The Idea of US-China G2: What It Means for India?: Interview of Major General Dr. S B Asthana by FPRC, India, Issue 67.

The Myth of Clean Bipolarity, Managed Rivalry and the Rise of Fragmented Middle Powers

What if the biggest geopolitical mistake of the 21st century is assuming that the world belongs to just two powers?

Washington and Beijing may be the two most consequential players in the emerging Cold War 2.0—but a US-China G2 cannot simply convert strategic rivalry into global co-management.

For India, the real danger is not choosing between Washington and Beijing. It is losing the freedom to choose at all.

Backdrop

The idea of a US-China “G2” has resurfaced with renewed force as Washington and Beijing attempt to manage an increasingly complex relationship marked simultaneously by rivalry, economic interdependence and strategic competition.

But can two powers really co-manage a world that is increasingly multipolar, economically interconnected and technologically diffused?

In this exclusive FPRC Journal 67 (ISSN 2277 – 2464) , Major General Dr S B Asthana, SM, VSM, PhD (Veteran), examines the structural viability of the G2 concept, President Donald Trump’s evolving China policy, the strategic calculations behind the Trump-Xi engagement, and the implications for India.

The interview argues that the world is not moving towards a clean bipolar order. Instead, it is witnessing what can better be described as “adversarial coexistence under conditions of mutual dependence.”

For India, both US-China accommodation and confrontation carry risks. The answer, therefore, is neither alignment nor passive neutrality, but strategic autonomy backed by economic resilience, technological self-reliance, diversified partnerships and flexible diplomacy.

The interview also examines whether the Indo-Pacific is developing a “G-Minus-Two” architecture and concludes that the emerging reality is better understood as a lattice of overlapping mini-laterals rather than a coherent third bloc.

Why this interview matters now

Five questions. One strategic dilemma for India.

• Can Washington and Beijing really create a G2?
• Has Trump shifted from confrontation to accommodation with China?
• Did Xi give Trump tactical concessions without surrendering strategic ground?
• Why is both US-China friendship and US-China confrontation potentially bad for India?
• Is a “G-Minus-Two” middle-power architecture emerging in the Indo-Pacific?

As everyone may not have access to the journal, I am reproducing the contents of my interview to facilitate the readers.

The Idea of US-China- G2: Impact on India!

“The myth of clean bipolarity, Managed rivalry, not resolution and Fragmented Middle-powers“

Interview of Major General Dr. S B Asthana,SM,VSM,PhD (Veteran) by FPRC, India, Issue 67.

FPRC JOURNAL-67

Introduction

The re-election of Donald Trump and his subsequent Beijing summit with Xi Jinping in May 2026 have reopened a debate that has simmered since the Obama years: whether the world’s two largest powers can, or should, co-manage global order as a “G-2.” This interview interrogates that proposition from five angles — the structural viability of G-2 itself, the true character of Trump’s shifting China posture, the substance behind the Beijing summit’s headline deals, the collateral costs both US-China rivalry and rapprochement impose on India, and the middle-power architecture rising beyond Washington and Beijing. Across all five, the analysis returns to a consistent finding: the current order is neither the bipolar contest the G-2 label implies nor a settled reconciliation, but what the accompanying article terms “adversarial coexistence under conditions of mutual dependence“.

The evidence assembled here — trade data, summit readouts, Taiwan arms-sale timelines, India-US-China trilateral dynamics, and the institutional record of Quad and allied Mini laterals — consistently favours nuance over the binary framings popular in commentary. Trump’s tariff climbdown from a 57 percent peak to a stabilized 10 percent reciprocal rate is real, yet it coexists with an unresolved chip-export standoff and a Taiwan arms package explicitly recast as a “negotiating chip” followed by rhetoric over future 100 percent tariff on countries trading with Russia speculations. China’s parity-seeking is explicit in its own policy discourse, yet Beijing’s summit concessions were calculated to be reversible rather than structural. And India’s answer to being squeezed between accommodation and confrontation has not been passivity but deliberate, simultaneous hedging with both capitals. The throughline is that Cold War 2.0 is being managed in real time by actors who all reject the clean categories — G-2, bloc, alliance — that would make it easier to describe.Cold-War-2-trump-Xi-13-May-26.docx

Questionnaire

FPRC

Question 1.

