We all know that America has ‘a new sheriff in town,’ and in the unipolar world that we still live in, whether we like it or not, the ‘sheriff’ or the newly elected president of the USA, Donald Trump, gets to have the whole world as his backyard to police.

However, for a sheriff to succeed in enforcing the law in his jurisdiction, there is a need for deputies. In the early days of the Cold War, America tried to resolve that problem by setting up security alliances – NATO, CENTO and SEATO.

While CENTO and SEATO have withered away with time, NATO still exists. But with the death of communism in Europe, and with Trump’s recent unilateral declaration that Ukraine will not get to join NATO, and that it will have to smoke the peace pipe with Russia on more or less Russian terms, the North Atlantic Treaty is, more or less, now a costly weapons club with no immediate purpose.

That brings us back to the USA’s need for local deputies to help it out. For Asia, the Trump administration seems to be pushing for the QUAD, a grouping of the USA, India, Japan and Australia, to take care of the Indian Ocean and western Pacific area in which flashpoints, such as the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits, exist.

Besides transactional discussions on tariffs, oil and defence purchases, not surprisingly, the two sides announced plans to sign this year a new ten-year ‘Framework for the U.S.-India Major Defence Partnership in the 21st Century.’ The two sides also said, as New Delhi was a “major defence partner and a key Quad partner, the U.S. and India will review their respective arms transfer regulations” and “break new ground to support and sustain the overseas deployments of the U.S. and Indian militaries in the Indo-Pacific, including........

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