McMahon line showing Arunachal Pradesh as part of India
The United States (US) has come down heavily on an autocratic China and left no stone unturned to create a deadlock for China. This resolution comes after the biggest clash between India and China in six years in the Eastern Sector along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
A US bipartisan resolution has acknowledged the fact that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India. The resolution has also condemned Chinese military aggression to tamper with the established status quo at LAC.
Senator Bill Hagerty and Senator Jeff Merkley introduced the resolution. Also condemned the East Asian nation’s aggression in the region, a move that follows multiple clashes between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The resolution has vehemently expressed its condemnation at the Chinese expansionist and coercive policies.
According to the Press Trust of India (PTI), the resolution will strengthen India’s bilateral relationship with the US in terms of defence, technology, economics, and people-to-people ties. It promotes enhancing multilateral cooperation between the two countries through Quad, the East Asia Summit, alongside our partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and other international fora.
The US has also emphasised the Indo-Pacific and how China poses a major challenge in this paradigm. It displayed its solidarity towards India, who is geopolitically a strategic player in the region.
“This bipartisan resolution expresses the Senate’s support for unequivocally recognising the state of Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India, condemning China’s military aggression to change the status quo along the Line of Actual Control, and further enhancing the US-India strategic partnership and the Quad in support of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” Hagerty said.
“America’s values supporting freedom and a rules-based order must be at the center of all of our actions and relationships around the world, especially as the PRC government pushes an alternative vision,” Merkley said.
This resolution, co-sponsored by Senator John Cornyn mentions China’s provocations, including its use of military force to change the status quo along the Line of Actual Control, construction of villages in contested areas, publication of maps with Mandarin-language names for cities and features in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, and expansion of PRC territorial claims in Bhutan.
It has been reported that while criticising China, the resolution commended India’s defence, taking into account the Indian government’s moves to secure the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.
Analysts have hailed this checkmate move of the US. They view it as a major US policy shift. But can this shift help in getting a breakthrough in the Indo-Sino border contentions? Or is this an intervention that the US is using to its own vantage and to widen the already established divergences between India and China?
However, it is being viewed as a strategic move in the bilateral relations between India and the US. This is an indication of deepening cooperation between the two sides. The US is keen to expand its roots and its footprint in the Indo-Pacific. To blatantly denounce an oppressor like China, the US is trying to win the Asian camp.
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