THE BIDEN MOMENTUM
MOTN respondents view the new US president as good for India. But will Joe Biden remain proactive on New Delhi’s border challenge from Beijing?
MOTN respondents wonder if Biden will be proactive about India’s border row with China
President Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States at a time when strategic partners New Delhi and Washington are both wrestling with internal issues of their own. For Biden, it is more than just a pledge to restore the “soul of America” scarred by the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill by the far-right. He not only has to battle the Covid-19 pandemic but also plug America back into the global order, especially on its commitment to fighting climate change. Biden is a longstanding friend of India and has advocated deeper ties between the two democracies. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2001, he pushed for India to be taken off the list of sanctions, and in 2008 helped steer the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement through the upper house. A friend certainly, but someone who could be terribly distracted by internal issues.
India is not only battling an economic contraction but also a protracted face-off with China on its borders and, more worryingly, a strategic nexus between Beijing and Islamabad. This has resulted in its armed forces being on an extended period of alertness on both fronts ever since the Chinese PLA (People’s Liberation Army) made incursions into Ladakh last May.
The Donald Trump administration, which unequivocally backed India on the Ladakh standoff, outlined its priorities in a recently declassified National Security Council (NSC) memo, the ‘US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific’. ‘A strong India, in cooperation with like-minded countries, would act as a counterbalance to China,’ the note stated. The US would support India through diplomatic, military and intelligence channels to help address continental challenges, such as the border dispute with China and access to water, including from the Brahmaputra and other rivers being diverted by China. There is, of course, the Trumpian dichotomy—strategic relations flourished,