, and we're well over that. We expect each and every ally and partner to have that kind of resolve.

India was currently spending 1.9 to 2.2 per cent of GDP on defence which was far below the threshold. So far remains to be seen whether Washington will press New Delhi to fill that gap, or whether New Delhi's strategic significance and size makes it a lesser target for the harder talks it has with NATO partners. The maths of a 3.5 percent ask, when translated to the size of India's $3.9 trillion economy, would mean a defence budget of over $130 billion enough to change the geopolitical equation in the region overnight but also suggest that India would need to divert resources from bolstering social and infrastructural sectors that are the engines of its growth.

The trade fault line:

This is not in a diplomatic vacuum. The Trump administration introduced punitive tariffs on Indian exports in mid-2025, increasing tariffs to as high as 50 percent, the highest level in the world, under the guise of addressing trade imbalances, but with clear geopolitical implications, such as the US concerns about ongoing Indian energy and defence deals with Russia. In early 2026, both sides have reached an interim trade deal, in which Washington has agreed to lower tariffs on Indian goods to 18 percent, in exchange for a series of steps towards market reforms and substantial Indian purchases in key sectors.

Security ties have been spared the tariff tussle, analysts noted, adding that “in the tempestuous first year of Trump 2.0, if there has been continuity in the relationship, that has been in defence.” Yet the episode did point to an inherent tension that will not go away, at least not in Washington's eyes: defence and commerce go hand in hand. In New Delhi, it is a question of dignity, as they want them to be kept apart in the name of strategy.

The true meaning behind it

Remove the rhetoric from Singapore the ‘balance of power,' the ‘arsenal of freedom,' the ‘shared goals' and you are left with a more practical and more engaging narrative. India is a rapidly growing state, with the spending power of a major economy in the area, real military-industrial capability and a location vital to American presence in the Indian Ocean. Washington requires Indian ports, Indian logistics, Indian manufacturing and Indian political protection for a Pacific strategy which China is striving to delegitimise.

For India, it's the need for American technology, American investment, and the diplomatic gravitas that would be bestowed upon it by being openly embraced by the most powerful military in the world. The US-India partnership now appears to be turning towards joint production, greater co-production of systems such as Apache helicopters and Javelin missiles, to a fuller defence-industrial matrix, with Washington anticipating that MRO sector in India will be servicing its Navy ships in the Indian Ocean.

It's not like this partnership is fake, it is. Who depends on who more and whether the flattery in Singapore is for real, or a more one-sided affair put in the “equal” language. In that regard, the ballroom at Shangri-la isn't the first place to seek a straight answer.