CHINA, INDIA AND THE US: A NEW COLD WAR?

INDIA: LINCHPIN OF ASIA PIVOT? – ANALYSIS

Ninan Koshy (FPIF)

Eurasia Review, September 23, 2012

The January 2012 Pentagon document on Strategic Guidance, entitled “Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for Twenty First Century,” has inaugurated a new cold war in the Asia-Pacific region between the United States and China. The document affirms that the United States will of necessity rebalance, or “pivot,” towards the Asia-Pacific region. The goal of the rebalancing—American “global leadership”—is a fancy name for empire, maintained by military superiority.

The document gives a prominent place for India in the U.S. strategy, which came as a surprise to many observers. While India is singled out with specific reference to strategic partnership, long-standing allies such as Japan, Australia, and South Korea are clubbed together under “existing alliances.” In his maiden visit to India in the first week of May, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta piled on, calling defense cooperation with India “a linchpin in U.S. strategy” in Asia.

In what may be called cartographic diplomacy, the United States is keen to show that there is geostrategic and even territorial convergence between the United States and India in the region. The January Strategic Guidance document, for example, refers specifically to “the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean and South Asia.” In a November 2011 article for Foreign Policy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defined the Asia-Pacific as stretching “from the Indian subcontinent to the Western shores of the Americas. The region spans two oceans – the Pacific and the Indian–that are increasingly linked by shipping and strategy.” It is interesting to note the inclusion of South Asia in the geographic area of the Asia-Pacific pivot. South Asia has generally been considered a distinct strategic sub-region of Asia, one the United States apparently intends to integrate into its strategy for the broader continent.

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