Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. He wrote on UPI Asia Online:
Military strategists in India raise their blood pressure levels by pointing to China’s “encirclement” of the country through an archipelago of military and intelligence assets around the periphery of the world’s only billion-plus democracy. The reality, however, is that India has been displaced by the United States as the primary target of Beijing’s attention and actions, at least since 1999.
New Delhi does alarm military planners in Beijing, but only because they foresee a situation in which India joins Washington’s two “deputy sheriffs,” Japan and Australia, in a U.S.-led coalition capable of taking on the People’s Liberation Army on land, sea and air, should the eventuality arise. They know that the addition of India’s substantial uniformed muscle could create a “second front” across the Himalayas, in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. [Full Text]
[Image source: naval-history.net]
