Four US visits and seven meetings with Obama within two years; PM Modi’s deepening engagement with the US has already started others wondering how the US- India relationship is transforming quickly. At the end of the day, the US has finalised a deal to create six nuclear reactors in India’s power sector.
But the battle to win the NSG membership is a blooming of the ties between the two powers whatever may be the result of India’s attempt. All 48 members of the NSG knows that the US is making out of the box efforts to include a non-NPT signatory country into the group.
The camp against India at the NSG is led by China, though some independent countries oppose India’s entry from some other angle. China and Pakistan have made strong alliance and notable campaign against India’s membership. But the duo’s stand lack credentials as it is not motivated by disarmament but because of regional rivalry.
What is seeing on the diplomacy front is that the NSG campaign is pushing India more towards the US side, for which China has to blame itself.
So far, India has pursued own policy and kept distance from the US on South China Sea. Rather, it has taken an opportunity to harden its stand on enhancing the influence in the Indian Ocean. The Malabar exercise conducted near to the strait of Malacca clearly gives a signal to the Chinese that there is a boundary between the South China Sea and Indian Ocean.
China’s policy of encircling India has reached its maximum return but the opposite counterbalancing response from India has just started. Even now New Delhi has not used its friendship with US to block the interest of China and this gives more credibility to its diplomatic endeavors. On the other hand, China’s veto the UN ban on Masood Azhar has weakened Beijing’s stand internationally.
What the NSG alliance brings to India will be more economic and technological partnership between the US and India. New Delhi’s independent foreign policy and the synergy of democratic culture between the two countries will cement this partnership. China and Pakistan are triggering this process over the last couple of years.
Still, Beijing can learn its lesson and should recognize that the return from economic cooperation with India will be great and will be good for the entire region.
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