The Strategic Imperative Benefits outweigh costs of India, US intimacies

There’s anxiety in the Indian strategic community that India is about to embrace the US strategically and get locked in an anti-China alliance — without adequate debate. This anxiety is fuelled by three mistaken factors. First, the lack of reading of China’s Defence White Paper of 2015, wherein the debate between the continentalists and the maritime people has been settled in favour of the maritime lobby. China is going to become a maritime power in the “far seas” — the Indian Ocean. Second, “One belt one road” is the larger plan to change the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean to support the permanent presence of a Chinese fleet. It’s admittedly a long-term plan. Third, the Chinese are going full speed to get Gwadar and Djibouti ready for the PLA Navy in the Indian Ocean. Read More…