US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on 22 April that the United States will terminate the ‘significant reduction exceptions’ for existing importers of Iranian oil. From 2 May, the waivers that have been in effect since November will be withdrawn, and countries that continue to import Iranian oil will face sanctions from the US. China, India and Turkey, the principal remaining oil importers from Iran, will feel the greatest effects of this policy.

The end of the waivers will have differential impacts on the three countries. China, the largest importer of Iranian oil, is likely to defy the American demand for three main reasons. First, as a great power and potential challenger to US hegemony, it won’t want to be seen as bowing to American pressure. Second, Beijing is firmly opposed to any form of unilateral sanctions, probably because it fears that one day it may be subjected to the same treatment. Third, China has substantial leverage with the US because of the large volume of bilateral trade and huge Chinese investments in the American economy.

Turkey is geographically contiguous to Iran and has increasingly overlapping strategic interests with it, especially regarding Kurdish secessionism, which threatens both countries; the territorial integrity of Iraq; and shared antipathy towards Saudi Arabia. Iran is the second largest supplier of energy to Turkey and a leading trading partner as well.

Ankara’s relations with Washington have been rocky due to US support for the Kurdish YPG in Syria, which Turkey considers an extension of the terrorist PKK that has been fighting Turkish forces for decades, and the threat of US sanctions over Turkey’s proposed purchase of the S-400 missile defense system from Russia.

All these factors make it imperative for Ankara to maintain cordial relations with Tehran. It is unlikely, therefore, that Turkey will bend completely to American will, although it may reduce its consumption of Iranian oil to partially placate the United States.

The Trump administration’s decision could not have come at a worse time for India. The country in the midst of a bitterly fought election campaign in which any Indian response can become an intensely divisive issue. The sudden announcement from Washington seems to have caught Indian decision-makers unawares.

However, New Delhi is likely to comply with American demands, as India’s relations with the US are very important in the economic sphere. The US is India’s largest trading partner and a major source of foreign investment. It has also become increasingly important in New Delhi’s calculations in the strategic arena because of the convergence of American and Indian interests in China’s containment in the Indo-Pacific region and India’s participation in a structure of security being fashioned in Washington with Japan and Australia as the other partners. Moreover, the civil nuclear relationship with the US is very important for India, as is American support for India’s bid to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

But Indian compliance with American diktat won’t come without costs. Iran has been a major source of India’s energy supply and India is heavily involved in building the Chahbahar port in southern Iran. This port is projected to become a major access route for Indian goods and services to Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing hostile Pakistani territory. Tehran is also important for New Delhi in relation to Afghanistan, as both are opposed to the Taliban’s capturing power in that country. Iran is also a great asset for India in its adversarial relationship with Pakistan. Tehran discreetly shares New Delhi’s antipathy towards Pakistan as it considers Islamabad to be Washington’s proxy on issues of strategic importance to Iran.

The final question to ponder is whether Iran will capitulate to American pressure and accept Washington’s demand to revise its position on the nuclear issue and accept an amended version of the nuclear agreement by giving up its right to enrich uranium, curtail if not eradicate its missile program, and radically change its regional policy to fall into line with American preferences.

Such an outcome seems like a Washington pipe dream. Iran has stood up to unprecedented sanctions for four decades and remained unbowed. The current US policy of forcing Tehran to cut its oil exports to zero is only likely to aid Iranian hardliners and end up with Tehran adopting an even more anti-American posture in the Middle East.

While the policy of ending waivers may please Israel and Saudi Arabia, it could become a prelude to another major war in the Middle East. Pushed to the wall by its inability to export oil—which forms the backbone of the Iranian economy—in sufficient quantities, Iran is likely to retaliate by withdrawing from the nuclear accord reached in 2015, resume full-scale nuclear enrichment and move towards weaponisation. That could lead to US air attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, thus inviting an Iranian response against American and allied targets in Iraq and around the Gulf.

The instability introduced by this action–reaction phenomenon will be disastrous for the Middle East and could severely disrupt the flow of energy supplies from the Gulf. It’s ironic that some of the authors of America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq, such as National Security Advisor John Bolton, are also the masterminds behind the current American policy towards Iran. This could well lead to another devastating American misadventure in the Middle East, before which the tragic consequences of the Iraqi invasion are likely to pale into insignificance.

