India’s Joint Military Drills With The US Are Part Of Its New Cold War Balancing Act

Those observers who’ve finally come around to appreciating India’s balancing act in the New Cold War must do their utmost to understand this policy as it objectively exists instead of mistakenly interpreting it according to their own preconceived notions. It isn’t being promulgated to help Russia or the US, but purely to help India itself, to which end its leadership is multi-aligning between all key players in the global systemic transition.

India’s pragmatic policy of principled neutrality towards the New Cold War between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the jointly BRICS- & SCO-led Global South of which it’s nowadays the voice is responsible for its accelerated rise as a globally significant Great Power. This South Asian civilization-state carefully balances between both de facto blocs in order to maintain its status as the kingmaker in this worldwide competition over the direction of the global systemic transition.

To that end, India continues comprehensively expanding its strategic ties with Russia simultaneously with retaining those that it cultivated with the US over the past half-decade, all while pragmatically managing its complicated relations with China. Regarding the latter, they were once again the subject of attention following its latest joint military drills with the US that were staged around 100 kilometers from the Chinese border.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed that they “violated the spirit of relevant agreements” and that “It does not serve the mutual trust between China and India. China has expressed concerns to the Indian side over the military exercise.” In response, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said that “India exercises with whomsoever it chooses to, and it does not give a veto to third countries on this issue.”

He also denied that the drills violated any agreements but added that “since these were raised, the Chinese side needs to reflect upon and think upon its own breach of these agreements.” This incident confirmed that both sides are still far away from jointly pioneering the Asian Century that their representatives previously pledged to work towards. That said, it would also be wrong to conclude that tensions between them are rising since the reality is that they never fully abated in the first place.

Their border disputes that provoked the brief 1962 conflict and their deadly standoff in summer 2020 remain unresolved, yet China and India are still committed to responsibly managing them in view of their respective national interests, which clearly differ from one another. It was against this context that China protested India’s joint military drills with the US, which was a predictable response from the People’s Republic keeping in mind its stance towards this sensitive issue.

That said, it also served several ulterior purposes too. First, China doesn’t want to show anything that can be perceived as weakness amidst its ongoing discussions with the US over a New Détente, ergo why it couldn’t remain silent when its systemic rival was carrying out drills near its border. Second, China still doesn’t trust India even though the latter proved its independence by defying US pressure to distance itself from Russia. And third, China hopes to continually keep its border disputes with India in the news.

The first ulterior motive is purely driven by the desire to signal strength to the US and the rest of the world more broadly as ties between the superpowers comparatively thaw despite Washington not (yet?) conceding on anything that China previously demanded. The second, meanwhile, concerns the interplay between these Asian leaders that dramatically changed since February. As for the third, China seemingly thinks that India might concede to its demands in the face of potential public pressure.

The last-mentioned observation is arguably a miscalculation though since the public is actually against India making any moves that are perceived as unilateral concessions on this sensitive issue. In fact, it can even be posited that one of the reasons why its latest joint military drills with the US were held so close to the Chinese border was to allay the public’s concerns that any such concessions were being speculatively considered behind closed doors as part of a larger series of compromises with China.

To be absolutely clear, India has the sovereign right to exercise with whomever it chooses anywhere on its territory exactly as Bagchi clarified in response to China’s protest. Nevertheless, just like China had ulterior motives in publicly sharing its displeasure with that development, so too might India have had its own in terms of where it decided to host its latest drills with the US. That doesn’t mean that India is a US proxy, however, but just that it’ll leverage its relations with the US to advance its national interests.

Those observers who’ve finally come around to appreciating India’s balancing act in the New Cold War must do their utmost to understand this policy as it objectively exists instead of mistakenly interpreting it according to their own preconceived notions. It isn’t being promulgated to help Russia or the US, but purely to help India itself, to which end its leadership is multi-aligning between all key players in the global systemic transition.

This most recently took the form of India jointly exercising with the US close to the Chinese border while in all likelihood probably using Russian arms during those same drills too. Delhi wanted to retain its strategic ties with Washington, send a signal to Beijing that it won’t undertake any unilateral concessions on the border issue no matter how much the People’s Republic might want it to, and reaffirm the importance of military wares from Moscow in its national security strategy.

India knows very well that the US wants it to fight China as a proxy to the last Indian, which would enable Washington to divide and rule these Asian leaders for the purpose of indefinitely delaying the global systemic transition’s evolution to multipolarity. It therefore isn’t going to fall for this trap, especially not after the US hung it out to dry following the deadly clashes with China in summer 2020 when India expected more tangible support from its newfound strategic partner than it received.

Nonetheless, its leadership is also wise enough to flirt with the US’ wishful thinking fantasies in order to allay its partner’s misguided concerns that India’s pragmatic policy of principled neutrality is pro-Russian and anti-American, ergo why it decided to host the latest joint military drills so close to the Chinese border. This doesn’t mean that India is going to surrender its hard-earned strategic autonomy in the New Cold War by becoming the US’ anti-Chinese proxy, but just that it practices clever diplomacy.

Principled neutrality in the New Cold War has always been about advancing India’s national interests as its leadership understands them to be, after all, despite whatever some observers might have speculated. India’s refusal to capitulate to US pressure to distance itself from Russia shouldn’t be interpreted by China as a willingness to enact unilateral concessions on the border dispute since this sensitive issue predates American meddling in Asia even though Washington has tried to weaponize it.

Those efforts are ongoing, yet they don’t mean that the issue itself is purely the result of American meddling nor that India will be manipulated by the US into advancing the declining unipolar hegemon’s divide-and-rule designs. The latter indisputably exist, but India’s stance towards the border dispute is independent thereof despite the American and Chinese superpowers thinking otherwise, each for their own reasons and without any coordination between them.

The takeaway from the latest attention afforded to India’s joint military drills with the US is that Delhi is actively balancing between all key players in the global systemic transition in increasingly creative ways. It’s not a puppet of anyone, and no one should misinterpret any manifestation of its balancing act as supposedly signaling that it’s surrendered its hard-earned strategic autonomy. Rather, everything that India does is designed to advance its national interests, and this will always remain the case.