India-US relations have always been complex and will continue to be so in the future. Unlike our bilateral relations with most other countries, India’s equation with America operates in the context of mutual expectations, which are invariably high and unlikely to be fulfilled. On the other hand, our equations with Russia and China are largely driven by government to government relations. Historically, the Chinese factor in India-US relations has transited from the negative to the positive. The war of 1962 in the Himalayas was the turning point. However, a number of ambiguities and countervailing factors play their part on both sides. It seems that the Indian and American governments are not anxious to press forward and clarify the subterranean realities at this time. The US and China are economically so intertwined and interdependent that they have to hang together, notwithstanding the many ‘other’ factors (human rights, Taiwan, and above all the “not so peaceful rise of China”1) that pull them apart. The growing proximity in India-US relationship is seen with suspicion by China. The China factor will necessarily prolong the wariness on both sides.

Newly Independent India and post-war America expected a great deal from each other because of their shared values: freedom, democracy, pluralism, rule of law, civil liberties, free press, etc. However, the two nations drifted apart because of the politics of the Cold War that divided the world into two hostile power blocs and the not so gradual unfulfillment of mutual expectations that followed.2 Americans expected democratic India to be on their side in their global crusade against communism, and the ungodly Soviet Union. President Eisenhower’s first choice was to have a military base in India, as a key constituent of the global network undergirding Sino-Soviet bloc from Istanbul (Turkey) to Okinawa (Japan). However, Nehru’s India opted to stay out of the conflict between the two Superpowers and the rival strategic and ideological formations. India was anxious to protect its newly won freedom from the hegemonic sway of the Big Two. Economic development at home was her topmost priority. Americans (especially John Foster Dulles) did not appreciate India’s ‘neutrality’ in the global conflict. Since the Cold War was seen by them as a fight to finish between ‘good and evil’, Dulles declared that “those who are not with us are against us.” In 1954, the US signed a military pact with Pakistan, which quickly became a member of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO). Thus, politics of the Cold War entered South Asia much against our will; and India and the US became ‘estranged democracies’.3 The two countries continued to be at logger heads on most global issues throughout the Cold War era, though India continued to accept economic aid from both the sides (the US and the USSR). Such a stance was seen in India as an affirmation of her policy of non-alignment.

International Relations Journal, The China Factor, India-US, Relations, Dissonance to Uneasy, Convergence, China as a Negative Factor, China as a Positive Factor, Strategic and Ideological Divergence, The North-South Divide.