China’s decision to block Pakistani Masood Azhar’s designation as a terrorist at the UN yet again is likely to test the limits of the tactical ‘reset’ in Sino-Indian relations in place since the Wuhan summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April last year. Another recent, if low-key, development has the potential to set the tone for the future of the relationship between the two countries. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan community, has thrown a spanner in the works by saying that his next reincarnation, who will be the 15th Dalai Lama, could ‘come from India’.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese government has rejected this statement and insists that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation ‘must follow Chinese law’. India has provided sanctuary to thousands of Tibetan refugees including the current Dalai Lama since 1959, something that’s a major thorn in Sino-Indian relations, even though India maintains that it doesn’t challenge Beijing’s sovereignty over Tibet.

The Panchen Lama is an important Tibetan spiritual figure whose duties include anointing the Dalai Lama. In 1995, China kidnapped and imprisoned the 11th Panchen Lama (when he was six years old) days after he was appointed by the current Dalai Lama and his whereabouts are unknown. China has nominated its own Panchen Lama and will undoubtedly anoint someone as a Dalai Lama in due course.

In an interview in India, the Dalai Lama recently remarked, ‘In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in free country, one chosen by the Chinese, then nobody will trust, nobody will respect [the one chosen by China].’ Until now, the Dalai Lama has been vacillating on the question of his reincarnation (saying it might not happen), but his latest statement complicates things. Two years ago, in a move that could assist the next Dalai Lama, India started allowing Tibetan refugees (though they are officially called ‘foreigners’ in India) to apply for Indian passports.

That the Tibetan government in exile in India is likely to nominate a Dalai Lama was made clear in an interview given last year by the prime minister in exile, Lobsang Sangay. The candidate chosen by the Tibetans is likely to enjoy far more legitimacy than one China nominates. This could mean that the next Dalai Lama is an Indian citizen or a Tibetan refugee in India.

The nomination of the next Dalai Lama is significant to China because the figure is greatly revered by Tibetans globally and because Tibet is one of the restive ‘separatist’ provinces that Beijing has been trying to assert control over since the 1950s. Tibet is one of the ‘three Ts’ that modern-day China is most sensitive about (the other two are Taiwan and Tiananmen).

The ethnically, linguistically and culturally distinct region of Tibet had over centuries existed as an autonomous kingdom under the suzerainty of Chinese emperors, but asserted its independence in the early 20th century. The newly formed Chinese government under Chairman Mao, however, refused to recognise Tibet’s independence and invaded it in 1950 and tried to seek a cooperative arrangement with the political and spiritual head of the Tibetan state, the Dalai Lama. Brutal Chinese policies and fear of assassination forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India in 1959. Beijing’s suspicions about what it feared were Indian designs on Tibet are thought to be the ‘principal reasons’ for China’s surprise invasion of India in 1962, in which India was badly humiliated.

China has been reacting sharply to visits by Indian leaders to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh—which Beijing calls ‘South Tibet’—for several years now. During Modi’s last visit to the state, Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the Global Times published an editorial attacking Modi for trying to change the demographics of South Tibet and make the population more ‘“Indianized”’.

The emergence of two claimants to the Dalai Lama’s position, one nominated by the CCP and the other possibly an Indian citizen nominated by the Tibetan government in exile, would add a major irritant to China–India relations. The notion presents an interesting conundrum and underscores the distinction between an authoritarian China and a democratic India, and highlights Tibetans’ aspirations for a more a free political system. The emergence of a Dalai Lama in India could cause disquiet among the six million Tibetans living in China, and potentially galvanise their quest for separatism.

In the last couple of years, India has been generally cautious about not stirring up Chinese sensitivities on Tibet (except where Arunachal Pradesh is concerned), in keeping with the spirit of the so-called reset. Last year, for example, the Indian government instructed its ministers and officials to stay away from a major interfaith meeting organised by the Tibetan administration as part of its ‘Thank you India’ campaign. The event, which was originally meant to be held in New Delhi, was moved to the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, Dharamshala.

