India Finds its Footing in a New Era of Bipolarity
The US and Indian teams during their joint statement after the culmination of the 2+2 Dialogue. Source.
Two weeks ago, an entourage of United States officials headed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper arrived in New Delhi, signing a new military agreement with India. The terms of this agreement, called the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), include provisions for sharing navigational and geospatial intelligence with India.
According to an Indian Ministry of Defence official, this agreement will “...will help boost the accuracy of the Indian military’s automated hardware systems and weapons such as drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles,” While stopping short of a full military alliance, this agreement, and others signed in recent years, are clearly aimed at stemming Chinese influence in the region.
China’s attempts to expand its authoritarian influence beyond its borders have been keenly felt by many countries, but India’s close proximity to China has caused it greater concern than most. In addition to the long-standing military dispute over territory in the Indian state of Ladakh, China’s foreign policy towards India has been described as encirclement. By exerting its influence on Indian neighbors Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Pakistan, China has attempted to subject India to regional containment.
China’s other activities have also come under greater international scrutiny, including the particularly chilling internment of Uyghur people in “re-education camps” where recent reports of sexual abuse and forced sterilizations have caused great concern abroad (though little concrete action).
Internationally, China has engaged in “debt-trap diplomacy”, in which it saddles developing nations with large amounts of debt to garner strategic leverage. This has allowed it to take control of strategic ports and land in areas ranging from neighboring Tajikistan to African countries such as Kenya, where 72% of all national debt is owed to China.
Given the rising tensions between the United States and China, recent defense agreements and military exercises with India, Japan and Australia in a group informally known as the Quad should come as no surprise. Pompeo delivered scathing remarks regarding the Chinese government, stating "The CCP is no friend to democracy, the rule of law, transparency, nor to freedom of navigation — the foundation of a free and open and prosperous Indo-Pacific,".
During the Cold War, the United States generally pursued closer relations with China and its ally Pakistan in an attempt to curb Soviet influence in Asia, while India was generally closer to the USSR despite its official stance of being “non-aligned”. This damaged relations between the United States and India, culminating in President Nixon sending a nuclear weapon-equipped aircraft carrier into the Bay of Bengal in an attempt to intimidate India during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.
Despite internal recognition by the US State Department that the Pakistani military was engaging in a systematic campaign of rape and genocide in East Pakistan (what is now Bangladesh), President Nixon and Secratary of State Henry Kissinger valued the close strategic relationship the United States had with Pakistan, and by proxy China, over its human rights abuses. To this day, India and Bangladesh remain the only nations to recognize the Bangaldesh Genocide, the death count of which has been estimated to be between 300,000 and 3,000,000 people with 200,000 to 400,000 sexual assaults.
Despite these past grievances, the collapse of the USSR and rise of China as an economic and military power has caused a realignment of interests that strongly favors US-India cooperation.
As has been stated in the past by American leaders, the United States and India would appear to be natural allies - the world’s oldest democracy, and the world’s largest. With Chinese actions both within its borders and in the broader world causing concern as the world enters a state of heightened tension between bipolar centers of power, both nations see the need of enhancing military cooperation in the world’s most populous continent.