New Delhi still hesitates to take side in China-US rivalry despite deadly border clash

Name: India and China attempt to de-escalate border tension after deaths
Uploaded: 2020-07-11T14:00:19.000Z
Duration: 2 min 13 s
Description: India and China attempt to de-escalate border tension after deaths

Fears of becoming a subordinate ally to the United States have so far kept India from fully embracing the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy

‘China’s strategic goal is to stabilise relations with India in order to prevent the US wooing it away and avoid a two-front war,’ analyst says

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US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi embrace after giving a joint statement in New Delhi on February 25. Photo: AP

Shi Jiangtao

Published: 10:00pm, 11 Jul 2020Updated: 10:22pm, 11 Jul 2020

As China’s relations with India plummet over the fatal clash on their disputed Himalayan border amid an unfolding cold war between Beijing and Washington, it seems natural to assume that India would edge closer to the United States in the strategic triangle.

The deadliest border confrontation in more than 50 years has rekindled a debate about whether New Delhi should forge a formal alliance with Washington to counter China and how that might alter the China-India-US triangular dynamics and reshape the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific.

India and the US are “natural allies in the quest for a better future for the world”, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee proclaimed in New York in 1998, in a bold departure from New Delhi’s non-aligned policy during the Cold War.

Many observers in China also appear to believe that Washington has played an implicit role in the simmering China-India border tensions and that it will just be a matter of time before India jumps on the American bandwagon to confront Beijing.

02:13

India and China attempt to de-escalate border tension after deaths

But more than two decades later, despite all the talk about their “natural alliance”, India has so far remained hesitant to choose sides in the US-China rivalry, or to fully embrace President Donald Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy and a proposed quadrilateral coalition with the US, Japan and Australia.

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New Delhi still hesitates to take side in China-US rivalry despite deadly border clash

Fears of becoming a subordinate ally to the United States have so far kept India from fully embracing the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy ‘China’s strategic goal is to stabilise relations with India in order to prevent the US wooing it away and avoid a two-front war,’ analyst says

Fears of becoming a subordinate ally to the United States have so far kept India from fully embracing the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy

‘China’s strategic goal is to stabilise relations with India in order to prevent the US wooing it away and avoid a two-front war,’ analyst says