India’s response to China’s protection of Azhar at the UN is being criticised as weak. A growing number of Indian analysts say that India should seek other ways to bargain with or even ‘punish’ China for consistently trampling Indian interests.

India could play the ‘Tibet card’ with China, including by using ambiguous language on Tibet’s status, issuing stapled visas for Tibetans—as China does for Indian citizens from Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh—and ramping up engagement with the Tibetan government in exile. If it were so inclined, India could choose to press the Dalai Lama issue and use it as a lever to extract bargains from Beijing like a favourable decision on Azhar’s status at the UN. However, going by recent trends, New Delhi is likely to distance itself from the Dalai Lama’s statement.

India would do well to realise that the Tibet issue is far more important to the CCP than China’s ‘all-weather’ relationship with Pakistan; for China, protecting Azhar at the UN isn’t as important as keeping Tibet under control. This offers some much-needed space for a serious discussion on core interests between New Delhi and Beijing.

The vast construct of the Indo-Pacific and the limited grouping of the Quad (the US, Japan, India and Australia) share a few significant traits.

Both are attempts to define and direct the emerging regional power system. Both suffer from the significant defect that key members aren’t sure about the meaning of the new club—or even whether they want to belong to it. And both cause intense arguments.

At the point where the arguments start, the huge differences between the Indo-Pacific and the Quad rear up and crash through those shared features.

The Indo-Pacific is supposed to include everyone, while the Quad—four democracies groping towards a grouping—has reconvened to push back at China. (See ASPI’s new paper on Quad 2.0.)

The Indo-Pacific, in the picture painted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is ‘a natural region’—free, open, inclusive—and not ‘directed against any country’. He adds that ‘A geographical definition, as such, cannot be.’ That’s elegantly put, but this isn’t just geography, and as for it being ‘natural’, well …

The ‘free and open’ language projects the Indo-Pacific as the dream. The Quad faces towards nightmare scenarios.

The dream-versus-nightmare contrast explains why India is happier to talk up the Indo-Pacific than the meaning of the Quad.

In the 2019 regional security outlook from the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), Rahul Mishra says India is more attracted to the Indo-Pacific but the Quad’s fortunes will rise if times turn bleak:

While China plays a critical role in shaping India’s security perceptions, relations with Japan, the US, and countries of the region are gaining prominence in influencing India’s overall security perspective. In that context, India’s commitment to the Quad would also depend on how far these four democracies could move forward together on the security front.

Mishra comments that to become a substantive voice, the four members will have to deepen their commitments to the Quad and expand its membership: ‘Asia’s past tells us that no regional political or military construct can sustain itself without the active participation of key Southeast Asian states.’

Before any ASEAN state would even touch the Quad, the bleak scenario will have to deliver many more shocks to the regional power system. At this point, ASEAN hasn’t even wholly embraced the concept of the Indo-Pacific.

On the Quad’s prospects, the co-chair of the Australian committee of CSCAP, Anthony Milner, comments: ‘One very senior ASEAN diplomat said to me a few weeks ago: “You’d have to be insane to think that the Quad is going anywhere.”’

CSCAP lives on the second track (where discussion is blunter than the official first track) and argument buzzes about the Indo-Pacific, the Quad and regional architecture: in November, at the CSCAP steering council meeting in Perth; in December at an Australia–India CSCAP bilateral hosted by the Delhi Policy Group, followed by a roundtable involving Australia, the EU, ASEAN and India; and in Kuala Lumpur a fortnight ago at a CSCAP retreat for two working groups looking at the future of the ASEAN Regional Forum and the shape of the rules-based order.

Reflecting on ASEAN views, Milner says that although an Indo-Pacific strategic framework makes some sense for Australia, for others in this region the label puts two oceans together to squeeze out Asia—or ‘two oceans drowning Asia’. His view is that ‘Asia’ or ‘Asia–Pacific’ covers what we’re talking about, since Asia most certainly includes India.

The trouble is that if Asia becomes the label of choice, that echoes China’s ‘Asia is for Asians’ language, excluding the US; Indo-Pacific and Asia–Pacific are explicit in embracing the US role.