The US-China G-2 concept is both normatively exclusionary and strategically constraining. The inherent limits of a G-2 framework – hierarchy, power structure and systematic constraints -make it a non-starter in a multipolar reality. Do you agree?

Major General Dr S B Asthana 

The G-2 Framework Is Structurally Unviable

I concur substantially with your proposition. A US-China G-2 is normatively exclusionary because it privileges a duopoly of civilisational and ideological narratives — American liberal-institutionalism versus Chinese state-capitalist centralism — leaving no legitimate seat for the EU, India, Russia, Japan, or the Global South collective that today accounts for the majority of global growth and population. It is strategically constraining because it forces every other capital into a binary alignment choice precisely when middle powers are engineering strategic autonomy as their organising principle.

The complex US-China rivalry has evolved into “Cold  War 2.0,” entailing intertwined economic and strategic interactions amidst  military posturing. Presidents Trump and Xi’s approaches symbolize contrasting strategies: Xi’s strategic continuity contrasts with Trump’s transactional nationalism. The geopolitical environment is still multipolar, necessitating that countries carefully manage tensions while cultivating selective alliances and avoiding direct conflict.

Three structural limits make G-2 a non-starter:

• Hierarchy problem: A G-2 presumes a managed duopoly at the apex, but Beijing itself resists the label. Chinese analysts increasingly view G-2 as “a world-order frame that legitimises great-power monopoly” and threatens China’s own Global South positioning and its claim to support an “equal, orderly multipolar world“. Beijing wants deference to its core interests without accepting the co-management obligations — and the normative baggage — that G-2 status would impose.
• Power-structure problem: G-2 logic assumes comparable, convertible power currencies. In reality, Washington exercises legacy power through alliances, financial systems, and coalition legitimacy, while Beijing exercises power through trade dependency, infrastructure penetration, and calibrated coercion — categorically different instruments that don’t compress into a single bipolar hierarchy. A recent East Asia Forum analysis argues explicitly that reviving G-2 would “undercut Asian multilateralism and force regional powers to recalibrate their strategic choices,” which is precisely the exclusionary effect.
• Systemic constraint: Unlike Cold War 1.0’s bloc-based bipolarity, today’s order is economically interconnected and technologically diffused, with middle powers — India foremost among them — playing swing roles precisely by refusing binary alignment. A G-2 architecture cannot accommodate that diffusion; it presumes a hub-and-spoke or condominium model that the multipolar reality has already outgrown.

The empirical record from 2025-26 reinforces my conviction. Even at the height of Trump-Xi “deal-making” — the Busan truce and the May 2026 Beijing summit — neither side treated the relationship as co-management of global order. It produced narrow transactional arrangements (a Board of Trade, agricultural purchases, a rare-earths truce) rather than any joint stewardship framework, and Taiwan, Iran, and technology controls remained unresolved zones of contestation, not areas of G-2 coordination. That outcome pattern — competitive coexistence rather than joint hegemony — is itself evidence that the G-2 concept has no operational traction even between its two supposed principals, let alone as a template the rest of the world would accept.

Question 2.

Trump’s China policy has shifted from confrontation to accommodation. How far true ?

Major General Dr S B Asthana 

“Confrontation to Accommodation” — Partially True, Structurally Overstated

The characterisation is directionally accurate on trade optics but analytically incomplete; it mistakes tactical accommodation for strategic accommodation, when the underlying posture remains “managed confrontation under conditions of deep interdependence”.

