As the United States of America (USA) deepens its strategic and economic partnership with India in 2025, a 2016 comment by US Ambassador Nicholas Burns at a Brookings Institution event is gaining renewed attention. His candid assessment of the US approach to South Asia highlighted the enduring differences in Washington’s relationships with India and Pakistan, a distinction that appears increasingly relevant in light of current geopolitical dynamics.
“It would be a mistake for America to treat India and Pakistan equally. Our relationship with India is rising but we have no confidence in Pakistan,” said U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns pic.twitter.com/w6SXDKAQa9
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At the time, Burns cautioned against equating US ties with the two countries, stating, “It would be a great mistake if we attempted to frame our relations with these two countries as some kind of, you know, we have to have equal treatment and equal levels of interest, because we have an entirely different relationship with India—much more positive, much more engaged, much more integrated than we do with Pakistan.”
His remarks came during a broader discussion of regional stability and historical US diplomacy in South Asia. Reflecting on past crises, he noted how the situation had shifted dramatically since the Kargil conflict of 1999. “I was thinking back to the strategic situation that Strobe [Talbott] dealt with as Deputy Secretary. It was entirely different. We had a closer relationship with Pakistan… President Clinton and Strobe were able to play a role of diffusing a crisis, the Kargil crisis, because of the influence we had in Islamabad.”
Burns contrasted that influence with the diminished leverage the US had by 2016, saying, “I don’t think President Obama has that degree of influence now. The US-Pakistan relationship has clearly suffered because of our lack of confidence in Pakistan over its inability to fight terrorist groups on its own soil that have led to the deaths of Americans in Afghanistan.”
Citing former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Burns reaffirmed the strategic rationale behind the shift: “Condi Rice was absolutely right in March 2005 when she first went to India… She said, it does not make strategic sense for the United States to have some kind of equal strategic interest in these two countries when clearly our relationship with India is rising. And I would never want to see us go back.”
As Washington looks eastward with a long-term Indo-Pacific vision, Burns’s 2016 insights serve as a reminder of how far US-India ties have progressed—and why the United States no longer seeks a balancing act between New Delhi and Islamabad.