The India DividendSeptember/October 2019 183
friendly Indian government. New Delhi is content to cooperate when
there are common national interests at stake, as in the case o balanc-
ing China, but seeks the right to go its own way without penalty when
U.S. and Indian interests diverge.
Ultimately, neither the American nor the Indian approach provides a
stable basis for long-term cooperation; both will instead produce only
acrimony and frustration. The United States must recognize that India
is not an ally and will not behave like one, even though there are issues
on which the two countries’ vital national interests align. Strengthening
those convergences should be a priority in Washington. Toward that
end, the United States should desist under certain circumstances from
levying demands on India that could threaten New Delhi’s relations
with its other partners: when vital U.S. interests are not at stake, when
the demands would undermine progress toward collectively balancing
China, and when they relate to peripheral dierences in the bilateral
relationship with India. And India should stop taking the United States’
strategic altruism for granted and assuming that it can rely on continued
U.S. generosity even in the absence o any attempts by New Delhi to
make it worth the cost. For India, this means contributing to the liberal
international order at a time when Washington’s commitment to bearing
those costs is wobbly, accelerating defense cooperation with the United
States, and pursuing economic reforms that would allow U.S. businesses
more access to the growing Indian economy.
Both sides should prioritize practical cooperation to balance China’s
rise. They should start by routinely sharing intelligence on China’s mili-
tary modernization and real-time information about Chinese military
movements in the Indian Ocean. Each could allow the other’s military
to use its facilities for rotational access. And by working together on
antisubmarine and antisurface warfare, air and missile defense, and cyber-
and space technology, they could erect a joint anti-access/area-denial sys-
tem that constrains Chinese military operations in the Indo-Paci¿c.
“Forgetting our intentions,” Friedrich Nietzsche observed, “is the
most frequent o all acts o stupidity.” Washington and New Delhi
should remember that their most pressing objective by far is not to agree
on trade or Iran or Russia; it is to cope with the power o a rising China
in the coming decades. I balancing China in the context o protecting
the liberal international order remains the lodestar, the actions that
both sides take toward that goal, both unilaterally and bilaterally, will be
more than worth all the inevitable disagreements on other issues.∂