By Maj Gen Pushpendra Singh
Harsh V Pant who teaches at King's College, London, describes Obama's foreign policy as 'courting America's adversaries while ignoring friends and potential allies.'
India, which has tried to establish a strategic partnership with the US, now finds itself adrift in a hostile environment. Ours is arguably the most dangerous neighbourhood on the planet.
Two-thirds of our land borders in the north and west are abutted by two inimical, collusive and nuclear-armed neighbours.
Encouraged by perceived American disinclination to protect US strategic interests, China has flexed its military muscles and laid expansive claims to oil-rich South China Sea.
ASEAN nations are justifiably nervous about the Dragon's designs. In the Indian Ocean, she is pursuing a string-of-pearls strategy - ostensibly to safeguard her energy-vital sea-links, but equally designed to bottle-up the Indian Navy.
Following the Indo-US civilian nuclear accord, China upped the ante in confronting India. The latest Pentagon report unveils her rapid accretion of nuclear weapon systems and staging some of them forward into Tibet.
In close collaboration with Pakistan, China is attempting to strategically invest India through her northern and western frontiers. It has now expanded its claim over the Tawang Tract to include all of Arunachal, even protesting Asian Development Bank loans for the State.
China has also reopened the Sikkim question and escalated tensions in Ladakh. Chinese intrusions have gone up by about 52 percent over last year and its soldiers are more aggressively staking out territory across the LAC.
Meanwhile, diplomats continue to parrot 'peace and tranquility' platitudes. China is raising its profile in Maoist-afflicted Nepal and extending the railway from Lhasa to Khasa on the Nepalese border. She has already built a strategic road through eastern Nepal close to our sensitive Siliguri corridor.
To the west, China is provocatively constructing surface communication links and hydroelectric projects in PoK.
Another provocation is issue of stapled visas to Indian Kashmiris for visiting China; encouraging them to defy our travel laws. She has consistently ignored our protestations on both issues.
In a further boost for Pakistan, she is committed to build two civilian, unsafeguarded nuclear reactors for its ally, which will help augment its N-stockpile.
Image: A man waves Pakistani and Chinese national flags on a street of Karachi on December 19, 2010. (Photograph copyright AFP)
