Enemy Of My Enemy Need Not Be My Friend


“When you stop looking at India through the prism of China, the authors argue, the picture looks very different.”
-         Book review in Wall Street Journal

George Gilboy and Eric Heginbotham wrote this book titled “Chinese and Indian Strategic Behavior” where they question whether America is blindly assuming that India is an ally, a country with similar interests simply because of the fear of a rising China. The book suggests a hard look at each country independently instead of looking at the two as a yin-yang pair where if one is your enemy, then the other must be your friend by definition.

The authors’ conclusion? India and China spell double trouble for the US. Now for their reasons.

They point at India’s stance on issues like Iran, Syria and Libya where it never aligns with the West. Both India and China, they argue, repeatedly vote against any foreign intervention anywhere, including Myanmar and Sudan.

As for the argument that democracies make natural allies, the authors point out that India and the US were on opposite sides during the Cold War. Now the US and India are often on the same side. Just goes to show, that say, that nations pursue their own interests.

Unlike the Cold War era, when two camps had nuclear weapons, now these two nations with no clear grouping hold nukes. Which obviously complicates matters tremendously because it is now a multilateral world.

Further, India and China do align with each other in international bodies and hold common views on diluting existing power structures where the West holds influence. Like the World Bank and IMF. Both want more of the responsibility on climate change on the West, not developing nations.

Maybe the Left should read this book. After all, aren’t they always accusing India of selling out to the Americans? If that were true, shouldn’t we be perfectly aligned with the US on all the above parameters? The reality is more complicated: there are areas and reasons we align with the US, and there are areas we have common interests with the Chinese.

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