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The US’ soft power and strategic interests are served by manipulating the public’s perceptions about India’s emerging role in the global systemic transition, while that country’s own soft power and strategic interests are challenged by its partner’s latest information warfare campaign. Presenting the aforesaid transition’s latest phase as a bipolar one between “democracies” and “dictatorships” instead of the tripolar phase that it truly is undercuts India’s claims to neutrality in the New Cold War.
The US commenced an information warfare campaign in the run-up to President Xi’s historic visit to Moscow aimed at misportraying India as its ally against China. The intention is to make the targeted audience think that International Relations aren’t about to trifurcate into the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the informally Indian–led Global South, but bifurcate into “democracies” and “dictatorships”, with the US and India against China and Russia in the New Cold War.
The first move in this direction occurred on 14 March when Republican Senator Bill Hagerty published a press release about the bipartisan resolution that he co-sponsored in mid-February reaffirming the US’ recognition of Arunachal Pradesh as Indian territory and not Chinese. One day later on 15 March, former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was confirmed by the Senate to become the next US Ambassador to India, which finally filled this highly important diplomatic post after a two-year absence.
Then on 20 March, which was the same day that President Xi arrived in Moscow, US News & World Report cited an inside source who claimed that the US supplied intelligence to India prior to a border incident with China late last year, which enabled Delhi to thwart Beijing’s alleged incursion at the time. This sequence of events was arguably set into motion by the initial report on 7 March that President Xi planned to visit Russia on 21 March, which Beijing confirmed ten days later on 17 March.
Early February’s balloon incident ended prior hopes for a “New Détente” between China and the US, which in turn hardened their positions towards one another and thus made the intensification of their worldwide competition inevitable. Accordingly, China decided to solidify its nascent Entente with Russia by having President Xi travel to Moscow for that purpose, while the US sought to mislead the world into thinking that India had allied with it against the People’s Republic.
That second-mentioned response to the newfound military-strategic dynamics brought about by the balloon incident deserves to be analyzed more at length since everything isn’t at it seems. Upon learning in early March that President Xi was planning to visit Russia, the US decided to send three sequential signals for the purpose of manipulating public perceptions about the Indian-US Strategic Partnership, ergo the spree of developments that was described above.
The timing of Senator Hagerty’s press release about the bipartisan resolution that he co-sponsored the month prior wasn’t coincidental but the first salvo in this information warfare campaign. It was then followed by the Senate finally confirming Garcetti’s appointment as the next US Ambassador to India, which was a long time coming but was given an urgent impetus by reports about President Xi’s upcoming visit to Moscow.
The third and most recent step of this campaign, but certainly not the last one, was when the US decided to leak the report about their country’s intelligence assistance to India late last year on the exact day that President Xi arrived in Russia. This was meant to artificially manufacture the earlier described narrative relating to the false bifurcation of International Relations into “democratic” and “dictatorial” blocs instead of their trifurcation into the Golden Billion, the Entente, and Global South.
About that last-mentioned step, this report doesn’t in and of itself prove that India is the US’ military ally against China since that South Asian Great Power proudly practices a policy of multi-alignment between the world’s top players, which maximizes its hard-earned strategic autonomy in the New Cold War. India rightly eschews formal alliances since they’d impose limits on its foreign policy and burden it with uncomfortable obligations, thus reducing its sovereignty.
Moreover, observers should be informed that the US still dispatched senior diplomats to Beijing for talks with their Chinese counterparts in pursuit of their now-defunct “New Détente” immediately after the same Sino-Indo clash that their intelligence services helped Delhi prepare for ahead of time. Reports about that incident indicate that it took place on 9 December, while China’s Foreign Ministry disclosed on 12 December that their diplomats and the US’ held talks in Beijing over the past two days.
This proves that the US was double-dealing at the time. On the one hand, it reportedly shared intelligence with India to help it prepare for an impending incursion by China, while at the same time still dispatching its diplomats to Beijing in spite of the Sino-Indo clash that took place immediately prior. The signal sent to India was that the US tacitly had its back against China, while the one sent to China was that the US didn’t care enough about its reported incursion against India to call off their talks.
There’s no way to describe this approach other than emblematic of the US’ typical divide-and-rule agenda against Eurasia. If it and India had truly allied against China, then the US would have abruptly canceled its planned talks with China in protest after those two neighboring Asian Great Powers clashed. Instead, it went through with them anyhow since its strategists calculated that their country’s interests were best served by discussing a possible deal with China than standing in solidarity with India.
The above insight adds crucial context to the US’ newly commenced information warfare campaign aimed at misportraying India as its ally against China and compellingly discredits that false narrative. Quite clearly, while Delhi won’t ever decline Washington’s actionable intelligence that’s shared with it about Beijing’s military plans along their disputed border, this doesn’t mean that India will do the US’ bidding against China as proven by its continued restraint despite the incident late last year.
The US’ soft power and strategic interests are served by manipulating the public’s perceptions about India’s emerging role in the global systemic transition, while that country’s own soft power and strategic interests are challenged by its partner’s latest information warfare campaign. Presenting the aforesaid transition’s latest phase as a bipolar one between “democracies” and “dictatorships” instead of the tripolar phase that it truly is undercuts India’s claims to neutrality in the New Cold War.
It also implies that this South Asian Great Power has voluntarily surrendered its hard-earned strategic autonomy in that worldwide competition over the direction of the global systemic transition in order to voluntarily submit itself to becoming the unipolar-driven Golden Billion’s largest-ever vassal state. Neither of these narratives implied by the US’ latest information warfare campaign are true, but they’re being propagated in order to advance that declining unipolar hegemon’s interests at India’s expense.
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This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.