Evidence for the “shift to accommodation”

Track	Where it stands (mid-2026)	Read
Tariffs	Cut from ~57% peak to a stabilised ~10% reciprocal rate after Busan; Section 301 replacement rates still being negotiated. War of words for additional tariffs over Iran continues.	Accommodation under duress
Rare earths	One-year suspension of China’s controls to Nov 2026, but White House now concedes China’s “export control regime is here to stay”	Tactical, not structural
Agriculture/Boeing	$17bn/year US farm purchases (2026-28), 200 Boeing jets, beef/poultry licences restored	Accommodation
New mechanisms	Board of Trade and Board of Investment established to manage disputes	Institutionalised de-escalation
Truce extension	Not yet extended; Bessent says US is “not in a hurry”	Confrontation risk retained
Taiwan arms	$11bn package approved (largest ever); $14bn package “paused,” Trump calls it a “negotiating chip”	Confrontation, instrumentalised
Chips/tech	Nvidia H200 export terms unresolved; not even raised at the Beijing summit	Confrontation, unresolved

Why “accommodation” overstates the shift:

The trade track has genuinely moved from escalatory tariff warfare toward negotiated stabilization — tariffs roughly halved from their 2025 peak, and two standing institutional channels (the Boards of Trade and Investment) now exist to manage friction rather than escalate it. That is a real, measurable de-escalation, consistent with what your article calls Trump’s “managed competition” instinct once Beijing’s retaliatory capacity became evident.

But on the two issues that actually define the strategic relationship — Taiwan and technology denial — the posture is closer to calibrated leverage than accommodation. Trump himself has framed the paused $14 billion Taiwan arms package explicitly as a “negotiating chip” against Xi, and the acting Navy Secretary has cited Iran-related munitions shortages as the operational reason for the pause, not any strategic concession to Beijing. Rare-earth controls, similarly, were suspended for one year rather than dismantled, and Washington’s own factsheet now quietly accepts that Beijing’s underlying export-control architecture will persist. Nvidia H200 chip export terms — arguably the most consequential technology issue on the table — were not even discussed at the Beijing summit

This maps precisely onto the “adversarial coexistence under mutual dependence” framing in my Cold War 2.0 article: Trump is trading tactical, reversible concessions (tariffs, farm purchases, aircraft orders) for domestic political and economic wins, while withholding movement on the two structural levers — Taiwan and technology — that determine long-term relative power. The shift is real but bounded: it is a shift in tone and instruments (transactional deal-making replacing tariff escalation), not a shift in strategic intent. This conclusion holds up well against the subsequent five months of evidence: the likely trajectory remains “managed confrontation,” not reconciliation.

Question 3.

China wants to be seen on par with Washington .The Chinese gave Trump everything he wanted  but nothing of substance. Taiwan was off the table at Beijing May 2026 meet . Do you agree ?

Major General Dr S B Asthana 

Beijing didn’t give Trump “everything” so much as calibrated, reversible concessions calculated to buy time while conceding no structural ground. Let me take each element iturn.China’s Parity Ambition Is Explicit, Not Inferred

A detailed review of roughly fifty Chinese policy articles since Trump revived the “G2” label shows Beijing’s establishment is actively debating de facto bipolarity even while officially rejecting the term . Wang Yi stated explicitly in March 2026 that China does not “subscribe to the logic of great-power co-governance,” yet scholars like Yan Xuetong argue Kissinger’s old “two superpowers, several major powers” formula has collapsed into simply “two superpowers,” with every other power’s relative weight declining . Zheng Yongnian goes further, describing a “de facto G2” as already existing on every measurable indicator — economic size, technology, military power .

The status motivation is explicit in the literature: American recognition of China as a “near peer” carries symbolic value precisely because it signals, in the words of scholar Xia Liping, that Washington has been forced to “look across” at China rather than “look down” on it . This is parity-seeking dressed in multipolar language — Beijing wants the deference of peer status without the alliance-management costs or Global South alienation that formal G-2 co-governance would entail .

“Everything He Wanted, Nothing of Substance” — Directionally Right, With Nuance

What Trump got, on paper:

The Beijing summit’s own readouts support this reading, though the picture is more “preliminary and reversible” than “empty.”