From his New Delhi CSCAP talks, Milner reports a mixed picture on Indian perceptions of the purpose and prospects of the Quad. Some in India, he says, are ‘gung-ho’ for the four-nation process, while others put far more emphasis on building the relationship with China.

‘Australia would be very unwise to assume India will be serious about the Quad’, Milner says.

Japan, too, is putting far more effort into its China interests than in directing the Quad. Milner echoes former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s fears that Australia could find itself home alone at the Quad party, jilted by Japan and India and at the mercy of a capricious US president.

‘I think Australia runs the risk of being in an idiotic position’, Milner says. ‘We could end up being seen as the only enthusiasts in the Quad. Some in the region are puzzled or bemused that we have gone so far in poking China, considering the scale of our economic relationship with China. We are looking rather lonely.’

The other co-chair of Australian CSCAP is Ric Smith, former senior diplomat and secretary of Australia’s defence department, who sees the Quad more at the interesting than the idiotic end of the scale:

There’s a great risk of outsiders to the Quad over-egging it: there have been three fairly low-key meetings of officials from four governments that share a range of interests, and none of them have canvassed anything remotely like a new bloc let alone an alliance in the region. There can be no harm in consultation between ‘like-mindeds’. But some Southeast Asian governments are predictably anxious about ideas that ‘weren’t invented here’.

The editor of CSCAP’s security outlook, Ron Huisken, thinks the Quad is a bit of quiet conceptualising that unexpectedly shot up the hit parades—both as a target to be hit and as a statement about the nightmare scenario:

The Quad, I believe, was intended as a sleeper, a kind of understated, long-range signal to China not to break the furniture in the region because it could lead to the Quad becoming real and hard. Geopolitical fine-tuning of this kind is notoriously difficult. India, in particular, will risk nearly everything before abandoning non-alignment and accepting that it may not be the second of two massive and ancient civilizations in the world that is capable, like China, of charting a wholly independent course.

The suicide bombing of a paramilitary convoy in Pulwama, Kashmir, two weeks ago killed 44 soldiers and spurred a series of events that threatens to spiral into a full-blown conflict between India and Pakistan. In the latest escalation, Pakistan claims to have shot down two Indian jets it says crossed into its airspace. India has confirmed the loss of one aircraft and is demanding the return of a captured pilot. It also says it has downed a Pakistani jet in an ‘aerial encounter’.

The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack in Pulwama. India has pointed the finger of criminality at JeM for many previous atrocities, but China has blocked several efforts to brand its leader Masood Azhar a global terrorist.

In the highly febrile atmosphere in India after the attack, and with elections due in April or May, an aroused public lost patience with nuance and thirsted for vengeance. In a policy brief in 2016, I wrote: ‘The toxic cocktail of growing nuclear stockpiles, expanding nuclear platforms, irredentist territorial claims and out of control jihadist groups makes the Indian subcontinent a high risk region of concern.’

For over a decade, it has been the case that no one could be confident that another major terrorist attack with links back to Pakistan-based jihadists would not take place. If it happened, India would be compelled to retaliate militarily and that could escalate into another war that crosses the nuclear threshold.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the military had been given a clean hand to determine the timing, location and scale of response to the attack. On 26 February, India claimed to have conducted a ‘non-military preemptive action’ against JeM targets in Balakot, Pakistan. Twelve Mirage 2000 jets carried out the strikes, which India says killed ‘a very large number of terrorists’ while avoiding civilian casualties. While Pakistan denies anyone was killed, it’s the first such action by the Indian military across the border since 1971.

The strikes also mark the first occasion in history of an air attack inside any nuclear-armed state. This may be relevant to how the Trump–Kim summit in Hanoi plays out, in that future mischief by a North Korea allowed to keep the bomb can be met with airstrikes deep inside North Korea.

The official Indian statement justified the action not in the legally questionable language of punishment for the Pulwama attack, but of pre-emptive action against credible intelligence reports of an imminent terrorist attack by the JeM.

There were hints that Washington may have been kept in the Indian decision-making loop. US National Security Adviser John Bolton publicly backed India’s right to self-defence. Describing the post-Pulwama situation as ‘very dangerous’, President Donald Trump predicted a ‘very strong’ response from India. The intriguing question is: was US drone surveillance used to help pinpoint the location of the terrorist camp struck by India?

