Hitler and Stalin both knew they would go at each other eventually. Hitler needed a safe rear while he took Western Europe. Stalin needed time to expand his own miltary to finally meet Germany when that time came. The pact bought what each other needed.
Does India have something to offer China that China needs in the near term? Like a way to facilitate the takeover of Taiwan?
I'm reminded of the fictional India/China/Islam alliance in some of Tom Clancy's novels, where the Islamists took point against the US, with India and China supplying "plausibly deniable" assistance. I've seen signs that the China/Islam alliance may be more than fiction. It's in China's long-term interest that we spend our military budgets chasing Osama & co rather than upgrading our abilities to fight a toe-to-toe conflict with a first-rate power (which China will be soon enough with their expanding economy)
Exactly...and my series of books goes right to that point. It is why I wrote them. To try and explore what happens if and when China reaches that point and that alliance becomes an overt world war scenario after we have reshaped our military into something more suited for prosecuting a world-wide war on terror.