Korybko To Mihir Sharma: The Latest Sino-Indo Clashes Push The US Further Away From India
I’d actually reword Sharma’s latest article to posit that “China Clashes Are Pushing The US Away From India” since Washington’s rhetorical support for Delhi obviously didn’t meet its South Asian partner’s expectations. This respected expert once again has it all backwards exactly as he did when he earlier wrote about India’s balancing act, which also prompted me to respond to him in detail at the time.
Mihir Sharma, who’s a senior fellow at India’s prestigious Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and a Bloomberg columnist, published an opinion piece on Thursday declaring that “China Clashes Are Pushing India Away From The US”. According to him, the Indian military isn’t prepared for a all-out conflict with China, which aligns with celebrated Indian defense analyst Pravin Sawhney’s assessment that that he elaborated on in his latest book earlier this year that I reviewed here.
Where Sharma differs from Sawhney, however, is that the first-mentioned believes that their country is actually distancing itself from the US in an attempt to assuage its security dilemma with China. He wrote that “Given its military unpreparedness, India cannot give the impression that it is a fully paid-up member of a Western bloc. That would give full license to the People’s Liberation Army to poke across the border as much as it likes — with unforeseeable but probably negative consequences for India.”
The highly esteemed ORF analyst then added that “On the world stage, Indian leaders are thus forced to balance any toughness towards Beijing with repeated denunciations of Western hypocrisy, even though everyone in the New Delhi establishment quietly recognizes the need for Western weapons and support.” In other words, he’s of the view that India’s public reaffirmation of its hard-earned strategic autonomy is a ruse intended to mislead China for short-term de-escalation purposes.
With all due respect to Sharma, I believe that he’s once again arrived at an inaccurate conclusion similar in spirit to the one that prompted me to reply to him in early October. At that time, he declared that “India’s Balancing Act on Russia is Getting Trickier”, to which I responded that actually “India’s Balancing Act Is Approaching Perfection”. The core difference in our respective positions is that I praise the effectiveness of India’s balancing act while Sharma continues to criticize it.
Intrepid readers can learn more about my view towards this issue in my recent response to influential Indian intellectual Rajesh Rajagopalan where I explained how “India’s Principled Neutrality Does Indeed Ensure Its Security”, which hyperlinks to nearly four dozen related analyses over the past year. I then summarized my assessment in my latest analysis for the Russian International Affairs Council about how “India’s Principled Neutrality Reaps Grand Strategic Dividends”.
The preceding insight is directly relevant to Sharma’s latest article. Whereas he continues implying that India’s strongly worded public statements against Western hypocrisy are insincere, I maintain that they’re genuine and motivated by his country’s desire to position itself as the leader of the Global South exactly as Prime Minister Modi envisaged in his article about its G20 chairmanship. The grand strategic goal is to become an independent pole of influence with a view towards stabilizing global affairs.
To that end, India regularly recalibrates its balancing act exactly as I explained in my earlier response to Sharma, which aims to maintain equidistance between all Great Powers. It therefore isn’t accurate to claim that it’s distancing itself from the US, even rhetorically like Sharma argues, since the reality is that it hopes to retain equal relations with it. The veracity of this observation is proven by its joint military drills with the US last month that were held near the Chinese border.
Even so, India’s balancing act has been complicated by the US’ pressure upon it to condemn and sanction Russia, which Delhi has proudly refused to do since it’ll never unilaterally concede on its objective national interests. To the contrary, India has redoubled its commitment to their strategic partnership and is now poised to scale its exports to Russia by a whopping five times per Moscow’s request. This will strengthen the multipolar axis between them and further accelerate related processes.
The US reacted to this development in a rather curious way, especially in light of the latest news that India and China once again clashed along their disputed Eastern Himalayan border late last week. Instead of postponing its high-level officials’ preplanned trip to the People’s Republic that was scheduled to begin two days after that unexpected event and thus meaningfully signaling solidarity with fellow Quad partner India, America went through with it regardless despite the uncomfortable optics.
That in turn prompted me to provocatively ask “Will The US Sell India Out To China To Sweeten The Deal For A Sino-American New Détente?” The preceding analysis should be read in full by interested readers who want to learn more about how I interpret that decision in the context of the ongoing discussions between those two superpowers over a New Détente, but the most relevant takeaway in terms of the present piece is that India’s importance to the US is nowadays secondary to China’s.
With this in mind, I’d actually reword Sharma’s latest article to posit that “China Clashes Are Pushing The US Away From India” since Washington’s rhetorical support for Delhi obviously didn’t meet its South Asian partner’s expectations. This is especially so when considering that the US still went through with its high-level officials’ preplanned two-day-long trip to China in spite of the border clash that preceded it instead of postponing that visit as a result in order to meaningfully signal solidarity with India.
The US is clearly upset that India has substantively strengthened its strategic autonomy in the New Cold War across the past ten months, which defied its strategists’ false expectations that their South Asian partner would concede on its objective national interests in order to voluntarily become their vassal. That development had the consequence of accelerating the global systemic transition’s evolution towards tripolarity ahead of its final form of multiplexity at the expense of the US’ declining hegemony.
Considering that the American and Chinese superpowers have shared structural-systemic interests in preserving the fading bi-multipolar order that characterized International Relations prior to Russia’s game-changing special operation, it therefore follows that they both consider India’s moves a threat. This explains why the US didn’t seek to politically punish China for last week’s border clashes with India by postponing its high-level officials’ preplanned trip there out of solidarity with Delhi.
In fact, the decision to still go through with their talks in spite of that shows the premium that America attaches to its discussions with China over exploring the parameters of a New Détente aimed at temporarily delaying the end of the bi-multipolar system in which they both have leading stakes. It’s so important for the US to clinch a series of mutual compromises with China to this end that it was willing to hang India out to dry despite that South Asian state being its close partner in the Quad.
These grand strategic calculations, which are arguably shaping America’s evolving approach towards the Sino-Indo rivalry as proven by its scandalous decision that was just analyzed at length, add credence to my conclusion that “China Clashes Are Pushing The US Away From India”. I therefore insist that Sharma once again has it all backwards exactly as he did when he earlier wrote about India’s balancing act. In any case, it’s up to the reader to decide for themselves which of us has the more accurate assessment.