Why a US foreign policy aimed at obstructing China won’t succeed

India, grappling with a coronavirus resurgence, will not be pushed to take the US side against China

Washington’s move towards a cold war with Beijing, amid frosty relations with Moscow, will only drive the two nuclear powers closer

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Published: 3:30am, 4 May 2021Updated: 3:30am, 4 May 2021

Marvellously, sharp streaks of sunshine are starting to break through America’s Covid-19 cloud cover, but the fog over US foreign policy seems heavy. It involves India, China and Russia.

Let’s start with India and employ the British poet W.H. Auden’s words – “the gates of hell are always standing wide open”. But, in India’s case, you have to fear that this South Asian giant, with its endless problems, looks more like a revolving door, perhaps with no way out.

Sectors of the Indian population are trapped instead in a kind of hell on Earth. Every day, hundreds of thousands become victims of the pandemic. The Modi government is in denial, as was Donald Trump’s.

Recall that India has been designated in the minds of US policymakers and grand theorists as the historic geopolitical counterweight to big, bad China on the west bank of Asia. But, since independence in 1947, India has seen itself as somehow above grimy side-taking geopolitics.

Even today, it seems in little mood to play the role of new deputy sheriff to replace ever-loyal Australia, which always had a lot more bark than actual bite to offer anyway.

As many on the US East Coast still imagine that Washington remains the centre of the geopolitical universe, it cannot understand why others don’t think this way and don’t want to join in the new global gutter fight of anti-China geopolitics. Such a diplomatic passage for India, from its stance of non-alignment, would be a very tough transformation.

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