A border clash has plunged ties between India and China to their
lowest point in decades. But one beneficiary looks clear the relationship between United States and
India.
Experts
say India could finally end equivocation about openly aligning itself with the
long-eager US, although there will still be disagreements which, paradoxically,
are now mostly due to Washington.
Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that China “took incredibly aggressive
action” in a hand-to-hand battle in
the remote Himalayas on June 15 that killed 20 Indian soldiers.
The hawkish
Pompeo characterised the violence as part of a broader strategy by Beijing to
challenge all of its neighbours.
Jeff M.
Smith, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who has
written a book on the India-China rivalry, said the US is known to offer border
intelligence to India, which is now likely to pick up the pace on defence
acquisitions.
But Smith
said that India has asked the US to be publicly circumspect — in part to show
the domestic audience that New Delhi does not need help.
India
also does not want “to feed Chinese propaganda narratives that this is all a
component of the China-US rivalry and that India is working at America's
behest,” Smith said.
Michael
Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, cautioned that neither India nor China wanted a complete rupture and
said that both still saw some common interests, especially in international
organisations.
“But make
no mistake: This current India-China crisis is a watershed for the geopolitics
of Asia, and the US-India relationship will be one of the main beneficiaries,”
he said.
“Previous
Indian concern about antagonising China if it moves closer to the US is
starting to melt away.”
'Transactional' ties
US has been
seeking warmer ties since the 1990s with India, which insisted during the Cold
War on being “non-aligned” on the global stage.
US
President Donald Trump has appeared to form a bond with Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, a fellow nationalist who warns of the threat of radical Islam,
and the pair have held two joint mega-rallies.
But
Trump, his eyes at home ahead of elections, has also taken action detrimental
to India, including last year kicking it out of a preferential trade status
under which it had exported billions of dollars in goods.
Trump,
citing the coronavirus pandemic, more recently has suspended high-tech visas
and threatened to expel international students, moves with significant impacts
on Indians.
India is
happy to see Trump's tougher stances on China as well as historic adversary
Pakistan but also feels demands, especially on trade, said Aparna Pande,
director of the Hudson Institute's Initiative on the Future of India and South
Asia.
“It is a
semi-transactional relationship. It is not a strategic relationship, as it was
in earlier years,” she said.
Trump,
who has frequently sparred with Western allies, may not even want a more
committed relationship with India, she said.
“I
wouldn't say there is as much reluctance on the Indian side. That has calmed
down,” Pande said. “The two are closer than they have ever been. But are the
two ready to take that extra step?”
Warmth regardless of election
In
another recent shift, US lawmakers, mostly Democrats, have openly criticised
India on human rights, including Modi's revocation of autonomy and controls on
the internet in occupied Kashmir.
Anthony
Blinken, a close aide to presidential candidate Joe Biden, said that the
Democrat, if he defeats Trump, would seek to “strengthen and deepen” the
relationship with India. But Blinken shared concerns on freedoms.
“You're
always better engaging with a partner, and a vitally important one like India,
when you can speak frankly and directly about areas where you have
differences,” Blinken said at the Hudson Institute.
Trump has
stayed mum on rights and has offered, with little detail, to mediate between
India and China.
But John
Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser who recently published an
explosive memoir, doubted Trump understood the border situation.
“He may
have been briefed on it, but history doesn't really stick with him,” Bolton
told Indian news channel WION.
