US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday has said that India can become a strategic partner of America by playing an important role in countering China.
Gilday was speaking at a seminar organized by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, Nikkei Asia reported.
“India presents China with a problem on two fronts. They now force China not only to look to the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, but they must now look over their shoulders to India,” he said. “
“I have spent more time visiting India than any other country because I consider them a strategic partner for us in the future,” Gilday said.
Describing his five-day visit to India last October, he said, “The battlefield of the Indian Ocean is becoming more and more important to us. The fact that India and China currently have some skirmishes on their border… strategically important.”
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According to the Nikkei Asia report, the fact that border conflicts in the Himalayas are a two-front problem for Beijing is gaining traction among US strategists.
In June, when the leaders of the Quad, the US, Japan, India and Australia, were meeting in Japan, former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby told Nikkei Asia that India would not contribute directly to the local fight over Taiwan, but that it would attract China. Can do. meditation on the Himalayan range
Colby, the lead author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, said, “The United States and Japan need India to be as strong as possible in South Asia and effectively attract Chinese attention so that they face a major other problem.” Are.” Under former President Donald Trump.
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Meanwhile, India derives equal benefit from China’s difficulties in countering a strong US-Japan alliance around Taiwan, he said.
A planned joint mountaineering exercise between the US and India in October is being seen as a possible second front for China.
According to the report of Nikkei Asia, the annual joint exercise, Yudh Abhyas (Yudh Abhyas) will be held in the South Asian country of Uttarakhand from October 18 to 31.
India has hosted war exercises in Uttarakhand before 2014, 2016 and 2018, but all of those exercises were conducted in the foothills of more than 300 km from the Chinese border.
Local Indian media reports said this year’s exercise will take place at an altitude of over 3,000 meters in Uttarakhand’s Auli region, which is less than 100 km from the Line of Actual Control, Nikkei Asia reported.
Columnist Brahm Chelani wrote in Nikkei Asia, in an opinion piece titled “India has a stake in defending Taiwan”, that Indian activities in the Himalayas could help defend Taiwan.
This would “tidy up a full Chinese theater force, which could otherwise be employed against the island,” he said.
But such a two-front strategy must be coordinated with the US, he said.
At Thursday’s symposium, Gilday said a potential fight against China would be trans-regional. “You cannot think of China through the lens of the Indo-Pacific. You have to look at the Indian Ocean, you have to look at their Belt and Road, their economic connective tissue, which is now global,” he said. , “You have to take a look at their weaknesses,” he said.
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