The China Factor: How Beijing Figures In The Emerging Indo-U.S. Alliance

Abstract

George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001 with the intention of deepening the relationship with democratic India. Though they are multiethnic democracies, the two countries had failed to develop much of a relationship for the better part of 50 years. The incoming Bush administration’s primary rationale was that a stronger India was in American interests because the U.S. needed a democratic counterweight to communist China. After the September 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. and the December 12, 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament, combating a common enemy – radical Islamic terrorism – supplanted China containment as the principle rationale to strengthen the relationship.