US-India relations more and more mirror US-Israel relations. America’s alliance with both countries remains unchanged despite a new face in the White House. Both Israel and India are America’s cops on the beat in their respective regions. Both do dirty work for America, which gives them the opportunity and the clout to do their own filthy work in their backyard. President Trump, despite being an unconventional president who even questioned the existence of Nato, kept those two alliances untampered. President Biden has never been a change agent even though he was the Vice President of an administration that came to power with the promise of change.
During the Cold War, India was more in the camp of the Soviet Union than being an American ally. The communist bloc had India and Afghanistan as their members. The Cold War came to an end and a triumphantly marching America looked elsewhere for possible challengers to its superpower status. China was one serious contender for such a status. China and India had gone to war in the past as well. In a bizarre way, India had the same fate that Iraq had. Right after the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iran was lost as a US ally. The United States needed an ally to fill in the gap left by Iran, which had become an enemy. Iraq was allowed in to become the new US ally against Iran. The two even went to war during the 1980s. Similarly, this new enemy called China changed the fate of the erstwhile communist ally India and changed its status to that of an American ally in this region.
India makes part of America’s overall containment strategy towards China. The other countries for this American ambition are Japan and South Korea, which are other examples of past enemies turned allies of convenience. Japan went to war with America during the rule of the emperor Hirohito. After the United States defeated Japan by dropping the notorious atomic bomb, the Americans sat down to write the new Japanese constitution, which allowed for only a pacifist defence. And the Japanese have stuck to it ever since. However, recently the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been trying to reengineer that pacifist defence DNA. Interestingly, this revision is also at the behest of the Americans because they need a martially aggressive ally in the Chinese neighborhood.
India is a major weapons buyer because it has sadistic urges to fight against defenceless Kashmiris and keeps creating problems for Pakistan on its western front: Afghanistan. India used to buy its weapons from Russia. But that changed and now it is America’s customer. Yes, this is about the money stupid! India’s military is much larger than Pakistan’s and more importantly, the Indian army is offensive in nature. Any army that has an enemy or is always on the lookout for one is a potential customer for the American weapons manufacturers. And those powerful corporations, unsurprisingly, control the US government and its decision-making. That is also the sole reason why the United States had to look the other way when India showed its intentions to buy the Russian made anti-missile defence shield called S-400. 
The writer is a political analyst. He can be reached at imran.jan@gmail.com. Twitter @Imran_Jan.
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