CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

U.S. Imperial Models for India

Image by Pop & Zebra.

The Trump administration is rolling out a new model for India that marks a subtle shift in U.S. imperial strategy but continues decades of U.S. imperial practices.

Drawing on its National Security Strategy, which claims to be shifting U.S. strategy away from “global domination” toward “global and regional balances of power,” the Trump administration is redefining India as critical pillar in the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. Although administration officials insist that they want India to function as a key power center, they are requiring limits to its power, determined to prevent the country from becoming another China.

“India should understand that we are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago,” State Department official Christopher Landau told Indian leaders in March.

U.S. Imperial Models for India

Over the past two decades, the leaders of the United States have introduced multiple imperial models for India. Often reformulating models with deep roots in U.S. imperial planning, they have aspired to integrate India into broad regional structures that reinforce U.S. power across Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific.

During the Obama administration, U.S. officials introduced an expansive model that revived an old imperial imaginary. Locating India in a great arc of countries around Eurasia, they aspired to build a network of U.S. military partnerships that stretched across the Pacific Ocean and extended all the way to India.

“We will expand our military partnerships and our presence in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia,” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta explained in June 2012. “Defense cooperation with India is a linchpin in this strategy.”

The Obama administration’s model shared many similarities with the great crescent that Dean Acheson had envisioned for the region at the start of the Cold War. According to Acheson, a vast arc of countries enveloped Eurasia. It started in Japan, curved around Southeast Asia, extended to India, and stretched outward toward Afghanistan. This great crescent, Acheson argued, featured many geopolitical advantages, requiring the United States to provide countries in the region with military and economic........

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