Pakistan called the action an act of aggression and asserted the right to retaliate in self-defence. Major General Asif Ghafoor insisted the strikes caused no casualties and the Indian jets were forced to make a ‘hasty withdrawal’ when intercepted by Pakistani fighters, dropping their payload in an open area.

India’s nuclear policy has been driven primarily by China. That Pakistan would follow India in coming out of the nuclear closet in 1998 was widely anticipated in India and accepted as ‘collateral damage’. That said, few would have foreseen the extent to which, and the skill with which, Pakistan has exploited the parallel nuclearisation of the subcontinent to taunt India with cross-border terrorism sponsored and facilitated by the shadowy elements of its military-intelligence complex. Particularly after the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in 2011 within a stone’s throw of its premier military academy, Pakistan lost plausible deniability of complicity in acts of terrorism in Afghanistan and India.

A nuclear Pakistan has mistaken a higher bar for retaliation, for immunity against retaliation. For two decades, lacking a coherent vision or strategy on how to deal with the dilemma of state complicity in cross-border terrorism amid official denial, at best India managed to cobble together a muddled ‘shaming campaign’ against Pakistan as it solicited international censure of terror-tolerant Pakistani postures. At worst, India elicited contempt and pity, not sympathy and support, for hand-wringing appeals to others to sort out the mess in its own neighbourhood.

India’s patience with both Pakistan and the veto-ridden UN Security Council has been exhausted and it is moving to take the fight into the territory from which terror attacks originate. India will likely invest in the military and intelligence capacity it currently lacks in order to complete this task.

India had failed to impose accountability for state sponsorship of serial terrorist attacks in the past, emboldening Pakistan into continuing to use jihadists to wage hybrid warfare across the border. Now India has made it clear there will be consequences that are more than just pinpricks. To be effective—emulating the Israeli model—such strikes will have to be combined with ‘escalation dominance’: the enemy should know that any escalation from the limited strikes will bring even heavier punitive costs from a superior military force. Nuclear war remains unthinkable, but the onus for escalation has been shifted back onto Pakistan.

In a perverse and stubborn pattern of not letting national interests come in the way of abstract principles and noble ideals, shortly after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, India persisted in condemning ‘the ongoing incursion into Gaza by Israeli ground and other forces’ to take military action against Hamas. This came despite the fact that Israel is the only other country that can compare and empathise with India’s predicament and policy dilemma in facing the threat of serial terror attacks planned, organised and launched from neighbouring territories.

Of course there are differences. Israel’s dilemma isn’t as sharp because the Palestinians don’t constitute a nuclear-armed state (which should make Indians sympathise with the Israeli fear of an Iranian bomb). India also doesn’t have the total local air dominance that Israel possesses in its region. But the geopolitical, demographic and terrorist infrastructural differences also mean that India can avoid the disproportionately heavy civilian casualties that major Israeli strikes entail, to worldwide horror and unease.

But Modi must also recognise that India has a Kashmir problem first, and that has empowered Pakistan to foment trouble. The Pulwama suicide bomber was a home-grown militant. Without understanding and redressing Kashmiri grievances and guaranteeing their human and civic rights, no amount of punitive strikes on Pakistan will create peace in the Valley.

The Indian government is ploughing ahead with its plans to develop the country’s northeast, including the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its own territory. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for an important airport in a remote part of the state and announced development plans worth almost $800 million. Those moves provoked an angry response from Beijing. The Chinese government issued a sharp statement, saying it was ‘firmly opposed to the Indian leader’s visit to the eastern section of the Sino-Indian border’. New Delhi dismissed the criticism, affirming that the state is ‘an integral and inalienable part of India’. It’s worth noting that this is nothing new; China routinely protests visits by Indian leaders to Arunachal Pradesh, as it did with Modi’s visit last year.

Despite the ‘reset’ in the Sino-Indian relationship said to be in place since the 2018 Wuhan summit between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the fact that India is careful to avoid trampling  Chinese sensitivities elsewhere, such as on its position on the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, New Delhi isn’t refraining from behaving assertively where its core interests are concerned. In other words, the reset hasn’t brought a fundamental change in the relationship and is better viewed as an attempt at buying temporary peace.

