Bloomberg reported late last week that Pentagon officials have begun privately referring to the multilateral cooperation between the US, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines as the “Squad”. This term is meant to signal that it’s a more active “Quad” than the one between those first three and India. This development has strategic implications for India that’ll be briefly reviewed in this piece, but before doing so, here are some background briefings for those readers that haven’t been closely following this trend:
* 16 June 2023: “The US’ Nascent Trilateral Alliance With Japan & The Philippines Will Integrate Into AUKUS+”
* 8 April 2024: “American Experts Won’t Admit That Their Country Is Responsible For Fragile Indo-US Ties”
* 9 April 2024: “The US Is Tightening Its Containment Noose Around China In The First Island Chain”
* 26 April 2024: “It’s Time To Stop Talking About The Quad In Connection With The US’ Asian Plans”
* 2 May 2024: “WaPo’s Indian Assassination Article Is A Shot Across The Bow By American Intelligence Agencies”
In short, the US is preparing to “Pivot (back) to Asia” once the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine ends or at least freezes, but this has coincided with the worsening of Indo-US ties. India refuses to subordinate itself to the US as that country’s “junior partner”, which in this context refers to becoming its anti-Chinese proxy. All the newfound trouble in their ties traces back to this, thus explaining why the US is replacing India with the fully compliant Philippines as the vanguard of its containment efforts.
This shift in strategy shows that the US doesn’t want sovereign partners that can improvise the most effective ways to achieve their shared goals, but puppets that dutifully obey orders without question. India isn’t going to endanger its objective national interests just to advance anyone else’s subjective ones, but the other three “Squad” members are willing to do so in pursuit of what they’ve been misled to believe is the “greater good”. This is the same mindset that most EU nations have towards Russia.
The US successfully reasserted its previously declining hegemony over Europe throughout the course of 2022, and now it’s on track to do the same over Northeast-Southeast Asia throughout this year. Exceptions exist of course since Hungary and nowadays also Slovakia refuse to dance to the US’ tune while neither Indonesia nor Vietnam are interested in doing the same either. As for India, it can’t accurately be compared to any of those four since its geostrategic balancing act is unique.
It’s multi–aligning between Russia and the US with a view towards improving its overall position vis-à-vis China, with whom it’s embroiled in a fierce territorial dispute and multidimensional competition yet won’t subordinate itself to the US as that country’s “junior partner” out of desperation to contain it. Hungary and Slovakia still comply with EU sanctions against Russia, while Indonesia has no territorial dispute with China, but Vietnam does though the US isn’t coercing it into vassalhood status like India.
India is also the world’s most populous country with one of the fastest-growing economies, which endows it with immense geostrategic significance in the global systemic transition, buttressed as it is by proudly retaining its sovereignty in all bilateral engagements. The US’ informal replacement of India with the Philippines through its newly formed Asian “Squad” testifies to the former’s truly independent foreign policy but also means that the US now regards it as less valuable and thus a potential target.
The last half of the aforesaid observation accounts for why America has begun to more aggressively pressure India on a host of issues from its political system to human rights and foreign policy, all of which is tinged with a mix of fact and faction in its growing number of information warfare products. Since India is no longer seen as indispensable to the US’ anti-Chinese containment plans due to its refusal to become a puppet, there’s no longer any reluctance in treating it as a “frenemy”.
On the one hand, retaining hard-earned strategic ties with India is still important due to the mutual benefit inherent in doing so, but hard-earned trust has been irreparably broken over the past half-year since the start of this unprecedentedly intense pressure campaign. A self-sustaining cycle is in effect whereby India’s reassertions of its sovereignty in self-defense (both rhetorical and practical) are met with more American pressure that perpetuates this loop to the detriment of mutual trust and strategic ties.
Worse still, the resultant distrust and worsening strategic ties could lead to the scenario whereby the US decides to reach a “New Détente” with China one day at India’s expense, which could see Washington turn a blind eye towards Beijing redirecting its territorial focus to the Himalayas. This is the worst nightmare of Indian policymakers, and while it’s unlikely to materialize anytime soon, this possibility still hangs heavy over their heads as a Damoacles’ sword since it can’t confidently be ruled out.
The news that the US has unofficially replaced India with the Philippines in terms of its Asian strategy is now even referring to their newly formed network as the “Squad” will exacerbate these fears. It doesn’t help any at that American intelligence agencies and their media proxies are waging unrestricted information warfare against India during its ongoing six-week-election that ends on 1 June. If this trend isn’t reversed, and there’s no indication that it will be, their “new normal” will indeed be as “frenemies”.
