New Delhi: The US must respect India's right to defend itself and should maintain a zero-tolerance policy towards terrorism, former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday, while describing Washington's ties with New Delhi and Islamabad as "fundamentally different".
"India is a global force," Blinken said, adding that the relationship and shared interests between Washington and New Delhi were "really global in nature".
In contrast, the US relationship with Pakistan is "regional," he said during a conversation with Jawed Ashraf, chairman of the India Trade Promotion Organisation, at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2026 in New Delhi.
"The relations with Pakistan are regional, and there are still going to be important areas where we need to do things with them, particularly, for example, when it comes to counter-terrorism, but these are fundamentally different relationships," he said.
"We have to have a zero-tolerance policy for terrorism. Period. And that means that we have to have respect for India's right to defend itself," he added.
Blinken said the US approach must include support for India's efforts to respond to attacks as well as diplomatic efforts to prevent an escalation between New Delhi and Islamabad, the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
He added that efforts to prevent escalation were important given the destructive potential of the weapons both countries possess.
Reflecting on Washington's past engagement with Islamabad, Blinken said US strategic interests during the Cold War and the war in Afghanistan may have led successive administrations to be less critical of Pakistan's civil-military establishment.
"And there's certainly an opportunity for the United States to do more," he added.
On India-US relations, Blinken described the transformation in ties over the past few decades as a shift from estrangement to a strategic partnership, underpinned by shared interests and people-to-people connections.
On India's relations with Russia, Blinken acknowledged the partnership's historical depth and said Washington did not expect New Delhi to sever those ties.
"There will be places where we don't have the same perspectives. For Russia, we understand there is deep history between India and Russia. So, we don't want them to end it," he said.
Blinken, who served as the 71st Secretary of State from 2021 to 2025 under then-President Joe Biden, said the world was at a profound inflection point, citing rapid technological change, inequality and shifting power.
"The speed and profundity of change is beyond anything we've seen, certainly in my lifetime," he said, noting that ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot, took one month to reach 50 million users, compared with 75 years for the telephone.
He said the private sector increasingly drove technological change, while governments struggled to keep pace. Growing inequalities had fuelled a sense among younger people that they were being "left out, left behind", he said.
Blinken warned that the US risked weakening its strength by damaging cooperation between the government, universities and research institutions, and by becoming less welcoming to skilled people from abroad.
"The biggest danger I think we face is a huge self-inflicted wound," he said.
On US domestic politics, Blinken said the recent midterm results went beyond the usual setback for the party of a sitting president. He attributed the outcome partly to frustration over the cost of living and concerns about corruption.
Blinken described the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, launched in February by President Donald Trump, as "a war of choice" and said the first Trump administration's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran had contributed to the crisis.
He said the agreement, signed in 2015 and formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), required Iran to ship out 97 per cent of its enriched uranium and placed limits on its centrifuges, while allowing extensive inspections.
After the US withdrawal from JCPOA in 2018, Iran accelerated its nuclear programme, Blinken added, saying the ongoing military action would not resolve the issue.
"It is very hard to try to force this Iranian regime to capitulate; it is possible to get it to negotiate. And these are very different things," he said.
