For many in the Indian establishment, the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to New Delhi this week will have been a disappointment. Beneath the bonhomie, India and the U.S. find themselves in very different places on a lot of issues that matter — Afghanistan, human rights and even the question of how the future of Asia will be shaped. If India wants the U.S. to heed its concerns, however, it needs to start adding more to the relationship.
Indian leaders generally assume that the U.S. needs India more than the other way around. Successive U.S. administrations have reinforced that impression by striving to deepen the relationship. In a press conference with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Blinken recalled a statement from Joe Biden — then an India-friendly senator — in 2006: “My dream is that in 2020 the two closest nations in the world will be India and the United States. If that occurs, the world will be safer.” It’s taken for granted that India is needed by the U.S. as a bulwark against China.
India Must Invest in Military to Be a True Partner to US - Bloomberg
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