A Historical Analysis of the Impacts of US-India Defense Collaboration over the South Asian Regional Political Dynamics

Abstract

The defense cooperation between the United States (US) and India undertaken primarily in the backdrop of the War Against Terrorism empowered India to boost its defensive capabilities up to such an extent that it could threaten the regional peace which ultimately happened at the end of the second decade of the 21^st century when deadly Indian military aggression surfaced practically against Pakistan and China in 2019-20 with the unfortunate exception that the episode against Pakistan was repeated in May 2025 nevertheless all these violent military attacks were successfully defeated by the rival armies while leaving the impact that India had continuously been endangering the regional peace. Although these developments had been prematurely sensed and the regional security circles were pointing out that the US should not provide modern arms and weaponry to the Indian military so that it might avoid involving in direct clashes with the neighboring states but none paid any heed to such sane voices. Moving upon this background, the current study reviews the India-US defense collaboration in historical perspective to assess and understand that how the same had resulted in polluting the South Asian regional peace? It finds that although the US presence in Afghanistan was a major factor for the US search for a trustworthy regional ally nevertheless it was the China’s economic progress by leaps and bounds which forced the US to modernize the Indian defensive and attacking capabilities so that the US hegemonic designs pertaining to the region could not be disturbed. However, the cooperation also brought negative consequences as well since both China and Pakistan came strategically further closer which resulted in the humiliating defeat of Indian army time and again. The study recommends that US defense establishment should maintain a rationally designed and balanced approach while adopting any arms supply mechanism to the South Asian states so that the balance of power might not swing in favor of any one state.