Rising Powers Initiative Research Assistant Satvik Pendyala and Senior Research Assistant at Carnegie China Nathan Sher authored an article for 9DASHLINE about Modi’s visit to the United States and India’s position in US-China competition. You can read the full article on the 9DASHLINE website. It is also available below.
The US-India Partnership After Modi’s Visit to Washington
Early in June, the US Indo-Pacific Coordinator, Kurt Campbell, expressed hope that Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Washington DC would “consecrate” India as the United States’ most important partner. Following the visit on 22 June, the two sides agreed to deepen ties across technology, defense, economic, and people-to-people domains. India even received technology-sharing deals traditionally reserved for US allies. As the United States adapts to rising strategic competition with China, it has sought to strengthen ties with New Delhi as a key partner in the Indo-Pacific.
As US-India relations are strengthening, China-India relations are continuing to deteriorate, reaching their lowest point in decades with unresolved border tensions at the forefront of the downturn in relations. Over the last 10 years, India has lost nearly 40 percent of its patrolling posts in Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Recent polling by Tsinghua University reveals that only eight percent of Chinese respondents have a favorable view of India, lower than the percentage of favorable views toward the United States and Japan. To make matters worse, India and China recently expelled nearly all of each other’s journalists, implemented mutual business restrictions, and are continuing to compete for influence in South Asia.
Even as New Delhi and Washington’s interests converge over mutual mistrust of Beijing, many analysts have questioned India’s value as a US security partner. Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently argued that Washington should not hold any “delusions of New Delhi becoming a comrade-in-arms during some future crisis with Beijing”. Similarly, a new RAND report suggests that New Delhi displays “no evidence of being willing to volunteer to join a war that does not directly involve” India’s interests.
As the United States adapts to rising strategic competition with China, it has sought to strengthen ties with New Delhi as a key partner in the Indo-Pacific.
Nonetheless, New Delhi may not need to get directly involved in a potential US-China contingency to be pivotal in a time of crisis. There is a range of actions, from logistical support to joint deterrence, that India could take to provide both strategic and tactical benefits to the United States in the event of a Western Pacific contingency. The possibility that India might get involved in a US-China crisis alone would be enough to deflect some of Beijing’s resources and attention from the direct zone of conflict. As the two sides work to continue to deepen their security relationship, Washington should not give up on the prospect of New Delhi’s growing appetite for defense cooperation.
Shared concerns and mutual interests
While many analysts point to the 2020 Galwan border clashes as the inflection point in India-China tensions, bilateral suspicions began rising years before, due to the growing assertiveness of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Western Theater Command. Not only did India and China face off at the Depsang Plains in 2013, but three years later several PLA officers involved in those clashes were also promoted to senior positions in the Tibetan Military District and the Western Theater Command.
Tensions then peaked with the May 2020 Galwan clash. While New Delhi claimed that Chinese border violations eroded the “entire basis” of India-China ties, Beijing attempted to put the border issue in an “appropriate place” in the bilateral relationship. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit this April, China portrayed the border situation as “stable”, even though the two sides clashed just months before, in December 2022, at Tawang.
Amid India’s estrangement from China, New Delhi’s underlying motive for strengthening relations with Washington is not solely to oppose Beijing but to cement its role as a rising great power. Therefore, India has joined US-led groupings like the Quad and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) along with participating in other coalitions such as BRICS and the SCO. However, India often recoils when the latter organizations try to insert language in support of Chinese initiatives, such as BRI projects, Beijing’s Global Security Initiative, or counter-terrorism efforts that do not target anti-India extremist groups in Pakistan.
During the Cold War, India partnered with the Soviet Union to avoid domination by either the United States or China. Today, the United States and India have discovered that common anxieties regarding China’s potential domination of Asia are bringing them closer together. As India’s threat perception of China continues to grow, India will find greater security cooperation with Washington — short of being a formal ally — ever more palatable.
India in a US-China Confrontation
It is true that India will likely seek to avoid the costs of any conflict that does not directly bear on New Delhi’s interests as much as possible, including in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea. India’s emphasis on economic development clashes with any desire to get directly involved in such a hypothetical military contingency. On the other hand, India’s security interests and great power aspirations do not start and stop at the Sino-Indian border. New Delhi recognizes that China’s increasingly destabilizing role in the Indian Ocean and larger Indo-Pacific undermines its own security. A scenario in which the United States loses a kinetic conflict with China and is pushed from East Asia would exacerbate India’s own vulnerability to Chinese domination.
Viewed through an economic lens, India may be reluctant to get involved in a US-China conflict to insulate its own economy. The reality, however, is that a major conflict, even far afield from India’s borders, would severely damage the Indian economy. Deterring and preventing potential Chinese aggression against its neighbors would serve India’s economic interests. In the security domain, India has an abiding interest in preventing Chinese hegemony not only along the Sino-Indian border but throughout the Indo-Pacific. If Beijing were to succeed in “reunifying” with Taiwan, the India-China border would become one of China’s last remaining territorial disputes, and India would be more vulnerable to Chinese pressure.
Even as it faces incursions along the border, India remains committed to improving its maritime capabilities to match the growth of the PLA Navy. New Delhi recently redoubled its military build-up at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands bases in the Bay of Bengal, just northeast of the Malacca Strait. In September 2022, India launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier, and in June 2023 the Indian Navy took part in twin-carrier exercises demonstrating improved interoperability with US and Japanese forces.
India’s naval bases at the mouth of the Malacca Strait give it a unique ability to apply pressure on China by leveraging access to important commercial shipping lanes. New Delhi could grant the United States and its partners access to these islands for logistical, as well as intelligence, support. Even if the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are not operationalized during a Western Pacific contingency, India’s decision to expand its capabilities in advance of any such crisis would enhance joint deterrence, complicating China’s strategic calculations against Taiwan.
Although Taiwan remains a far more important core territorial interest to China when compared with Aksai Chin or Arunachal Pradesh, the PLA still must prepare for the risk of a potential border conflict with India. This leaves Beijing in a tenuous position where it remains vulnerable to Indian pressure on disputed border territories while the bulk of its forces remains focused on preparing for a Taiwan contingency.
Indian geostrategist Brahma Chellaney recently proposed that an Indian escalation on the border in the event of an imminent Taiwan invasion could force China to consider a wider range of threats. Thus, deterrence signaling on the China-India border before a potential Taiwan invasion could be as important as any direct intervention in a US-China contingency. Joint deterrence by India and the United States would necessitate stronger strategic linkages between New Delhi and Washington to coordinate and manage the risks of escalation.
A partnership with teeth
While the degree of India’s involvement in a US-China conflict will depend on India’s threat perception of China, there is little to suggest that China and India plan to de-escalate soon. Although narratives in Chinese state media argue that Washington is to blame for rising China-India tensions, Chinese attempts to separate India from the United States have been largely unsuccessful. The confluence of India’s own strategic concerns and great power ambitions have facilitated its alignment with the United States.
Since the United States designated India as a Major Defense Partner in 2016 and elevated New Delhi to the status of Strategic Trade Authorization Tier 1 in 2018, the US-India relationship has become broader and deeper. The two countries now exchange vast quantities of military and dual-use technologies, conduct joint military exercises, and engage in intelligence-sharing bilaterally, as well as through the Quad.
Prime Minister Modi’s recent visit to Washington solidified new agreements to transfer critical jet technology, cooperate on spaceflight, purchase armed drones, and pursue joint research on semiconductor breakthroughs. In the aftermath of Modi’s state visit, more important than any single deliverable, the tone of the US-India relationship has shifted to one of long-term alignment.
