Since the early 2000s, buttressed by the weight of its technological advancement and marshaled by burgeoning ideological schisms, India has forged an increasingly complex net of strategic relations. Accordingly, the landscape of Indian international affairs, divided between India, America, and China, has become a crucible for modern political punditry. This piece explores a few of the lenses that link India to the broader international framework, contextualizing India’s recent courting of America as a counterbalance to Chinese provocations.
Perhaps the most salient driver of India’s geopolitical stance is its tenuous relationship with China. Yet it is nearly impossible to trace the origins of this tension to a single event; rather, there exist numerous flashpoints.
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Proximity is undeniably a factor which triggers territorial disputes. Three such disputes have defined Sino-Indian relations. The first concerns the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the legally recognized border between Indian provinces and South Tibet, demarcating India’s northern border as established in the Sino-Indian Agreements of 1993 and 1996. Two decades after these agreements were penned, skirmishes along this border have become increasingly common.
In June 2020, soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) encroached on Indian Territory along Ladakh’s Galwan Valley, resulting in the deaths of Indian and Chinese soldiers. Since the Galwan Valley Skirmish, the Indian border has become highly militarized. In 2021, India deployed 50,000 troops to the LAC–a military incursion that will extend into 2024 as Indian forces are stationed for the fourth winter along Eastern Ladakh and the Karakoram Pass.
After nearly four decades of peace along the LAC, this pattern of Chinese escalation is often attributed to a strategy known as ‘salami-slicing’: engaging in long-term series of minor transgressions to gain territory and strategic footholds. Moreover, it is speculated that this provocation was intended to disrupt the Indian ethos by creating an ‘enemy at the gates’, thus serving as a check against Indian hegemony and authority.
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However, the LAC is not India’s only border under dispute; India also shares a border with Bhutan – an area called the Doklam plateau. Despite Bhutan’s historic alliance with India since their 1949 Friendship Treaty, the Bhutanese Foreign Affairs Minister reportedly visited Beijing in late October, signaling a rekindling of Bhutan-Sino relations and a strategic play for influence over Doklam.
Long sought after by China, the plateau would reinforce the Chinese foothold in the Chumbi Valley, north of Doklam in case of Sino-Indian conflict. Moreover, the Doklam plateau overlooks the narrow Siliguri Corridor (known colloquially as the Chicken Neck) which connects 8 northeastern states in India with central India. In this way, Chinese control over the Doklam plateau could entrap peripheral Indian states, cutting them off from the rest of India.
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The last border skirmish involving China and India is perhaps the most well-known: Kashmir. As India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the Indo-Pakistan partition for claim to Kashmir, China has begun fanning the flames of conflict through continued backing of the Pakistani military. Having provided four warships to the Pakistani military in addition to JF-17 fighter jets, China is expanding to joint military training in the Arabian Sea, while also holding bilateral air force combat drills with Pakistani forces. Enhanced by the economic linkages of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), China is exerting economic and military pressures on India, driving a larger wedge between the two powers.
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Enter: the United States. Historically, India has maintained a policy of strategic autonomy, reluctant to enter most bilateral treaties or power colations. Yet, the South Asian nation has increasingly relied on America to hedge against Chinese and Pakistani encroachment. At the Annual 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue – a diplomatic summit between India, America, Japan, Australia, Russia, and the United Kingdom – Washington and New Delhi deepened an already-budding partnership.
America and India recently expanded their military defense partnership, outlining a Roadmap for US-India Defense Industrial Cooperation where GE-Aerospace will manufacture over 400 jet engines for the Indian Air Force. This will simultaneously augment Indian naval and air power with both P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine aircrafts and C-17 Globemaster heavy lift transport aircrafts.
The two nations’ cooperation further extends to India’s technology sector, as America deepened private sector investment into the Indian semiconductor industry via the US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology. In this way, Indian grand strategy is ostensibly leaning towards more amenable US-India relations, balancing the economic, militaristic, and technological competition presented by China.
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However, actions make for poor artists in the landscape of geopolitical perceptual dominance. While it might be easy to approach these instances of political brinkmanship and conclude that China and India have diametrically opposing interests and serve solely as rival powers in the South/Southeast Asian political landscape, such a judgment is perhaps too premature. Experts suggest that India’s grand strategy might actually be to normalize long-term relations with China, competing in order to prove its geopolitical capital across Asia. Counterintuitively then, India might align closely with America in the short-term to enhance its bargaining power and leverage with China in the long term.
In the ever-unfolding landscape of grand strategy and trilateral relations, the incentives of alliances and animosity between enemies can change day-by-day. In the case of India and America, perhaps all we can do is wait, and allow the actions of great powers to run their course.