Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent trip to China has rightly gotten the attention of many global strategists. Some in Washington seem especially concerned that Modi’s first trip to China since 2018 signals a potential rapprochement between New Delhi and Beijing, a development that could undermine many years of U.S. efforts to build up India as a counterweight to growing Chinese power in Asia.
Yet, it would be a major mistake to view this evident turnaround in China-India relations through a zero-sum lens (and thus as a problem for U.S. national security). American national interests will be well served if the two Asian giants can “bury the hatchet” on their decades-long border dispute, embrace compromise and return to more pragmatic bilateral relations.
For one, global trade and prosperity will be enhanced through much more extensive China-India trade linkages and, fundamentally, the world will not have to watch nervously as two nuclear-armed powers engage in regular, violent skirmishing. Most importantly, U.S. interests will be served by accepting the new multipolar world, including the distinct Chinese and Indian poles within that new global order.
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