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India’s foreign-policy stance of being enemies with none and friends with all is playing out in real-time as it deepens relations with participants at both ends of the geopolitical spectrum, from the United States to Russia. How will its strengthening US partnership affect its historically checkered relationship with neighbouring China?

As strategic autonomy makes way for a tighter military embrace with Washington, India will find that its room for manoeuvre in the face of emerging challenges has narrowed.

This is the moment of reckoning for India, especially Modi, who is the singular force behind India’s statecraft and diplomacy. Both the US and China want its support.

Two critical decisions taken at the recent Quad summit will increase the gulf between India and other countries of South Asia.

India has not managed to deter China, as the growing transgressions in Ladakh show, but has succeeded in bringing Beijing and Pakistan’s GHQ even closer together.

Believing its own rhetoric of major power status, and hence China’s peer competitor, India thought it could, like the US, combat, compete and cooperate on its own terms with China. But is that true?

Starkly different approaches to 2,100-mile line of actual control on show as defence ministers meet in Delhi

The move will bring India closer to war with China, which it cannot win. The US cannot help in such a situation either.

Neither the Indian government nor the military has any comprehension of the worst that will happen – it’s no longer a question of if, but when.

From the role of drones, AI and civil-military fusion to his emphasis on boots on the ground, the former Indian army chief is looking at concepts that China has left way behind.