My answer to Vice President Vance's question

Q: What is the role of strong U.S., India relations in shaping global stability in the 21st century?

A:

I would say it is very similar to Nixon visiting Beijing, which ended the Cold War eventually. Let us examine some aspects one by one.

When Nixon visited Mao, the USSR had sent its astronaut into space, and the US was in the quagmire of the Vietnam War. The situation is very similar. Now, China is leading in many technological fronts, while the US is busy in Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. In 1971, China was poor and had a huge population. Today, India is poor and has a huge population. Can the US explore the cheap labor of India to strengthen its economy and power, weaken China at the same time? I assume your stability means the stability of the US hegemon. The difference is that in the Cold War, both the US and the USSR were competing for global dominance, while today, the US is trying to keep its dominance, and China is not seeking dominance.

I am a physicist. Engineers often face the issue of power match. It is usually on the efficiency of power transfer, such as a grid, where the power supply matches the power demand. If there is not enough demand, regarless howmany power you want to pump into the grid, the grid would not take it. In the Cold War, the power was matched. The more the US hit, the harder the USSR suffered. Because both side compet for dominance. Today, the situation is different. The US can hit China as hard as it can, but China just doesn’t take it, because China is not seeking dominance. Just as you want to pump more power into a grid, but the grid does not take it. So the power is wasted as heat dissipation. There are many disputes between China and its neighbors, thanks to the US military projection and presence. Many of the disputes would have led to war if it were not China but Russia or the USSR. The US strategy and tactics are smart. Thouse strategy and tactics would have worked on Russia. Such as the Ukraine conflict. But does not work in China. China is not seeking dominance. With whoever China trade, China does not seek exclusivity. China allows its trade partner continue to trade with the US. On the other hand, with whoever the US trades, the US requests its parterns do not trade with China.

If we look back at the last few decades, especially since the Pivot to Asia of Obama, the US has wasted a lot of resources on China and dissipated, while China focused on its domestic issues, eradicated poverty, and built a high-speed train network.

After the normalization between the US and China in 1979, the US motivated the cheap labor in China to become stronger and stronger, compared with the USSR. China joined the world economy and joined the division of labor in the world economy, enabling the world economy, led by the US, to boom. The effect is that the economy dominated by the US becomes larger.

Today, replacing China with India will not make the economy dominated by the US larger. On the contrary, it makes the economy smaller. So, replay Nixon’s playscript on India will not work.

Nixon visited Mao. The US and China had a win-win cooperation. Because of the win-win cooperation, the US won the Cold War, and China developed. After the collapse of the USSR, the goal of the US changed. If in the rivalry with the USSR, the US created a strong China. Does the US want to have a strong India, a strong China v2, in the rivalry with China? It makes no sense.

In the 1980s, the US got stronger because of the cheap labor of China. The US can motivate a huge human resource for its geopolitics. The way to use the troop of labor in China is outsourcing. The US and its allies outsourced their manufacturing to China through trade. Today, the US has a strong financial industry, not a strong manufacturing industry. What can the US outsource to India? Finance? Oursource finance does not need the Indian cheap labor. The US today is different from the US in the 1980s. The US cannot replay Nixon’s playscript.

The US can shape global stability by building a relationship with China based on the principles of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation. To achieve a noble cause needs to take a noble mean.