Anticipating the China challenge

Abstract

This chapter assesses the United States’ security policy vis-à-vis India in the context of China's rise. It begins with a brief survey of the present literature on the theory of power transitions, to draw on the Thucydidean assertion that power differentials are at the core of conflicts over the international system. In underscoring realists’ prophecies of a coming hegemonic war between the United States and China, the chapter underscores US overtures to court partnerships with Asian countries such as India, as ‘balancers’ against China's rise. However, it argues that this is not a nascent phenomenon. Rather, the chapter argues that a binary, Manichaean rendering of China and India has been present in the American security lexicon long before China's contemporary economic rise. Further, the chapter conducts a brief perusal of post-Cold War US administrations, to highlight the continued relevance of binary renderings of China and India – brandishing the former as an ‘authoritative’ and ‘repressive’ state, while lauding the latter as the ‘largest democracy’ and a ‘natural ally’ of the United States. The chapter argues that this has spurred the institutionalisation of threat perceptions vis-à-vis China as a ‘strategic competitor’. In the American courtship of India, however, the chapter identifies two roadblocks –– India's isolation from the international community owing to its nuclear programme and the continued hyphenation of India–Pakistan in the American worldview –– that have hindered the US institutional courtship of India. In conclusion, the chapter argues the impediments have been met by an aggressive push by the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations to institutionalise India as a ‘balancer’ with a slew of strategic overtures and security agreements.