Last week on the show, Milan sat down with the Carnegie Endowment’s Ashley J. Tellis to discuss his much talked about Foreign Affairs essay titled, “America’s Bad Bet on India.”

In that piece, Ashley argues that if U.S. policymakers are expecting India to come to America’s aid in the event of a military conflict with China, they would be well advised to keep their expectations in check. Ashley argues that such a military coalition is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.

A month after Ashley’s piece was published, the scholar Arzan Tarapore penned a response in Foreign Affairs titled, “America’s Best Bet in the Indo-Pacific.”

Arzan, a Research Scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, joins Milan on the show this week to discuss why coalition warfare is the wrong benchmark with which to assess U.S.-India security cooperation.

Milan and Arzan discuss the policy differences between Delhi and Washington, the practical ways in which the United States and India can cooperate to constrain China, and the prospects of iCET (the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology). Plus, the two discuss the future of the Quad and how Australia fits into the budding U.S.-India partnership.

Episode notes:

“Reexamining America’s Bet on India (with Ashley J. Tellis),” Grand Tamasha, June 21, 2023.

Arzan Tarapore, “What the Quad could learn from AUKUS,” The Interpreter (blog), April 3, 2023.

Christopher Chivvis, “What Biden Wants From Modi’s State Visit,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 20, 2023.

“Pivotal States: What Direction for the U.S.-India Partnership (with Christopher Chivvis, Lisa Curtis, and Ashley J. Tellis),” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 9, 2023

Arzan Tarapore, “India and the US gear up for strategic competition,” The Strategist, June 26, 2023.