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US Navy Admiral Harry Harris Jr. has recently reintroduced the notion of establishing a naval coalition including the US, India, Japan and Australia, in order to combat China’s growing influence in the South China Sea.

The coalition Harris is proposing collapsed a over ten years ago at China’s protestations.

Establishing strategic alliances with India has been a difficult and thus far fruitless endeavor, owing to India’s (justified) hesitancy to partner with the Western powers.

But in light of China’s doubling down in their efforts to entirely control the South China Sea, Harris believes he can sell India on the might of the US’s naval enterprise.

America’s ambassador to India, Richard R. Verma, laid out the idea of joint navy patrols between India and the United States saying he hopes they “will become a common and welcome sight throughout Indo-Pacific waters.”

The US naval and strategy brass would like seamless access to India’s ports for refueling and repairs, as it steps up the tension on China. Essentially, the United States’ strategy in the decade since last propositioning India has been to back any and all powers in the region, so long as their interests oppose Chinese territorial claims.

“Exercising together will lead to operating together,” Admiral Harris said before meeting with India’s naval brass. “By being ambitious, India, Japan, Australia and the United States and so many like-minded nations can aspire to operate anywhere in the high seas and the airspace above it.”

He didn’t mention China by name, but glaringly referred to the so-called powerful countries seeking to “bully smaller nations through intimidation and coercion.”

Of course, neither the US nor India could be considered smaller nations by any stretch of the imagine—both are nuclear armed countries and have the first and third largest militaries in the world, respectively.

As the US is a major arms supplier to India, there is certainly economic interest in escalating naval patrols and the like.

That said, India has become increasingly wary of Pakistani and Bangladeshi partnership with China, especially the maritime “silk road” connecting China with ports in Gwadar, Pakistan and Chittagong, Bangladesh; one of President Xi Jinping’s priority projects with two of India’s regional rivals.



But India has yet still not shown any interest in carrying out joint patrols with the US. The country especially does not want to put itself on the front-lines in a regional, naval dispute.

In a rebuttal to a Reuters report from last month stating India’s willingness to join patrols, Nitin A. Gokhale told the New York Times, “the last thing India wants to do is accidentally make itself into a front-line player in the South China Sea.” He suggested the highest level of involvement from India will be participation in regional forums.

“I don’t think India will be a front-line state,” added Gokhale.



The New York Times, however, fails to consider that despite nominal outreach by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi to the Western powers in trade agreements, the United States’ utter belligerence in assuaging foreign conflicts and instigating proxy wars is surely a major deterrent to other nations; even those dealing with a belligerent power to its north like China.

Military cooperation with the US has been a disaster for nearly every country involved for decade— and being the foreign aggressor in most cases, India probably realizes the US will combat China with or without India’s support. So why not wait a little longer?