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US Secretaries of State & Defense Secretary Pompeo and Dr. Mark T. Esper at the National War Memorial ahead of the India – US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue today. Image Source: MEA India.

The strategic ties of The India and The United States are perennially rising especially since 2014. The physical visit by the Secretary of States Mike Pompeo and the Secretary of Defence Dr. Mark Esper, amidst the Chinese Virus pandemic, validates that. Both the side talked about a range of issues regarding defence cooperation and foreign policies.

The most Important agreement out of five signed today was the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial cooperation (BECA), the last of the four foundational agreement which US signs with its closer allies. This will provide India the confidential Geo-Spatial data collected by highly advanced US military satellites. These data include Maps of population density, demography, Naval charts, Commercial locations, aeronautical charts, and many other unclassified imageries along with geodetic, geophysical, geomagnetic and gravity data. BECA will provide huge boost to the accuracy and the impact of the Indian missiles. Now India can not only hit the target with pin pointed dynamic information of the target but it will also provide surety of envisaged damage and impact. This will also help is predicting the possible security threats.

One of the very important point which majority of our media missed was that Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh mention about the defence cooperation with United States Central Command (Centcom) and Africa command (Africom). ISIS and other radical terrorist organizations have become extremely active in recent times in African continent. In recent months ISIS has been highly active in African region especially in western Africa. We at Research Wing actively monitor the ISIS activities and expose their terror plans to world. We have had exchange of tweets with US Africa Command confirming the Struggle against ISIS in Africa.

India has huge and diverse stacks in Africa and thus it becomes very essential now to actively participate in war against terrorism on those region. This is also a major foreign policy shift and strong move towards laying down the foundation of becoming a global military power and to assert India’s interests more strongly over the world.

Secretary Pompeo also supported the long pending demand of India for a permanent seat in United Nations Security council (UNSC). Both the dignitaries paid visit to the National War Memorial and Pompeo explicitly condemned China over the unfortunate and cowardly attack by Chinese PLA in Galwan in June 2020. China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was condemned with explicit mention by both the secretaries for its aggression in the region and also for the global Corona pandemic unleashed over the world by them.

The recent discussion of QUAD is also growing and being militarized. With the Australia’s participation in the Malabar exercise 2020, which is to be scheduled on later part of the November this year, it has unofficially become the QUAD Naval exercise upbringing the military co-operation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Overall it can be seen that India is ready for the management of the global affairs and to be more assertive over world for her own interest. The Nehruvian obsession of neutrality in foreign affairs is dumped for a stronger new India to actively participate in the controlling affairs of third countries for the benefit our national interest. I see it as major shift from passive reluctant non-intervention to active Interest based involvement in Geopolitics.

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