[bioqubit]

The Atlantic Council??? You have to be shee-iting me. Another Soros funded liberal honey hole...yeah just the ones we are waiting to produce a white paper on India. Sheesh.

[VanShuyten]

US think tank doesn’t study geography.

[Paladin2]

British Colony development —> Capitalistic personalist govt.

What is not to like?

[Vendome]

Thought thats why we sell India so much stuff and their neighbors.

Russia and China are Natural allies.

India needs the USA or risks marooning itself with little influence in their sphere.

[Cowboy Bob]

Always wanted to get a job in a “think tank.” Sure beats working for a living!

[Secret Agent Man]

India and China are naturally opposed to each other for multiple reasons.

[PGR88]

Wow. Theses guys are REALLY smart. Use one really big country’s enemy to play off against the other. Who woulda thunk it?

[BobL]

Nothing wrong with being tight with India, but we really need RUSSIA - but that concept is now so poisoned in the US as to be unworkable (at least until Trump gets the Deep State behind bars). But even then, between the Dems and the Neocons (some on this site), we’ll be lucky to keep out of a shooting war with them.

[nathanbedford]

We should stop thinking like Americans and begin to view the world as Bismarck would.

Yes, we need a growing economic and military power which is destined to become a superpower as a counterpoint to China. What we do not need is to outsource our foreign policy to India on the same scale that we are presently outsourcing our IT work to India. We do not need to permit India to alienate us from Pakistan or to commit us to war against Pakistan because India finds itself fighting a crazed but nuclear equipped Pakistan. The power to declare war should remain exclusively in the hands of the American Congress and should not be sold off by treaty or executive agreement to any other nation.

We should be shutting down the torrent of IT work that is being sent out along the Internet as if it were a firehose to India. I believe the average American has no idea how extensive this outsourcing is. Do you know how many tens of thousands of pairs of Indian eyes are at this moment piering at computer screens to do back office work subcontracted to IBM by American corporations? It is not just a question of importing bright Indians who are quite willing to work cheap here under a H1B visa until they bring over the wife and proceed to have anchor babies, it amounts to billions in contracts outsourcing work that Americans want to do and can do.

Why are we paying $7.9 billion to India or whomever (the article does not seem to be clear)? It seems to me the threat to India from both Pakistan and China is so existential that it is the Indians who should come hat in hand to the United States for protection rather than using Uncle Sam for an ATM machine.

What do we get out of all this? Yes, we want what probably will be the world's most populous country as an ally. We need them as a counterpoint to China, without question. Let them buy our protection rather than trying to buy their cooperation.

Bismarck or Britain over the centuries played a power balancing game with a view toward creating deterrence or effective alliances in case of actual war against an ambitious potential threat. That is exactly what we should be doing.