Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a rare public speech Wednesday outlining U.S. policy toward India. Call it a “love letter to New Delhi,” write Emily Tamkin and Robbie Gramer for Foreign Policy.
“In terms of defense ties, Tillerson built on growing U.S.-India military cooperation that ramped up late in the Obama administration, calling the two countries ‘bookends of stability’ in a troubled part of the world. He stressed growing defense cooperation between the two countries, and especially the annual three-way military exercises including Japan that are at the center of U.S. efforts to push back against China in the greater Indian Ocean area,” they write.
“But a potential problem is that India has for decades gone its own way in terms of foreign policy -- and even with a more pro-Western leader in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that old notion of ‘nonalignment’ or ‘strategic autonomy’ remains alive and kicking among many Indian policy mandarins. Even in recent years, for example, India has redoubled defense and economic ties with Russia, even while it spurned the U.S.-led trade pact Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“That calculus may slowly be changing in part in response to China’s economic and military transformation, said Milan Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment.”
“In terms of defense ties, Tillerson built on growing U.S.-India military cooperation that ramped up late in the Obama administration, calling the two countries ‘bookends of stability’ in a troubled part of the world. He stressed growing defense cooperation between the two countries, and especially the annual three-way military exercises including Japan that are at the center of U.S. efforts to push back against China in the greater Indian Ocean area,” they write.
“But a potential problem is that India has for decades gone its own way in terms of foreign policy -- and even with a more pro-Western leader in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that old notion of ‘nonalignment’ or ‘strategic autonomy’ remains alive and kicking among many Indian policy mandarins. Even in recent years, for example, India has redoubled defense and economic ties with Russia, even while it spurned the U.S.-led trade pact Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“That calculus may slowly be changing in part in response to China’s economic and military transformation, said Milan Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment.”
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