• $17 billion/year in agricultural purchases through 2028, atop the earlier 25-million-ton soybean pledge — roughly $27 billion annually, which CNN notes is barely above pre-trade-war 2024 levels, not a genuine new concession
• An “initial purchase” of 200 Boeing aircraft, unconfirmed by Boeing itself, with China’s Commerce Ministry only vaguely acknowledging “arrangements on procuring aircraft”
• Two new institutional channels — a “Board of Trade” and “Board of Investment” — that both sides are calling forums for future negotiation, not binding agreements
• A restated pledge to “address” rare-earth supply concerns, which the White House itself now concedes leaves China’s underlying export-control regime “here to stay”

What went unaddressed: Trump told reporters he and Xi did not even discuss tariffs, the very issue that triggered the trade war . The technology rivalry — chip export controls, including the Nvidia H200 question — was not resolved and barely touched despite being, per CNN, “one of the thorniest issues” . Beijing’s own Ministry of Commerce readout was notably vaguer than Washington’s fact sheet on nearly every deliverable, explicitly calling the results “preliminary” . That asymmetry — America’s fact sheet reads like a win, China’s readout reads like a placeholder — is itself evidence for your “nothing of substance” characterization.

Taiwan Was Not Resolved, But It Was Not Entirely “Off the Table” Either

Here the record is more layered than a flat “off the table.” Trump himself said he and Xi “talked extensively about Taiwan” during the summit, and no resolution followed . What changed is the direction of pressure afterward:

• Days after the summit, Trump publicly cautioned Taiwan against “seeking independence” and urged Taipei to “cool down,” while separately floating the paused $14 billion arms package as a “negotiating chip” with Beijing
• The US paused that arms package on May 21, officially citing Middle East munitions needs, though the Institute for the Study of War assesses Beijing will exploit the timing to erode Taiwanese confidence in Washington regardless of the stated reason
• Trump’s announced intent to speak directly with Taiwan’s President Lai — the first such call by a sitting US president since 1979 — appears to have influenced China’s own posture on related defence talks

So Taiwan wasn’t a bargaining item formally traded away, but it was functionally instrumentalized around the summit — treated by Trump as leverage rather than as a principle to be defended, which is arguably a more troubling accommodation signal than an explicit concession would have been. Meanwhile Beijing kept escalating grey-zone pressure throughout — Liaoning carrier drills in the Western Pacific, roughly 200 J-6 fighter jets converted to drones deployed to bases facing the strait, and repeated ADIZ warnings against Taiwanese aircraft — none of which paused for the summit . That continuity of coercive pressure, unaffected by trade diplomacy, is the strongest evidence that Taiwan remained a live theatre of confrontation even as trade moved toward accommodation.

My take on the subject on National TV of Taiwan

In sum:  China secured recognition and tactical trade wins while avoiding any binding commitment on tariffs, technology, or sovereignty issues, and Taiwan was managed as leverage rather than settled. The more precise formulation is that Taiwan wasn’t removed from the table so much as quietly repriced as a bargaining chip, which fits my broader “managed confrontation” thesis better than a clean “off the table” claim would.

Question 4.

US-China friendship is bad for India.-their infighting too  is bad for India. How far do you agree?

Major General Dr S B Asthana 

US-China friendship as well as infighting both are risky for India, but India Is managing both risks, so far. Your framing captures a genuine strategic bind, and I’d agree with it as a general proposition — though the current evidence shows India actively hedging against both scenarios rather than being simply squeezed by them.

Why US-China Accommodation Threatens India

A durable US-China bargain would erode exactly the leverage India has built over the past decade as Washington’s preferred Indo-Pacific counterweight to Beijing. If Washington prioritizes trade stabilisation and Taiwan-adjacent “stability management” with Beijing over containment, India’s strategic salience as a hedge against China diminishes, and New Delhi risks being treated as one transactional partner among many rather than a load-bearing pillar of US Indo-Pacific strategy .

