PM Narendra Modi-US President Donald Trump talk a plan to counter China

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s discussion with President Donald Trump on India-China border tension was intended to convey to the communist country that New Delhi might have to move closer to the United States if Beijing does not rein in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Modi and Trump on Tuesday spoke to each other over the phone and one of the issues they discussed was the escalating tension between the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA on the bank of the Pangong Tso lake in eastern Ladakh. The issue came up for discussion between the two leaders even as New Delhi just recently rejected the US President’s offer to mediate between India and China.

New Delhi also made it public, with the press release issued by the Prime Minister’s Office after the talks between the two leaders did mention it among the topics they discussed, albeit without elaborating.

Modi also gave his nod to Trump’s proposal to bring India, Australia, South Korea and Russia into the ambit of the G-7 and turn it into a G-11. He did so although Beijing decried the US-led initiative as a move to contain China. It was even opposed by India’s long-standing strategic partner Russia.

New Delhi so far refrained from joining the US in blaming China and the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Covid-19 pandemic. Modi, however, discussed with Trump the need to reform the WHO during the phone-call on Tuesday.

Modi apparently wanted to send out a subtle message to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

India did join the US-led move to build a coalition of democratic nations to counter China’s hegemony and expansionist aspirations in Indo-Pacific. But it also so far maintained that its own policy on Indo-Pacific was inclusive and not adversarial to China.

But the Prime Minister’s talks with the US President on India-China boundary dispute on Tuesday signaled New Delhi might review its position and move closer to the US in the post-COVID-19 world order if the Chinese PLA continued its aggressive posture along the disputed boundary.

The tension along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – the disputed boundary between India and China – started escalating on May 5. Though the diplomats and the military officials of the two nations had several rounds of talks over the past four weeks, they could not yet reach a breakthrough.

The conciliatory words by the spokesperson of the Chinese Government’s Ministry of Foreign Ministers in Beijing did not translate into any change in the ground situation on the scene. The PLA did not withdraw its soldiers, who had transgressed into India’s side of the LAC in at least three locations along the disputed boundary.

Neither did it demolish the bunker nor the moat it built to stop the access of the Indian Army soldiers to an area they had been routinely patrolling before May 5.

The Chinese Army also continued to deploy additional troops with heavy logistics and weaponry, and the Indian Army too had to take adequate countermeasures in response