America's highest-ranking Navy officer said India will be a crucial partner for the U.S. in the future, playing a key role in countering China.
"I've spent more time on a trip to India than I have with any other country, because I consider them to be a strategic partner for us in the future," Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, told an in-person seminar hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington on Thursday. He was referring to a five-day visit to India last October.
"The Indian Ocean battlespace is becoming increasingly more important for us," Gilday said. "The fact that India and China currently have a bit of a skirmish along their border ... it's strategically important."
"They now force China to not only look east, toward the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, but they now have to be looking over their shoulder at India," he said.
The idea that the border clashes between India and China in the Himalayas pose a two-front problem for Beijing has been gaining traction among U.S. strategists.
"What the United States and Japan need India to do is to be as strong as possible in South Asia and effectively draw Chinese attention so that they have a major second-front problem," said Colby, the principal author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy under former President Donald Trump. India, in the meantime, draws the same benefit from China's difficulties in facing a strong U.S.-Japan alliance around Taiwan, he said.
A planned joint mountaintop exercise between the U.S. and India in October is seen as underscoring the potential second front for China.
The annual joint exercise Yudh Abhyas, which translates to "War Practice," will be held in the South Asian nation's Uttarakhand state from Oct. 18 to 31.
Local Indian media reports have said that this year's drills would take place at an altitude of over 3,000 meters in Uttarakhand's Auli region, less than 100 km from the Line of Actual Control -- the de facto border between India and China.
In an opinion piece titled "India has a stake in Taiwan's defense," columnist Brahma Chellaney wrote that Indian activities in the Himalayas could help Taiwan's defense. It would be "tying down a complete Chinese theater force, which could otherwise be employed against the island," he wrote.
But such a two-front strategy must be coordinated with the U.S., he added.
In Thursday's seminar, Gilday said that a potential fight against China will likely be trans-regional. "You just can't think of China through the lens of the Indo-Pacific. You have to look at the Indian Ocean, you have to look at their Belt and Road, their economic connective tissue, which is now global," he said. "You have to take a look at their vulnerabilities."
Anonymous
US is the shit stirrer in every corner of the world. In Ukraine where they blocked peace negotiations with Russia and continues to provide weaponry to fight to the last Ukrainian.
ReplyDeleteIn Taiwan, it is selling more arms and enhance political visits to the islands, supporting pro independence DPP gov..
In South Pacific, after years of neglect, is now moving in just to deny China's increasing diplomatic space and offensive.
After done with Middleeast but still looting Syrian oil, US needs to create tensions, to start wars to provide for the only manufacturing industry they have no competition-the militlary industrial complex.
India is jealous of China and is always plotting deviously to bring down China and its people.
ReplyDeleteIndia must be gloating that it is highly appreciated as a crucial partner for USA countering China. Being singled out openly by the USA must have made their heads swell even bigger. One fine day they will be highly appreciated as crucial partner for USA in countering BRICS as well. BRICS is developing a new global financial system to marginalise the US$ Hegemony and SWIFT settlement system, so it is obvious what the USA wants India to do the necessary. You never know when dealing with a double-headed snake.
ReplyDeleteIndia realistically does not fit in with BRICS, being at the opposite end of the gouping's non confrontational movement. BRICS is all about economic alliances and progress, not carrying the ideology of war and confrontational ideals. The Indians, as a member of QUAD, obviously wants the cake and eat it. It can never work and it will dump and betray one side for the other some day.
Members of BRICS must watch the double-headed snake carefully, or risk their hard work being destroyed.
India would tell the Americans whatever was discussed in BRICS' meeting to fight American hegemony. Thus the Americans would know every move of BRICS and be well prepared to take down BRICS.
ReplyDeleteNever trust a snake.
How lndia will fare in the Future is hard to tell. However, it is obviously doing well lately.
ReplyDeleteThe India People have progress much in living standard, especially more hygiene conscious.
Its' professionals
are much sort after World-wide, especially in Sin and in the US and Europe.
India shall contnue with it's momentum in progressing further.
Withstanding
unforeseen circumstances,
India shall be a nation to reckon with.
India would be incapable of building a world class MNC or a clean and organised country. Their only hope is to be invited by stupid MNCs or stupid countries to take over the fully organised and developed MNCs or countries.
ReplyDeleteThen they can boast that they built and created these well organised and developed MNCs and countries.
India has been an independent country for 75 years. And this is the 21st century. Go visit India and see for yourself how developed and organised, or how undeveloped and disorganised India is still today.
Quote:
ReplyDeleteIndia is a beacon, unquote.
Whatever it means.
The few very successful Indians in the US, UK and Singapore are a tiny fraction of the 1.3b Indians in India, of which 70 per cent are living in poverty and shitting under the stars, without proper toilets and modern sanitation.
ReplyDeleteIs this the beacon of the world, a model country for the world to emulate?
Sorry, the truth is very painful to accept.
JB, Penang or Malacca is even more organised, developed and modern than the best city in India. True?
ReplyDeleteIndia, like China, has come a long way from being poverty stricken countries. Both have made tremendous progress. However, India at best is like China in the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteI was hygience conscious fifty years ago, from non-flushing toilets to HDB flushing toilets. Fifty long years ago I knew about hygiene, and Indians in India only just recently discovered hygiene.
ReplyDeleteHow to progress when one highly educated, staunchly relgious, University professor interviewed admitted he still bathe in the Ganges, knowing it is highly polluted, saying that he follows his heart and ignored his head. He should, of all people, know the dangers of bathing in such a highly polluted river, yet goes in for his dip day in and day out. The Ganges must be the most polluted river in the world.
India is touted as the world's largest democracy, freedom to do anything, but when it comes to freedom of doing things or getting things done, it always get stuck in the mud, due to leaders not able to overcome public opinion and stalled by fear of voters backlash. This has hindered India's progress and can only move at a snail's pace while the world zips by.
China zipped past India within a matter of three decades. Give India three decades and see what happens. So much hindrances, so much of the population still resisting progress and preferring to adopt small scale manufacturing that cannot break into the global market. That is India's biggest problem and with such a massive population growing so fast, the problems get more difficult to solve.
But they like it this way, so be it.