Washington/New Delhi, March 3
As the regional security implications continue to unfold in the Middle East, India must adopt a broader perspective and recognise that European strategic autonomy remains inherently limited compared to its own.

While diversifying its economic partnerships, India should not be under any illusions that continental Europe would intervene if the former’s independent foreign policy attracts Anglo-American displeasure, a report said on Tuesday.

“The events of 28 February 2026 show how unbridled US power can prove threatening for any region’s stability. From a national security perspective, New Delhi must now seriously anticipate the possibility of persistent American interference in its domestic affairs, both covert and overt, much as France had already begun to do within a week of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025,” a report in New Delhi-based Vivekananda International Foundation detailed.

“Given that Trumpian America seeks to inflict on others whatever it perceives they lack the capacity to do by way of reprisal, boosting counterintelligence coverage of all US activities, official and unofficial (including media and NGO activism) is a prudent course of action for every state,” it added.

According to the report, the roots of such unilateralism existed before the Trump administration, with India unfairly targetted by Anglo-American propaganda during former US President Joe Biden’s tenure over the deaths of foreign-based Khalistanis.

“Those who were terrorists in India, became ‘dissidents’ in the Western media. As in the case of Iran, where there has recently been a choreographed parade of Iranian exiles endorsing the American action, so too were critics of India allowed to malign the country,” it highlighted.

At the 2026 Munich Security Conference, the report said, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a speech whose broadly conciliatory tone drew attention, particularly his description of the US as a ‘child of Europe’.

“What some analysts noticed however, was the full-throated celebration which Rubio paid to Europe’s history of colonial conquest, resource extraction and racially-motivated Western superiority over other civilizations. He seemingly presented Europe with a choice: join the American quest to rebuild Western hegemony, or risk irrelevance,” it mentioned.

“His message projected white supremacy over non-white heathens in the latter’s own homelands. It was a message not of xenophobia within American borders but of neo-imperialism and neo-colonial plunder at the international level, a return to 19th century gunboat diplomacy,” it noted.

The report further said, “At a time when the European continent is being forced into energy dependence on the US through an extortionate trade deal (one that risks replacing over-reliance on Russian gas supplies with over-reliance on American ones), there is perhaps not much that Brussels or other EU capitals can do.”

India must seriously anticipate possibility of persistent American interference: Report