Why LAC face-off with India is Xi Jinping's strategic gift for Donald Trump

Описание: A brutal day of hand-to-hand combat on the India-China border last month may accomplish what years of Pentagon and White House outreach has struggled to achieve: draw the US and India closer militarily. US strategists have long wanted to get India firmly on America's side, seeing the nation of 1.3 billion as a powerful counterweight to China. But while India has historically tried to balance its ties among global powers, the clashes with China at 14,000-feet (4,300 meters) laid bare the potential longer-term risks of not having the US more clearly behind it. Closer ties would represent a big strategic win for Donald Trump. The American president has courted Prime Minister Narendra Modi since taking office in 2017. In 2018, the two nations signed a defense agreement that allowed India to purchase advanced American weapons and share sensitive military technology. In 2019 the US approved the largest defense deal between the two countries in four years when it confirmed the sale of $1 billion in naval guns to India. Last year the US and Indian militaries also conducted their first-ever joint land, sea and air exercises. In February, just before the Covid-19 pandemic exploded in the US, the two leaders confirmed that $3 billion in defense deals would go forward, including $2.6 billion for MH-60R Seahawk maritime helicopters built by Lockheed Martin Corp. They promised more to come. Then came the border clash on the Tibetan plateau, just as tensions were soaring between Washington and Beijing. Trump, who used to regularly praise his friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, now lambastes Beijing over the origins of the coronavirus, its growing intervention in Hong Kong and its treatment of Muslim Uighurs in the western region of Xinjiang. That's all playing out to New Delhi's benefit as well as Trump's.