President Donald Trump held a bilateral meeting on Monday with India’s Prime Minister Narenda Modi, where they reportedly discussed “strategic partnership between the United States and India and their shared commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” according to a readout of the meeting.
However, if the White House wants India to be at the center of their Asia policy they have to help New Delhi get stronger in the region. The White House must also give support to India’s membership in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, CNBC reports.
In a speech Trump delivered in Vietnam he repeatedly used the term “Indo-Pacific” instead of “Asia-Pacific” to highlight New Delhi’s importance to Washington. According to Manoj Joshi, fellow at Observer Research Foundation, “the term Indo-Pacific now seems to be a means of including India in the military calculations of U.S. strategy in the Pacific.”
At the moment, India is not a treaty ally of the U.S. but has a strong bilateral relationship with it and has access to important American defense technology. During the meeting, Trump allegedly said the two countries should have “the world’s greatest militaries,” a relatively new feature of the relationship between these two countries.
New Delhi has recently also surfaced as one of the key players in the informal defense alliance which aims to counterbalance Beijing’s military aggression. The partnership consists of four nations, including the U.S., India, Australia and Japan and is seen by many as an effort to suppress China’s rising power. The alliance fell apart, but was unofficially revived at the ASEAN Summit in Manila, suggesting a possible military alliance with New Delhi.
Joshi also added that “for all its talk of the Indo-Pacific, [Washington] refuses to associate with India on issues relating to the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf,” which he pointed out were among the most important “external areas for India.”
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