In my book 'China-India Military Confrontation: 21st Century Perspectives' published in 2015, the following excerpts resonate more loudly in 2024, when the China Threat to Indo Pacific security has acquired unprecedented threatening contours:
- "The evolving China-centric geopolitics dynamics of the coming decades of the 21st Century, especially in relation to Indo Pacific Asia's security and stability, would compel the United States and India to finally take an unambiguous call on the China Threat that both tend to push under the carpet".
- "The robustness of the call that both the United States and India make on the China Threat would determine the future standings, one as the global Superpower, and the other as an 'Emerged Power' on its ascendancy as a global player or global power."
Continuing further on, before analyzing China Threat related postures of United States and India, following three more excerpts, are pertinent:
- "Is the United States uncertain about India's strategic directions or is it that United States planners are accustomed to deal with a country of India's size and potential only in adversarial equations? It is for United States to deal with its strategic dilemmas."
- "In the 21st Century, it is the United States which has the compelling imperatives to make a firmer call and make its strategic choices between India and China."
- "The United States in the 21st Century cannot keep maintaining that in its perceptions India is an existential counterweight to China strategically. If that counterweight is seriously threatened by China-Pakistan Axis then where does the United States get an alternative existential counterweight from within Asia? Does the United States have any credible answers to this critical question."
My observations on the crux points made above are briefly laid out below.
China Threat:Unambiguous Calls by United States and India
The United States and India both factor-in in the China Threat in their strategic and military planning. However, both shrink from declaring it as such in loud and vocally resounding tones.
The United States has attempted smoothening the contours of the China Threat by use of nebulous terms like 'Engagement', 'Congagement' and now 'China is US Main Competitor' and De-Risking'as opposed to 'Delinking'.
India sends strategically ambiguous signals as it still cavorts with China-dominated anti-US groupings like Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS and Rusia-India-China Trilateral unmindful that the China Threat is the prime and potent threat to India's security.
India also sends ambiguous signals when officially it keeps on harping on 'Multipolarity', and 'Multilateralism'. Both meaningless terms in a heavily polarized world generated by the China Threat.
Robustness of US-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership
The "Robustness' of this pivotal partnership can be said to be in good health judging solely by over half a dozen institutionalized joint mechanisms established encompassing intelligence-sharing, communications and logistics. The number of joint military exercises have increased.
However, this "Robustness" comes under strain when US top officials make a beeline to Beijing instead of the other way around. Smacks of 'China Appeasement' instead of 'Cina Containment'.
India too must not emphasize only on the 'Boundary Disputes' with China but emphasize on the broader manifestations of China Threat in geopolitical terms.
The latter provides the bedrock of the geopolitical underpinnings of US-India Strategic Partnership.
United States Needs Realistic Appraisal of India's Strategic Directions in 21st Century
Admittedly, India makes the deciphering of India's 'Strategic Directions' by its foreign policy vocabulary and actions suggestive that India still does not trust the United States despite the robustness of the strategic partnership.
But then, United States on long term appraisal should rest assured that India will continue to be a vibrant democracy. India at no stage in the future could possibly align with Russia and China against the United States.
In my assessment, India's hangover of 'Strategic Ambiguity' is a 'transient phase' which will evaporate as China out of geopolitical compulsions emerges as more aggressive and predatory.
India will surely aspire to be a global Major Power but one working in consonance with United States and the West.
United States Should in its Diplomatic Handling of India Should Ensure 'Equitibility'
Point already stands made in my excerpts quoted above that United States foreign policy planners need being accustomed to deal with India's size and attributes of power not on adversarial terms like China.
This aspect stands most eloquently
made by US Ambassador Eric Garcetti in a recent interview in New Delhi.
US Ambassador Garcetti stressed that United States should foster an 'Equal Partnership 'with India and in more telling terms advised that "United States foreign policy should liberate from Unconscious Paternalism".
Indians are a very sensitive people and Indian public opinion counts. Indian public opinion is not made in drawing rooms of Lutyens Delhi-- a fact that US should recognize.
United States has No Other Existential Counterweight to China in Asia but India.
There is a higher call on the United States to place implicit trust in India and its strategic directions in relation to the China Threat, simply, because no other Asian country offers to the United States an option of an alternative existential counterweight to China Threat.
India's national power attributes under PM Modi have blossomed in the last ten years both militarily and economically.
It was not for nothing that in the past the United Sates at highest levels asserted that the US was committed to assist India in emerging as a Major Power.
Concluding Observations
United States and India are best equipped to deal with the enveloping China Threat in IndoPacific despite power differentials.
In the American security template for Indo Pacific security, India has marshalled its resources to confront the China Threat on its Himalayan Borders and China's intrusiveness in the Indian Ocean.
India is in a unique position to tie down China both on land and sea unlike any other US Allies.
NATO and European Allies of United States are distant from Indo Pacific to effectively confront the China Threat.
India's emergence as a 'Robust Military Power' contributes handsomely to checkmate the China Threat.
At the turn of the Milennium, in my very first Paper on US-India Strategic Partnership, I had termed it as the "Advent of the Inevitable",
The United States and India should unreservedly bow to this "Inevitable" and nurture it to robustly checkmate the China Threat before it assumes Hitlerian proportions.
