US President Donald Trump’s recent visit (February 24-25, 2020) to India and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement that India will buy US military equipment totaling $3bn shows that the US and India are trying to tighten relations between them to limit the spread of Chinese influence in Asia and more specifically in the Indian Ocean.
The U.S. and India have been in defensive cooperation since 2018. In November 2019 all three branches of the armed forces of both countries held joint military exercises.
The only other country with which India’s all three branches of the armed forces have jointly conducted exercises with the respective three branches of its armed forces is Russia.
by Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis
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Photo by The White House by Shealah Graighead, Licensed Public Domain
In recent years both the US and India have been eminently with the same concerns about the expansion of Chinese power and influence respectively in Asia.
The priority shown by the US in strengthening its relations with the Indian and Pacific Ocean countries respectively is not unprecedented since if this objective is achieved then the US manages to control at the minimum possible cost the Pacific and Indian Ocean basin respectively with full control of the maritime trade routes of this region of the planet, limiting China as a land-based superpower.
China, in order to overcome this strategic US point on Eurasia’s global geopolitical chessboard and not only there, has created a cluster of ports and logistics infrastructure in islands and countries located in the Pacific and Indian Ocean basins in order to expand its economic and political influence in these regions of the world.
At the same time, however, since 2013, China has been continuously using infrastructure projects in Asian and African countries respectively to create its global geopolitical strategy called “the new silk road”.
Many of these infrastructure projects are ports that will form China’s “long hand” in support of the Chinese Navy by giving the unlimited range of action away from the Chinese mainland.
India in turn considers the Indian Ocean its own “vital space” and believes that China’s expansion into this region of the planet limits both India’s dynamic and international image.
Strengthening and improving relations between India and the US is changing the flow of these pro-India figures by creating the foundations so that India can gradually become the distant US stronghold that will act as the counterweight to Chinese power in Asia and in south Asia in particular, and like the US had Western Europe and NATO in Europe against the Warsaw Pact and the USSR during the Cold War.
Photo by Jolly Janner, Source: Own work, Licensed Public Domain
During his visit to India, US President Donald Trump said the US would supply India with the best and most formidable military equipment. The consideration the US is asking for is at least the exclusion from India of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from building 5G mobile networks on the Indian market.
The issue that arises is how India will react to the interests of the US when pressed by its other partners in the coalition of BRICS, namely Russia and China. What will India do when relations between China and Pakistan are further tightened when Pakistan, which is a traditional US ally?
China builds naval bases with huge logistics infrastructures at Pakistan’s largest port in Gwadar on its shores of Arabian Sea and 370 miles from the spout of the Persian Gulf. In the future there will be a railway network starting in China and ending in Gwadar, Pakistan.
Such infrastructure and naval bases are built by China and Djibouti in Kera, Africa.
The US geopolitical strategy and through President Donald Trump’s applied foreign policy and always after the US withdrawal from Syria shows that China is better planning its geopolitical strategy from the US. For more information about the geopolitical developments in the Middle East please read the analysis titled “The New Under Formation Geopolitical Developments in the Middle East“.
By acquiring a Chinese naval and air base in Syria, which is possible because of China’s relations with Russia and China’s future economic involvement in the reconstruction of Syria, China is completing its plan with the Chinese armed forces to circle the entire Arabian peninsula and the Indian Ocean. A figure that US geopolitical policymakers seems to ignore.
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