Flaming clash flared up between the Chinese and Indian armies. This military confrontation between the two nuclear-weapon states will have a far more profound impact on regional and global military strategies than a war between the two countries armed with conventional weapons. According to the latest assessment of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden, China may have 320 nuclear bombs while India may have 130 to 140. What the nuclear-weapon states are now possessing are no longer the low TNT atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, but thermonuclear weapons containing hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives. It has been reported that the Chinese and Indian troops subsequently "disengaged from contact" in the incident area, but henceforth, there is no doubt that one more hot spot has since emerged in the global arena.

The Indian subcontinent has always been a hotly contested area among military strategists. India holds fast to the stronghold of the Indian Ocean, overlooking all the waterways from the Persian Gulf to the Pacific Ocean. It takes only an easy interception for India to stop crude oil from passing through the Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific area. If only the Strait of Malacca, the oil lifeline of Japan, South Korea and other countries, is blocked, tankers will not be able to catch a glimpse of the Strait, not to mention passing through it.

Russia and the U.S. scramble for vital tactical interests in India

In the 1950s, India was a member of the Non-Aligned Movement. Back then, the Nehru government adopted diplomacy of equidistance in which India had relations with major powers on par. However, as India had great strategic value, it became an area contended by the former Soviet Union (today's Russia) and the U.S.. The Soviet Union had been spending huge resources working on India for a long time, while U.S. Department of Defense issued the Indo-Pacific Strategy Report in June last year, expanding the strategic scope of the U.S. military in the Western Pacific from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific, fusing the Indian Ocean with the Western Pacific. The U.S. placed importance on the strategic value of India at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, at least 60 years later than Soviet Russia.

The Soviet Union offered military assistance to India as early as the 1950s when Khrushchev came to power. This "tradition" is still reflected in Russia's arms sales to India. For the same type of fighter jet, the ones that Moscow sells to India are different from those sold to China. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, established in 1996, originally comprised China, Russia, and four Central Asian countries. Upon the invitation by Putin, India also became a member in 2017. It is said that Putin is very eager to build a three-nation alliance among Russia, China, and India, thus combining West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and East Asia, with Russia taking the lead against the U.S.. The book by former White House National Security Advisor Brzezinski, Grand Chessboard, published in 1997 during the Carter Administration, contains discerning insights into Eurasia. Now, in retrospect, this geostrategist hit the nail on the head.

In the era that the Soviet empire had not yet fallen apart, 80% of India’s weapons were supplied by the Soviet Union. In November 1971, a large-scale war broke out between India and Pakistan, and finally Pakistan suffered a heavy defeat. According to some studies, Pakistan "lost half of its navy, a quarter of its air force and a quarter of its army" in the war. East Pakistan, where 90,000 people surrendered, became today’s Bangladesh. India also attacked West Pakistan, but the U.S. made it clear that it would not allow India to root out Pakistan. Former White House National Security Advisor Kissinger said that the U.S. would send warships to the area and transfer military supplies to Pakistan from countries including Jordan, Turkey, and Iran. After that, U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier "Enterprise" with 2,000 marines on board bore down on India in the name of "evacuating Americans in India." It was at that time the Soviet Union, which had signed the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with India for military cooperation four months before the outbreak of the war, sent a fleet into the adjacent Bay of Bengal, and mobilized the Pacific Fleet westward from Vladivostok straight to the Indian Ocean to flex its muscles before the U.S.. The Third World War loomed large.

The deep-seated relationship between the Soviet Union and India subsisted from the Indo-Pakistani War to the Russian era. Strictly speaking, Russia is not a country that excels in marine power. Flanked by the Black Sea Fleet and the Pacific Fleet is a huge unmanned area - the Indian Ocean. Therefore, Russia since the Soviet times has been maintaining close ties with India, the largest country in the Indian Ocean. With tight military, diplomatic, economic and trade cooperation, the relationship between Russia and India is robust. In 2011, the then Russian President Medvedev publicly stated that Moscow supported India as a new permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. As for the U.S., Trump developed a strategy to contain China after he took office. The Indo-Pacific Strategy Report included the Indian Ocean in the US-Indo-Pacific strategic framework, which means getting close to India and drawing New Delhi over to the U.S.’s side to contain China. Therefore, at a time when conflicts between China and India flared up, Trump volunteered to be a mediator all of a sudden, which was actually a move to infiltrate American influence into the Indian subcontinent.

Sixty-eight percent of Indian military equipment supplied by Russia

How can Russia put up with the U.S. sharing a slice of India? After the Sino-Indian conflict, Russia jumped up as an intermediary to discuss regional affairs with China and India. India has now become a "wavering country": it can stay put with its 60-year close ties with Russia, or coexist with the U.S. in its Indo-Pacific strategy. In other words, with its superior geo-strategic position, India has become a prized pearl in the rivalry between Russia and the U.S.: Without India, Russia cannot form its Russia-China-India triangle, and India can play a role to contain China in Russia’s long-term strategy against China; in the U.S.’s strategy to contain China, India can function as a bouncer of the Indian Ocean, which is an important piece in the US’s containment jigsaw puzzle. However, years of cooperation between India and Russia have made Washington lag far behind Moscow in military relations: at present, Russian armament accounts for 68% of Indian military equipment, while the U.S. only accounts for 14%. After the Sino-Indian conflict, the Indian media claimed that India was able to attack China's "Brahmos" supersonic cruise missile, which was the result of India-Russia cooperation.

The Indo-Pacific strategic situation has again become an international focus, and India is important to both the U.S. and Russia. India’s control over the Indian Ocean and the importance of the Indian Ocean to the US-Russian-Indian-Pacific strategy is set to rapidly heat up the rivalry for the Indian subcontinent and the surrounding waters, which may be fiercer than the scramble for the Western Pacific.

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