American Foreign Policy in India

2020

The Indo-US strategic bonding is shifting the security dynamics of the South Asian balance-of-power in Indian favour. From the signing of 123 US-India Nuclear Deal to the facilitation in becoming a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the US has clearly designated India as an instrumental element in the American grand strategy of devising a ‘new world order’. As a result, India has grabbed the opportunity of alleviating its status as a credible regional and global power. In this regard, the US tilt towards India is significantly paving grounds for a strategic imbalance in the South Asian region, thus creating challenges for Pakistan. Therefore, this paper argues that the growing bonhomie between the US and India is a destabilizing factor in the region which reinforces Pakistan’s fast falling into the Chinese orbit; thereby cementing the old friendship into a new strategic partnership. This dynamic certainly gives China and Pakistan an incentive to work together so...

Asia Policy, 2019

This special issue of Asia Policy scrutinizes the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership by examining the prospects for bilateral cooperation in Asia. Although peacetime foreign policy collaboration between major powers is a rarity, China’s rapid rise in the international system appears to have forced the United States and India into unusually close consultation on regional security issues. Will this consultation mature into active cooperation? To answer this question, this introductory essay first examines the concept of strategic partnership—a nebulous type of political relationship that has proliferated since the end of the Cold War. It then highlights the obstacles to peacetime cooperation between major powers in other regions of the world. Following this, attention turns to the articles in this special issue, which examine the history of Indo-U.S. cooperation in various subregions of Asia. Collectively, these articles challenge misperceptions and misunderstandings of each country’s policies and past behavior, as well as identify the differing understandings they have of both the bilateral relationship and the region. Taken together, they provide a clearer sense of the geopolitical scope and depth, as well as the important limitations, of the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership. This essay concludes by identifying the key insights that come from this collection and offers some thoughts on the overall trajectory of bilateral relations. POLICY IMPLICATIONS Bilateral Indo-U.S. cooperation in Asia is often hindered by an “absent dialogue” between the two sides, highlighting the need for constant communication between officials in both countries. Although there is an apparent congruence of interests in the countries’ regional and foreign policy objectives, sustaining and developing the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership will require considerable attention and imagination. India and the United States urgently need to focus on developing infrastructure and enhancing connectivity in Asia.

isara solutions, 2020

This article examines how India-US relations during the Cold War period, marked by confrontation and mistrust, ushered in mutual cooperation in various fields ranging from defence and security cooperation to the nuclear deal, and counter-terrorism initiatives to the “strategic partnership” between them. The article further argues that during the Cold War era, India’s relations were examined purely from the ideological perspective but after the end of the Cold War in 1990 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, geopolitical equations changed. The article evaluates those factors which brought New Delhi and Washington closer to each other.It discusses how the two Cold War antagonists-India and America- became close strategic partners in defence, security, space, trade and investment fields. Also, it discusses how China has emerged as a crucial factor in the growing ties between New Delhi and Washington.

Eurasia Review, 2022

In the light of the Ukraine war, there is a brief mention of how China has become a source of strategic sway in U.S.- India relations, in this article. It also describes how the United States’ military assistance forced China to end its attack on India in 1962. The essay also explains how the United States and India were unable to foster the kind of strategic proximity that the 1962 conflict initiated, which ultimately developed into a kind of the cruelest enmity in 1971 during the Bangladesh war.

Global Social Sciences Review, 2016

Due to unprecedented rise of China in the economic, political and social domains world is shifting its strategic focus from the European Politics to both continental and maritime domains of Asia resulting in a challenge for the US and its allies. US, China and India are tied into strategic ingredients of cooperation, competition and containment. US intends to assign India an appropriate, competitive and probable offshore balancing role against China - that is, a strategy of balancing without containment. Engaging into an active conflict is not envisaged due to close integration of these powers in terms of economic, political, social and cultural domains. Indo US close strategic coordination is win-win situation for both the countries. India may become an offshore balancing power for US to retain its influence in Asia Pacific region against China and its allies; On the other hand it brings treasure of opportunities for India to strengthen its military arsenal with open doors of US so...

