Die Torheit der illiberalen Hegemonie Indiens

In *Foreign Affairs* (Nov 12 2025), Muhib Rahman argues that India’s self-styled democratic leadership in South Asia has devolved into an illiberal hegemony that props up autocrats, silences dissent, and invites Chinese influence. From Dhaka to Malé, Colombo to Kathmandu, New Delhi’s habit of backing strongmen—whether Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh, Abdulla Yameen in the Maldives, or the Rajapaksas in Sri Lanka—has traded liberal values for strategic expediency, breeding public resentment and sparking “India Out” movements. Washington, long deferential to India since Jimmy Carter’s 1979 policy of regional deference, has tolerated this behavior in the name of partnership, undermining its own credibility as smaller neighbors turn to Beijing for aid, arms, and validation. Rahman contends that unless the United States stops outsourcing regional diplomacy to New Delhi and instead treats South Asian states as independent partners with their own democratic aspirations, it risks permanently ceding the region’s future to China.