Washington is closely monitoring developments following New Delhi’s announcement of an agreement with Beijing on patrolling their 3,000km (1,860 miles) disputed border.
“We are closely following these developments,” a US State Department spokesperson told the South China Morning Post via email on Tuesday, adding that the US did not have details on the “reported arrangement.”
The department did not say if New Delhi had informed Washington – a key geopolitical partner – about the agreement, which Beijing also has yet to confirm.
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Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told a media conference on Monday that “the disengagement process with China has been completed” and both sides had “gone back to where the situation was in 2020”.
The announcement represents a significant breakthrough in flaring border tensions following the 2020 clash in the Himalayas that resulted in the deaths of at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers. More than 30 rounds of negotiations have taken place over the past four years.
Since the 2020 clashes, India has strengthened its ties with the US to counter what both nations view as Beijing’s aggressive actions against its neighbours in the Indo-Pacific region.
This deepening relationship has been highlighted by the signing of defence cooperation agreements, including reports of real-time intelligence sharing regarding the India-China disputed border.
New Delhi is also a member of the US-led Quad grouping, which includes Australia and Japan, seen by China as a “threat” to “peace” in the region.
However, scepticism has emerged in Washington regarding New Delhi’s growing closeness to the Kremlin, particularly amid pressure to isolate Putin from the West following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow’s friendly relations with both Beijing and New Delhi were evident when Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval discussed the border dispute in September during a high-level Brics gathering in St. Petersburg.
The deal with Beijing was made public by New Delhi just one day before Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the leaders of the Brics grouping of emerging markets – the name is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – in Kazan.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will both be there at the summit, which runs from October 22-24.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on Monday said that Modi is expected to have “a few bilateral meetings” on the sidelines, raising expectation of a Xi-Modi bilateral. The two leaders briefly met alongside last year’s Brics summit in South Africa.
Farwa Aamer, a South Asia expert in the US, said that while Beijing’s strained relations with New Delhi are a key factor in the deepening of US-India ties, the partnership is driven by several other important considerations.
Aamer, director of the South Asia Initiatives at New York think tank the Asia Society, said the issues between China and India are also far from resolved. The agreement was a “step towards normalcy if not a full-blown reset just as yet, for Sino-Indian ties”.
Highlighting years of diplomatic exchanges leading up to the deal, she added that more developments might follow if a Modi-Xi bilateral meeting happens on the sidelines of the Brics summit.
However, Aamer emphasised that the breakthrough “doesn’t necessarily reflect the effectiveness of Brics or any influence on conflict resolution”.
“China has been a factor that has pushed New Delhi and Washington closer, but now they have their own partnership anchored on a number of factors, so I don’t see an impact on the US-India dynamic,” she said.
Michael Kulegman of the Wilson Centre agreed, saying “China won’t stop being a strategic competitor to India, and New Delhi’s broader concerns about Chinese power and provocations won’t abate, just because there’s a border accord”.
He added that Washington “has no interest in another India-China crisis and the destabilising impacts that could have”.
According to Kulegman, improved ties between India and China would also make Brics “more effective”, but he stressed that the deal “is not necessarily a precursor to a full-fledged bilateral detente”.
The Brics grouping was co-founded by China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa in 2009 as a non-Western bloc to work together on economic and political issues to insulate Western influence and pressures. In January, the group expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
When asked on Monday about Putin using the summit as an attempt to show the West that he still has friends, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that the US does not view Brics as a “threat”.
“These countries can decide for themselves who they want to associate with and especially how they want to be economically linked with one another,” he said.
More from South China Morning Post:
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- India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar criticises Pakistan, China at UN, cites ‘karma’
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