India: The Price of Choice

Officials in India had assumed that land disputes with China – over Aranachal Pradesh, in the eastern Himalayas and Aksai Chin, near Kashmir – ended with a visit by the Chinese premier in 2005. India would take the first and China got the second. But India was wrong, and journalist Gwynne Dyer points out that the premier’s overture was merely a low-key effort to stop India from entering a 10-year military alliance with the US. Dyer describes India as overconfident about handling the Chinese reaction, while the US displayed “a quiet confidence that once India signed the 10-year military co-operation deal with Washington, its relations with China would automatically deteriorate and it would slide willy-nilly into a full military alliance with the US.” According to Dyer, the choices that go into forming alliances always carry a price. – YaleGlobal