Pakistan Social Sciences Review

This paper examines the United States interests and its strategies in South Asia. The region has emerged as progressively vibrant interest to United States foreign policy in the 21st century. During the Cold War era, the U.S. interests were to save the region from communist expansion. But, the recent changes in global power affiliations have made South Asia an important region. After September 11 tragedy and the Indo-US strategic collaboration the situation have changed the framework of relationship between the United States and South Asia. Present involvement of the U.S. in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Indo-Pak contention, concerns about the proliferation of nuclear armaments, struggle with terrorism, and rising of Chinese influence in the region has considerably increased the importance of South Asia in the United States policy making. United States must enhance the strategic partnership with the countries in the South Asian region for peace and stability.

Journal of Public Affairs, 2020

This paper examines the nature of India and the US relations. The relations between two the states have improved in the post−/11 era. The willingness of the US to provide India political support at the regional and global level is one aspect that resulted in changing the nature of that relationship. Second, growing defense ties both in conventional and nonconventional sectors fundamentally galvanized the nature of that relationship. This paper further analyzes the geopolitical compulsion of both states to counter various state and non-state actors' threats such as China's increasing maritime presence in the Indian Ocean region and terrorism. Moreover, this discussion argues about the political, strategic, commercial aspects of the strategic partnership till date. Much part of this paper analyzes what is the nature of this relationship and how it developed?

Research Paper, 2020

Historically, the sub-continent was a world in itself where empires were raised by the invaders of Hindustan for a millennium. The last was the British Indian Empire. The Hindu consciousness outlived these empires through an impersonal dissociation to preserve its consciousness, culture, value system and worldview. Nevertheless, the legacies of the invaders remain. The Indian foreign policy is the strategic demonstration of the British imperial foreign policy legacy to establish hegemony in South Asia. In its operational expression, India within and without has gone through occupations, annexations, wars and the fomenting of ethnic and sectarian troubles along with the secessionist insurgencies in the neighbouring countries. America is India's strategic partner in its pursuit of South Asian hegemony. The post 9/11 Indo-US nuclear agreement was the beginning of this formal global partnership. It has since expanded into an Indo-US Entente over the last two decades. Meanwhile, the world has transitioned to the Great Power competition with China squared-off against America and India. Pakistan has opened the strategic door for Russia by initiating a New Frontier Policy. Russia in the perception of Pakistan is a strategic partner across the Amu River. The New Frontier Policy is to the unease of Anglo-Saxons. China, Pakistan and Russia are upgrading ties, as the New Great Game continues unfolding with the twists added by the annexation of Kashmir, the Citizenship Act and Reorganization Order, the Sino-Indian clashes and Covid-19.

India’s recognition as a great power is preceded by the development of a partnership relation with the United States. That partnership, which has now become irrevocable, was set forth in March 2000, with the visit to India by President Bill Clinton. In its “rebalance” policy toward Asia, the United States has been trying to position India as an important strategic partner. However, India has recently begun to carry out a cautious debate about whether or not to further strengthen its strategic relation with the United States, from the perspective of strategic autonomy. In the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, India has been promoting multifaceted bilateral defense and security cooperation. Two forms of cooperation can be observed: one oriented toward classical defense cooperation, primarily cooperation in military equipment and hardware, the other through cooperative military-to-military relations, with its Navy as the main proponent. With Chinese influence growing in the region since the mid-2000s, India has been accelerating its defense and security cooperation with countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Also, on the global stage, India is now urging greater participation in the United Nations (UN) decision-making process, utilizing its score in UN peacekeeping operations as a new diplomatic resource. In this aspiration to address the global South, one of the most successful tools of the Indian foreign policy is the ‘Look East Policy’ [LEP], which is currently aiming for the LEP 2.0. The origin of LEP , in fact, is a fallout of the withering away of the former Soviet Union and the rise of the unipolar world. The restructuring done, thereby, has in fact also altered the concept of the ‘core and the periphery’ . The re-defined Indian foreign policy has thus, also altered the security policy of India, which is today , not only ‘containing China’, but also extending to Southeast and East Asia, and the encouragement to get involved with USA. In this backdrop, this paper seeks to analyse the Indian foreign and security policy from the perspective of India’s “Look East” Policy: Developments in the Security Arena.