India, April 21 -- Can India truly trust the US in moments of strategic need, especially with transactional leadership styles like Trump's resurfacing? The past offers warnings, and the present demands clear-eyed realism

Whenever the issue of the United States as a strategic military ally of India is discussed, discomforting memories of the past resurface. In 1971, when Indian forces were on a blitzkrieg in what was then East Pakistan (later, Bangladesh), the US had ordered its Seventh Fleet's 'Task Force 74' to sail menacingly into the Bay of Bengal. As a complicit partner of Pakistan, the US had overlooked the genocidal actions of the Pakistanis and instead adopted a threatening posture against India.

It was a complete public relation...