[ad_1]
WASHINGTON: When the United States tried to seal a defense deal seven years ago with the Maldives, a sprawling and strategic archipelago, its plans were quietly torpedoed by a friend: India, which considers the Indian Ocean its sphere of influence.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit the Maldives this week after high-level talks in India, which offered open support when the Pentagon finally went ahead with a defense pact with the island nation in September.
What sparked the change, analysts say, is growing concern in New Delhi about China, which engaged in a deadly border clash with India this year and has increased its influence in South Asia, including the Maldives.
Pompeo will also visit Sri Lanka, where China has lent billions of dollars, leaving a mountain of debt, as well as Indonesia, as President Donald Trump’s administration escalates its challenges to Beijing’s maritime claims in the plagued South China Sea. of disputes.
Pompeo, who has advocated a hard line on Beijing, said his trip “will include discussions on how free nations can work together to thwart the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
CHINA “NEEDLE” MOVING
Pompeo will be the first US secretary of state since 2004 to visit the Maldives, which under the defense agreement agreed to strengthen cooperation with the United States and support a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
“At another time, India might have complained about the US presence in the Indian Ocean. Today, it doesn’t want the US to leave,” said Tanvi Madan, director of The India Project at the Brookings Institution.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi shakes hands with Maldivian Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid in Beijing in September 2019 as Beijing seeks ties in the archipelago. (Photo: AFP / Andrea Verdelli)
New Delhi has come to see greater US involvement in India’s backyard as offering a better alternative to China, he said.
“India recognizes that it cannot do it alone, either because of capacity problems or because it has a background with the countries that affects what they would be willing to do with India versus, say, Japan or the United States.”
Sri Lanka’s populist President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has received support from China, but will likely want to “play the game” of being courted by different powers, said Aparna Pande, director of the Hudson Institute’s Initiative on the Future of India and the South of Asia.
He doubted that Sri Lanka would follow the path of India’s historic rival Pakistan, which has forged close relations with China.
New Delhi believes that if the United States gets more involved in Sri Lanka, “the needle will get a little closer to the American-Indian side than to the Chinese side,” Pande said.
PRIORITY EVEN DURING ELECTIONS
Pompeo will be joined by Defense Secretary Mark Esper in New Delhi on Monday (October 26) and Tuesday for the annual talks.
Officials said the two countries are expected to sign an agreement to share geospatial intelligence, paving the way for the United States to send increasingly sophisticated missile technology.
The United States has sold more than $ 20 billion worth of arms to India since the world’s two largest democracies began to intensify relations in the 2000s, but New Delhi has also turned to Russia, its long-time partner, as well as France and Israel as it modernizes its army.
A Chinese soldier with Sri Lankan military personnel during a training exercise off the east coast of Trincomalee in September 2019 (Photo: AFP / Lakruwan Wanniarachchi)
The “two plus two” dialogue, delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has devastated both India and the United States, comes a week before the US elections in which Trump is behind Democrat Joe Biden in the polls .
Pande said the moment showed India that the United States placed a high priority on the relationship, and doubted there would be any significant changes with Biden.
“I think Delhi is one of the few capitals that is not very concerned” about the changes in politics depending on the elections, Pande said.
As America’s relations with China deteriorate, “which country would you want on your side? One that borders China, is antagonistic to China, has lost ground to China, and has the potential to become a rival to China. That is India. “
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, seen here in June 2020, will travel to New Delhi for talks a week before the US elections. (Photo: AFP / Yuri Gripas)
India has banned Chinese apps, including TikTok, but has expressed hope for stable relations with Beijing, even after 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers were killed in the June clash in the Himalayas.
When Indian officials listen to the Trump administration, “I think they would prefer it not to be so direct at times, because they take a more subtle approach,” Madan said.
But he added: “They are well aware that there is a more competitive American vision that converges with much of their vision of China.”
