The United States has long described its partnership with India as a “defining partnership for the twenty-first century,” investing since 2005 in India’s defense capabilities, technology base, and military interoperability. This relationship reached a formal milestone with India’s designation as a “Major Defense Partner” in 2016. At the end of October 2025, both countries signed the next defense framework despite current turmoil in relations. This paper assesses why both countries were able to sign the agreement by theoretically highlighting the convergences and divergences in their relationship. It examines whether Washington and New Delhi possess the political will, mutual trust, common values, and institutional capacity to conclude and implement a new defense framework. Using a qualitative methodology and a neoclassical realist approach, the paper combines analysis of official policy documents, joint statements, speeches, and defense agreements with secondary sources such as think-tank reports and defense trade data. The findings suggest that while shared interests in balancing China sustain strategic convergence, persistent gaps in interoperability, India’s self-serving strategic autonomy doctrine, mistrust, and a lack of common values complicate Washington’s vision of India as a credible defense partner.