The Urgent Legal Imperative for the U.S.-India Defense Pivot

As the United States increasingly seeks integrated Indo-Pacific defense-industrial coordination, this legal asymmetry becomes more strategically consequential.

Historically, regimes such as the Wassenaar Arrangement were designed primarily to constrain proliferation risk and manage sensitive technology transfers. However, today’s geopolitical environment increasingly centers on strategic competition with state-directed industrial powers capable of integrating military production, advanced technology, and supply-chain leverage at enormous scale.

As a result, democratic nations now face a different challenge: how to preserve nonproliferation safeguards while enabling trusted industrial coordination among strategic partners.

This is where the State Department's IO Bureau becomes increasingly important.

IO’s role can no longer remain limited to traditional multilateral coordination. It must evolve toward what may be described as “Strategic Multilateralism” — ensuring that export-control frameworks do not become secondary barriers to democratic defense-industrial integration.

The United States cannot realistically pursue resilient allied supply chains while simultaneously preserving multilateral compliance interpretations that impede strategic coordination among trusted democratic partners.

China is rapidly institutionalizing military-industrial scale, strategic technology integration, and supply-chain leverage across the Indo-Pacific. The United States cannot realistically compete with state-directed industrial coordination through temporary executive frameworks lacking durable statutory authority.

While the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act introduced useful portfolio-based acquisition reforms, Congress stopped short of creating the legal architecture necessary to fully operationalize the U.S.-India defense partnership.

The era of symbolic strategic alignment is ending.

Washington can no longer rely primarily upon diplomatic frameworks, executive discretion, and ad hoc licensing flexibility to sustain a relationship increasingly central to Indo-Pacific deterrence strategy. Congress must now move beyond strategic signaling and modernize the partnership’s legal foundation through targeted statutory reforms designed to institutionalize long-term defense-industrial integration.

Necessary reforms should include:

Such measures would not constitute preferential treatment.

Rather, they would represent overdue alignment between American law and the strategic realities of twenty-first century Indo-Pacific competition.

Diplomatic frameworks may initiate strategic convergence, but only statutes can institutionalize it.

If Washington genuinely views India as indispensable to the future Indo-Pacific balance of power, then America’s legal architecture must evolve alongside its strategic doctrine. Congress can no longer leave the relationship dependent primarily upon executive continuity and bureaucratic discretion.

The U.S.-India defense partnership has outgrown symbolic alignment and temporary diplomatic momentum.

It now requires a durable statutory foundation capable of transforming strategic convergence into permanent institutional reality.

Sue Ghosh Stricklett is an attorney and national-security policy adviser specializing in international trade, export controls, and Indo-Pacific strategic affairs. She was nominated to serve as Assistant Administrator for the Asia Bureau at USAID and has advised presidential campaigns on Indo-Pacific policy and international trade.

image: United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, walks to shake hands with India’s Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar after addressing a joint press conference following their talks in New Delhi, India, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)