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Opinion | Why the deepening US-India bond should give China pause
- The US and India have had a shared but muted strategic and security concern since the end of the Cold War in the rise of China
- How much New Delhi will benefit from Washington’s embrace is unclear, but Beijing faces the prospect of a growing coalition aimed at resisting it
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Though China was not explicitly referred to in the joint statement signed by US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington on June 22, it is the catalyst that has elevated US-India relations to a special strategic partnership.
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The two democracies have lived with a shared but muted strategic and security concern since the end of the Cold War. They are both focused on the implications of the rise of China.
In recent years, this anxiety has become more acute and both Washington and New Delhi have sought to deal with a more assertive China under President Xi Jinping. The military activism of the People’s Liberation Army in relation to Taiwan, the South China Sea and Ladakh is a case in point.
However, the US and India have not entered into a formal military alliance – a template with which Washington is more familiar – where the world is divided into allies and adversaries. India does not fit into either box, though it bears remembering that for greater part of the Cold War, the bilateral relationship was described as one of “estranged democracies”.
The major bone of contention was the nuclear question. Delhi refused to be pushed into signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and renouncing the right to acquire nuclear weapons, a capability enjoyed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
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India has long been averse to joining any military bloc or aligning itself with a major geopolitical pole. During the Cold War, Delhi opted to remain non-aligned, a position that is now recast as opting for multi-alignment predicated on the abiding national interest and the issue that is being pursued.
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