Amid India-China war crisis, Washington boosts strategic ties with New Delhi
By
Deepal Jayasekera and Keith Jones
19 August 2017
The Trump administration and Pentagon have taken multiple steps in recent days to strengthen Washington’s military-strategic alliance with India.
These moves are manifestly aimed at encouraging India to hold fast to its hardline stance in the current dispute with China over control of the Doklam Plateau—a ridge in the Himalayan foothills that both China and Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom that New Delhi treats like a protectorate, claim as their sovereign territory.
For the past two months Indian and Chinese troops have been arrayed against each other “eyeball-to-eyeball” on the Doklam Plateau, while New Delhi and Beijing have exchanged bellicose threats and taunts, and ordered their militaries to ready for war.
India has moved thousands of troops to forward positions along its northeastern border with China, placing them on a high-alert “No War, No Peace” status, and undertaken emergency purchases of munitions, spare parts and other war materiel.
China has reportedly deployed fighter jets to Tibet and surface-to-air missile batteries near its border with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and sent additional blood stocks to Tibet, in anticipation of casualties.
Washington’s intervention in the conflict, even if at present only indirect, greatly heightens the danger that a border clash between India and China, themselves both nuclear powers, could rapidly escalate and draw in the US and other regional and imperialist powers with catastrophic consequences for the people of Asia and all humanity.
On Tuesday, the White House announced that, during an Indian Independence Day telephone conversation between President Trump and…