The new great game as it unfolds: 

The new great game as it unfolds: 

Context:

• The Southern Asia will soon witness the unfolding of several new geopolitical operations.

United States Foreign Policy in South Asia: New geopolitical operations of India-Afghanistan-Pakistan and China

1. The  U.S emphasized on a conditions-based approach, expectations for strong Pakistani actions against Taliban and Haqqani network safe-havens, and a request for India to increase non-military assistance to Afghanistan.
2. The US president also called on Afghans themselves to do more on tackling corruption, improving governance, and conducting their own nation-building.
3. Without a strong and sustained commitment by the Afghans themselves, no US or international strategy can succeed.
4. India has emphasized that it will not send troops to Afghanistan.
5. Moreover, India’s capacity for increasing economic support to Afghanistan remains limited.
6. Most importantly, Islamabad and Rawalpindi are especially suspicious of India’s role in Afghanistan as endorsed by the new US strategy.
7. Pakistani reactions to reports of recent drone strikes along the Afghan–Pakistan border suggest that the drone issue could again impinge on US–Pakistan relations.
8. Given that the two countries are not geographically contiguous and India cannot, for political and security reasons, transit trade through Pakistan.
9. Afghanistan would remain at most secondary in China’s broader foreign and security policymaking, just as implementation of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor and management of relations with India would continue to draw significantly from China’s political-diplomatic resources allocated as a whole to South Asia.

What is the way ahead?

• India should stick to its decision of not sending its troops to Afghanistan while at the same time enhancing its training of Afghan security forces and reconstruction efforts.
• There is a need to pay attention on the complicated American geopolitical signaling in the Southern Asian region.
• The center needs to carefully design the key areas of its China policy for aligning Indo-China policy to suit U.S. interests would not help our long-term interests.
• Both geo-economically and geopolitically, the Indo-Pacific region is abundant with potential and possibilities for New Delhi.
• This is one crucial area where New Delhi and Washington, along with other regional stakeholders such as Tokyo and Canberra, could synergize political, diplomatic and military efforts to uphold rule-based rights of navigation and over flight in the area and promote free trade in the broader region.