United States and India are forging long-term defence and security alliances aimed at containing China, a country both see as an emerging regional and global power, Jane's Foreign Report has said quoting a 'classified' United States analysis.
"China represents the most significant threat to both countries' security in the future as an economic and military competitor," the 130-page analysis titled -- 'Indo-US military relationship: expectations and perceptions', prepared for US Secretary of State for Defence Donald Rumsfeld, said.
The analysis also quoted an unidentified US admiral saying that a positive relationship with India was a 'hedge' against future Chinese ambitions. "USA and India both view China as a strategic threat and share an interest in understanding Chinese strategic intent, though we do not discuss this publicly," the admiral said.
The report said Indian and US views of China were 'strikingly similar' and predicated to keep China out of the Indian Ocean region where, over the past decade, it has been making swift inroads.
US officials, it said, think a 'strategic engagement' with India could become a 'future investment' of growing value if Asia became hostile and dangerous to a continuing US military presence in the region.
The analysis is a result of interviews with 82 senior US and Indian officials, mostly military personnel linked closely with furthering bilateral security ties between Washington and New Delhi.
"If China emerges as a major power, the USA needs to have friends - preferably friends who share the same values," the report said, adding, "India will have more clout. As the US military engages India, as much as we say we do, we cannot separate our thinking on India from our thinking on China."
One US officer was quoted as saying, "We want a friend in 2020 that will be capable of assisting the US militarily to deal with a Chinese threat."
India is more than willing to have US as an ally, to 'spook and rattle' China, despite its flurry of diplomatic and political overtures to the Chinese government to normalise relations, the report claimed.
"As the USA and India develop a closer military relationship, China will respond. Where and how China will respond remains unclear, but India faces the reality that it lives in a neighbourhood where China supplies nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan, weapons to Bangladesh and is building a 3657m runaway near Mandalin Gwadar in Pakistan," it said.
Indian intelligence sources were quoted as saying China had also resumed, after a two-decade gap, the supply of weapons to various insurgent groups fighting for independence in northeast India.
Meanwhile, the report said, a small cog in the US-Indian military alliance aimed at containing China is already in place.
For more than a year the Indian and US navies have been jointly patrolling the Malacca Straits.
The US is keen to police the Straits, through which over 80 per cent of Japan's oil supplies from the Middle East are transported.
The Bush administration would also like to establish a long-term presence in the region, given the brewing North Korean and China-Taiwan crisis, the report said, adding naval cooperation is perhaps one of the more promising areas.