Reflecting on the Modi–Xi summit, Indian Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh recently said that while the two leaders discussed the ‘red lines’ in the relationship, they left boundary disputes aside, to be decided by the mechanisms already in place. He added that ‘it was a conscious decision to develop the relationship in different areas and focus on people-to-people contacts, economics, commerce [and] investments’ in order to de-escalate ‘those fixations and hard stances that exist’. India is the only country with which China still has a major and ongoing land border dispute.

Chinese claims over Arunachal Pradesh have grown substantially over the past couple of decades. In the mid-1980s, Beijing only laid claims over a region called Tawang, but in the 2000s it started claiming all of Arunachal Pradesh as ‘South Tibet’. India has recognised China’s use of ‘salami-slicing’ tactics to increase its territorial claims, which over time change the status quo in an area. But New Delhi has assessed that Beijing doesn’t want to escalate tensions over Arunachal Pradesh and will likely limit its response to the latest Indian initiatives to lodging routine diplomatic protests and perhaps engaging in minor skirmishes along the boundary (like the stone-pelting incident between Indian and Chinese soldiers on the border with Chinese-occupied Kashmir in August 2017). Last year, a Chinese civilian road-building team entered Arunachal Pradesh and was forced to return after a minor faceoff with Indian army personnel. It appears that India has calculated that China wouldn’t risk an active confrontation over Arunachal Pradesh, given the difficulty in navigating the mountainous terrain in the region and, more significantly, the priority China places on its interests in Taiwan and the South and East China seas.

China is testing India’s vulnerabilities and political will. It has an interest in keeping New Delhi occupied along its borders, perhaps because it recognises India as a potential threat to realising ‘Chinese supremacy in Asia’, as Mohan Malik has argued. Beijing’s other motivation derives from using its claim over ‘South Tibet’ to challenge Tibetan identity and curb Tibetan nationalism, which it believes is being fanned and enabled by India. Moreover, Arunachal Pradesh is strategically located at the confluence of four international borders—between India, China, Bhutan and Myanmar—and is prized territory both for India and for China.

Referring to Arunachal Pradesh as ‘India’s pride’ and hailing the patriotism of its 1.25 million residents, Modi’s speech at the airport inauguration was directed more to his domestic constituency than to China. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party attaches a lot of symbolic pride to the motherland and prioritises Indian assertion of sovereign control of border states such as Arunachal Pradesh. It blames the Congress Party and former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s indecisiveness and weakness for India’s loss in the 1962 war against China, a defeat that remains a source of shame in the Hindu nationalist psyche. Modi’s pitch for preserving India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as an election looms is thus mostly about declaring his strength to his party and the nation.

To New Delhi, India’s northeast forms a gateway to Southeast Asia and is an integral part of Modi’s ‘Act East’ policy to develop closer links with the countries of the Indo-Pacific. India’s northeastern states have historically been hotbeds of insurgent movements since independence, and infrastructure development and connectivity are fundamental to internal security and stability for the Indian nation. Most importantly for Modi, his infrastructure push in the northeast has so far resulted in unprecedented success for the Bharatiya Janata Party in state elections in a region far removed from the party’s traditional ‘Hindi heartland’ base.

Whether India is miscalculating Beijing’s resolve on Arunachal Pradesh is hard to tell. India’s most recent defence budget has been assessed as inadequate to address the country’s growing strategic challenges, and both quantitatively and qualitatively, India is falling behind China in its defence spending. Analysts believe that India wouldn’t be able to sustain a two-front land-border war with Pakistan in the west and China in the east, should such a situation arise. Nevertheless, India’s emphasis on infrastructure and development in the northeast will help strengthen New Delhi’s position.

The Sino-Indian land boundary dispute is likely to remain a source of low-level friction and antagonism between the two Asian giants. Negotiations and confidence-building measures have yielded little in over the past several years. China is likely to continue testing India’s will and vulnerabilities and gain an advantage where it can. As we see with Modi’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, India is likely to continue to assert its sovereignty and protect its land borders while managing tensions in other areas of the relationship with China. The danger lies in either side miscalculating the other’s motivation, resolve and patience.