Defence Minister Rajnath Singh with his US counterpart llyod Austin
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, November 10: External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Friday brainstormed with his US counterpart Antony Blinken geo-political issues in the darkening shadow of the Middle East tension, which threatens to distract Washington from the Indo Pacific focus. Diplomatic community is also worried that the US may be distracted from the Indo Pacific amid a flurry of high-level contacts between Beijing and Washington ahead of Xi-Biden Summit next week.
“An open and productive conversation on further developing our strategic partnership…Also spoke about West Asia, Indo-Pacific and other regional issues,” Jaishankar posted on X after meeting Blinken on Friday morning. Union Minister for Defence Rajnath Singh had received his counterpart Llyod Austin in a gesture underlining the significance of the India-US 2+2 deliberations, which began in 2018 with focus on collaborations for critical and the next generation technologies.
However, Harsh Pant, a strategic affairs expert, told the South China Post that “India would be seeking reassurance that the agenda for the US still remains the same. Bilaterally, the agenda will remain the same, but regionally – from balancing two wars and the [growing] engagement with Beijing – the question is whether the US has bandwidth for a more robust response to China”. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College, London, struck a cautionary note with SCM in the backdrop of a hectic exchange of bilateral visits between China and the US in the last one and a half months after the ties hit the rock bottom following the alleged spy balloon shooting case over the American and Canadian airspace.
While Pant is laying much emphasis on bilateral exchange of visits, Chinese ambassador in the US Xie Feng in a video message for a conference in Hong Kong on Sino-US relations emphasised that it’s still a long way to go to normalise the ties between two largest economies of the world. He, however, noted positive developments in the recent times while spotlighting that better ties are in the mutual interest.
Yet, the US is visibly caught in two wars – Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas. This gives rise to the concern that the Indo Pacific focus may lose shine as the US also heads for the Presidential election next year.
But C. Raja Mohan, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, reasoned in an article in The Indian Express that 2+2 bilateral between India and the US will further give boost on collaborations of critical technologies amid growing concerns that Chia is moving quite fast in harvesting artificial intelligence (AI) in economy and military operations. His assertion gains credence in the backdrop of deepening defence technology ties between India and the US, as well as growing defence partnerships and sharing of intelligence.
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