https://worldaffairs.blog/2020/06/13/india-as-a-tool-to-contain-china-geopolitics-explained/
>>Quoted text>>1In the war against China, the US has chosen India to be the big pawn, as traditional US “allies” like Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia have all signaled that they don’t want to be a part of WW3. To give credit to the US, they have been planning on recruiting India for a long time. Let’s expound on this more …
First, one must understand the Faustian bargain that India made with the US. America opened up its job market for Indians, and India opened up its entire economy for the US! And the USA wins in both sides of the deal. Get the brightest workers from India; and in return get two things: (1) access to 1.3 billion consumers, and (2) a geopolitical puppet state.
Democracy and Free Market are propaganda slogans. Why hasn’t the US tried to spread democracy in Saudi Arabia? No, that would be very dangerous — what if a populist Saudi guy gets elected and kicks out the US military base and starts selling oil in Yuan? That would be the end of USA’s global hegemony.
Throughout the Cold War history, the US supported and installed dozens of dictators and mass murderers all over the world — in Cambodia, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, all over Latin America, Middle East, Africa etc. Currently, the US funds and arms about 70% of all non-democratic governments around the world. Just last year, when the socialist leader of Bolivia won the election, the US instigated a military coup and overthrew the winner. In the 1970s, the US even staged a coup in Australia and overthrew the popular Prime Minister who wasn’t very pro-US. Here is the general idea: “You can choose anyone democratically, as long as he is pro-USA.”
Thus, India shouldn’t fall for the propaganda for “like-minded democratic nations” getting together to contain China.
And “free market” was great until China started to win. Now the US likes protectionism and hates WTO, which the US created! When Walmart buys FlipKart — India’s successful e-commerce startup — that’s cheered on as free market. But do you think the US would have allowed FlipKart to buy Walmart? Of course, not.
The Indian executives in America will never be able to go back to India and start competing corporations. The US has made sure that it has enough control over Indian banks, VC’s and other financial structures to guarantee that there won’t be any funding for Indian versions of Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Facebook, Amazon etc.
China has Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, TikTok, Baidu, BeiDou, SMIC, Xiaomi etc. to compete with every large American/European firm. India has no such indigenous players. And given the recent moves, India will never have such domestic giants.
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>Quoted text>>2India should also join China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has more than 120 countries as members, including European nations such as Italy and Greece. India can learn a lot from China — for example, how China plans 5, 10, 40 years in advance; and how China has laser-focus attention and resolute meritocracy. There are numerous areas where India and China can cooperate and also compete in healthy ways.
In 1954, Indian Prime Minister Nehru went to Beijing and spent three days with Mao. And they came up with the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.” The famous slogan in those days was, “Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai” — meaning “Indians (and) Chinese (are) Brothers.” Hopefully, sometime in the future, there will be new leadership that will try diplomacy based on those ideals.
India’s global ranking in Human Development Index (HDI) is #130. That is, people in 129 countries are better off than Indians. India also has a lot of systemic and structural problems that will drag the country down, if left unsolved (see my blog). Thus, for the next twenty years or so, India’s focus should be on improving its economy, technological innovation, infrastructure, housing, healthcare, education, and environment.
As a final warning, India shouldn’t become a pawn of a disastrous war that will murder the “Asian century” in its infancy.
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