American Media Is Manipulating Perceptions About Joint Annual Military Drills With India

The continuance of joint annual military drills that rotate between one another’s universally recognized territory (seeing as how Uttarakhand’s Auli isn’t disputed by China) is each country’s sovereign right and doesn’t necessarily in and of itself imply any hostile intentions no matter how desperately the Mainstream Media wants to spin the upcoming exercises in such a false way. Perceiving joint annual military drills in a zero-sum way is actually part and parcel of the US’ divide-and-rule strategy.

The US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) is making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to America’s next round of joint annual military drills with India that will be held in the latter’s town of Auli in the state of Uttarakhand. CNN’s piece on this upcoming event in mid-October manipulates its targeted audience’s perceptions by dramatically declaring in the headline that it’ll take place “near India’s disputed border with China”. While that’s factually true, the disproportionate emphasis on this observation and the article’s focus on prior Indian-Chinese tensions combine to imply that Delhi is supposedly trying to send some sort of unfriendly signal to Beijing even though that’s not the case.

Despite the article mentioning that this is the 18th annual such drill and therefore nothing out of the ordinary, most readers probably won’t remember that important tidbit but will instead leave with the impression that India is trying to militarily “contain” China with the Pentagon’s support. The truth is altogether different though since this South Asian state doesn’t endorse the military dimension of the Quad that some forces have lobbied for and has actually improved its relations with its East Asian neighbor over the nearly past half year since the start of the Ukrainian Conflict. India proved its strategic autonomy by rebuffing US pressure to sanction Russia and even conducted trade with it using yuan.

Not only that, but this rising multipolar Great Power even played a leading role in this summer’s annual BRICS Summit, during which time that bloc invited a range of partners across the Global South such as Ethiopia and Iran to participate in its BRICS+ framework ahead of its planned expansion in the coming future. These aren’t the actions of an American proxy that’s conspiring with the Pentagon to militarily “contain” China but of a proudly sovereign state that always pursues what it sincerely considers to be its objective national interests, though without doing so at others’ expense. That also explains why India also participated in the US-led G7 Summit just a week after the BRICS one.

Nevertheless, there’s also no denying that India and US share concern about China’s rapid rise as a superpower, which is the reason why they became close strategic partners over the past decade. That said, the continuance of joint annual military drills that rotate between one another’s universally recognized territory (seeing as how Uttarakhand’s Auli isn’t disputed by China) is each country’s sovereign right and doesn’t necessarily in and of itself imply any hostile intentions no matter how desperately the MSM wants to spin the upcoming exercises in such a false way. Perceiving joint annual military drills in a zero-sum way is actually part and parcel of the US’ divide-and-rule strategy.

For instance, Russia and India’s Pakistani rival have carried out joint annual military drills that rotate between one another’s territories for over the past half-decade, though Moscow never had any intention of having them send a negative message towards Delhi. Be that as it is, some US-influenced (and perhaps also -financed) forces within Russia’s special and privileged strategic partner and not to mention American media itself attempted to misportray those drills in order to drive a wedge between Moscow and Delhi. They only succeeded in the alternative reality of online political fantasy, though, exactly as is expected to happen when it comes to their latest provocation vis a vis China and India.

What’s most important for observers to keep in mind is that some countries like India practice a policy of principled neutrality whereby they attempt to carefully balance between competing powers like Delhi’s doing when it comes to Beijing and Washington. After all, this civilization-state plans to jointly assemble a new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM”) together with Russia and Iran in order to create a third pole of influence in the present bi-multipolar intermediary phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity so as to maximize everyone’s strategic autonomy vis a vis the American and Chinese superpowers and thus inevitably midwife tripolarity prior to complex multipolarity (“multiplexity”).

It therefore follows that it’ll simultaneously continue its joint annual military drills with the US while working hand-in-hand with China to gradually reform the international system with a view towards making it more equal, fair, and just, especially in the economic-financial sense. Neither policy is contradictory nor does it have to be perceived through a false zero-sum choice, the same as can be said about those aforementioned drills going ahead in spite of Delhi chastising Washington for recently demanding that it prevent Russian ships from entering its ports. What America tried to impose upon India was wrong, but that didn’t impede their upcoming drills, nor have anything to do with them.

The lesson to be learned is that the twists and turns of the emerging Multipolar World Order might lead to what casual observers could be tempted to interpret as confusing policy moves by major countries like India but which in reality actually align with their objective national interests as explained. It should thus become a priority for those who don’t yet have a solid grasp of those states’ interests to learn more about them so as not to be misled by the MSM’s latest information warfare narratives aimed at dividing and ruling the Global South. The final takeaway is that zero-sum perceptions like those that US media proxies try to spin are almost always narrative tricks that everyone would do well to avoid.