As Defence Secretary Visits, Indo-US Security Cooperation is Far Better Than Academics Think - News18
News 18United States Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, is due to visit India, just weeks ahead of a Prime Ministerial visit to the United States. The paper then goes on to note that India might consider involvement in ‘potential stabilisation scenarios” such as those involving Islamic extremist groups, particularly on the periphery, ascribing this preference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. India has resisted attempts to draw it into Afghanistan for instance, and despite being ‘Hindu nationalist’ has made a strong Middle East policy central to its foreign policy agendas. A similar error in judgement is apparent in an article by Ashley Tellis, who makes the charge that the US has “overlooked India’s democratic erosion and its unhelpful foreign policy choices, such as its refusal to condemn Moscow’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine…. on the presumption that New Delhi will respond favourably… during a regional crisis involving China.” It’s not just the charge of ‘democratic erosion’ – which is dismayingly apparent in the US itself according to Freedom House – but the ignoring of the fact that the US – again like everybody else – has made foreign policy choices in supporting rampant dictators like Fulgencio Batista, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko, Augusto Pinochet, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Zia ul-Haq, and Suharto, even as it now courts Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.