That India has not achieved much from the recently signed “Renewal of India-US Defence Framework” is a fact. The argument of India’s right wing media that despite a major turmoil in the US-India relationship India’s fundamental strategic significance to the US has not been lost is no longer plausible in view of the fact that the US no longer considers India as a bulwark against China or a ‘policeman’ in the Indo-Pacific region owing to a variety of new ground realities, including New Delhi’s humiliation at the hands of Islamabad in the four-day conflict in May this year.
Circumventing the US sanctions in an overt manner, the Indian Oil Corp, country’s top refiner, has purchased five cargoes of Russian oil for December arrival from three non-sanctioned entities to the sheer chagrin of Washington. In other words, India has been trying to hoodwink the US in a typically clever and surreptitious way.
In my view, the policymakers in the Modi government do not have the required appreciation of what actually constitutes balance of power and how it is successfully maintained. Needless to say, India’s adversary Pakistan has been continually holding a stable balance of power in the region.
Nauman Syed (Karachi)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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