Evolving Indian Policy: It’s not USA vs China, It’s USA, China and Others!

Siddhartha K. Rastogi

Published: March 2022

As the world reorients into a bipolar power struggle between the USA and China, India is often touted to be the counterbalancing force to China, mainly due to geographical proximity, size and population. In the post-USSR world and since economic reforms in 1991, India became strategically coupled to the USA and economically coupled to China. Since 2014, it has often been argued that India has started to decouple from China and become closer to the USA, both strategically and economically. This article shows, with the help of the publicly available data, that while India has struggled to move out of the economic dominance of China, it has remained equidistant from the USA as well. The analysis covers mainly trade and defence, while keeping the general economic, developmental and political aspects in the backdrop.