Washington: The Biden administration pledged to continue building a strategic partnership with India as part of its Indo-Pacific outlook, citing China’s depredations at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) among other reasons for renewed impetus that comes amid war clouds on the Atlantic front. The 12-page strategy paper released in Washington on the heels of the Quad ministerial meeting in Australia, promised to “steadily advance our major defence partnership with India and support its role as a net security provider” while “supporting India’s continued rise and regional leadership”.
“We recognise that India is a like-minded partner and leader in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, active in and connected to Southeast Asia, a driving force of the Quad and other regional fora, and an engine for regional growth and development,” the strategy paper said, acknowledging New Delhi’s primacy in its neighborhood that China has long tried to undermine with its surrogate Pakistan. Although senior US administration officials who briefed the media on the paper said it not an exclusive “China strategy”, which he said was global in scope, it nevertheless cited “the rise of China and China’s much more assertive and aggressive behaviour” in the region to reassert America’s Pacific power credentials and its enhanced outreach towards allies and partners.
