Sailing into a new future

The story of the Seventh Fleet Task Force 74 led by the world’s longest warship, USS Enterprise, sailing into the Bay of Bengal to help Pakistan during India’s war for liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 was fresh in the nation’s collective consciousness for long. But that memory got eclipsed on Monday with the Nimitz carrier strike group getting deployed by the US for a ‘passex’ or passing exercise in the very same Bay of Bengal during India’s standoff with China. A new chapter in geopolitics is getting written in Washington, New Delhi and Beijing. The message of the unscheduled exercise, involving the US and Indian naval ships, is not the understated ‘improvement in interoperability’, but the deeper investment by the American establishment in Indo-US military ties. Earlier, as the US flotilla set sail into the Indian waters, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper significantly issued a warning, ‘Don’t underestimate the strength of free democracies.’

Meanwhile, in Washington, the US House of Representatives on Monday unanimously passed an amendment to the National Defence Authorisation Act decrying Chinese incursion in the Galwan valley of Ladakh and growing territorial assertiveness. If by the Ladakh incursion, China attempted to project its power in the neighbourhood and teach India a lesson for refusing to kowtow to its Belt and Road Initiative or gulp down the ignominy of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, it has achieved neither. Instead, China has only succeeded in formalising India’s strategic ties with the US into a mutually beneficial military relationship, wherein the eastern neighbour proves to be a cause of common concern.

Often a country’s foreign policy choices are forced upon it by a lack of options. Chinese aggression, intransigence and refusal to de-escalate have forced India to abandon its long-held hopes of an Asian century, where China and India could have been partners in prosperity. India will soon appreciate that it is easier to be hostile than be cautious and in this context, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar’s statement is of great consequence: India has to shed its caution and step out confidently to articulate its interests.