This is not abstract. Even as Trump pursued the Beijing summit, Washington simultaneously imposed a 25%+25% tariff regime on India — the highest rate globally at one point — explicitly linked to India’s Russian oil purchases, before a February 2026 deal cut it to 18%. New Delhi absorbed a year of tariff hostility precisely while Washington was courting Beijing for a trade deal, which is the clearest evidence that US-China accommodation does not automatically translate into better treatment for India; if anything, India became a bargaining variable in Washington’s own China calculus, asked to cut Russian oil purchases as a precondition for tariff relief. With announcement of Trump’s tariffs on trading with Iran, my sense is that Trump will remain symbolic with China due to the rare earth leverages, but may be harsh on others including India which has lesser leverages.

Why US-China Confrontation Is Also Costly for India

The “infighting is bad too” is equally well-evidenced. Intensified rivalry forces India into supply-chain disruption, technology-access uncertainty, and pressure to align on export controls and secondary sanctions it did not choose — all while India’s own economy remains entangled with China. Bilateral India-China goods trade actually hit $151.1 billion in FY2025-26 despite the frozen border dispute, showing India cannot simply decouple from China, even as it courts Washington strategically.

Confrontation scenarios also destabilise India’s neighbourhood. New Delhi must contend for influence in regions like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and the Maldives that China has been penetrating through infrastructure investment as a result of the growing US-China rivalry, which is manifesting itself directly in South Asia. This is a cost of rivalry rather than an advantage. India’s China policy identifies border stability, economic dependency management, and avoidance of great-power bloc pressure as India’s top competing imperatives, precisely the balancing act that intensified confrontation makes harder, not easier. It puts pressure on India’s policy of avoiding bloc politics.

India’s Actual Response: Neither Band wagoning Nor Passive Hedging

The most important corrective to the binary framing is that India is not simply reacting to whichever US-China mode prevails — it is running a parallel, deliberate normalisation track with Beijing regardless of the Washington relationship’s temperature.

Track 2025-26 development: Significance for India

Border management.    The 25^th round of SR level border talks seem to be positive. 36th round of border-affairs talks (Aug 2026); boundary delimitation and trans-border river discussions.  Real but partial; Depsang/Demchok resolved, wider LAC still militarised. Arunachal friction, encroachment reports (Aug 2026) even amid “cautious re-engagement” continue to surface

In FY 2025–2026, bilateral trade with the US reached $151.1 billion. Despite geopolitical tension, economic connection endures. In February 2026, US tariffs were reduced from 50% to 10%, subject to the prospect of further taxes on oil and Russian imports as well as trade with Iran. India’s connection with the US came at a true cost.

India’s China outreach since 2024 has been a “supply-chain truce, not a strategic reset,” driven by the recognition that being economically dependent on a rival with an unresolved border dispute was untenable — a hedge against Trump-era tariff volatility, not an abandonment of the China threat assessment. This is consistent with what my Cold War 2.0 article identifies as the prudent middle-power posture: “strategic autonomy backed by economic resilience, technological self-reliance, diversified partnerships and flexible diplomacy” .

I agree with your proposition, with one refinement. Both US-China accommodation and US-China confrontation carry real costs for India — the evidence for each is solid. But the framing of India as simply exposed to whichever mode dominates understates New Delhi’s agency. India’s current posture — simultaneous border normalisation with Beijing and conditional trade repair with Washington, neither at full trust, both kept “transactional and judged on merits” is precisely the strategic-autonomy hedge is India’s only viable path in a bipolar-tending but structurally multipolar order . The risk to India isn’t really which mode Washington and Beijing settle into; it’s whether India’s hedging capacity — economic resilience, defence indigenisation, diversified partnerships — keeps pace with either scenario.

Question 5.

Beyond US and China ,India and others are building a ” G Minus Two ” for Indo-Pacific . Do you agree?

Major General Dr S B Asthana 

The Trend Is Real, But “G-Minus-Two” Overstates Its Coherence

I’d agree with the underlying observation — a networked coalition of Indo-Pacific middle powers is genuinely emerging beyond Washington and Beijing — but I would resist the “G-Minus-Two” label itself, since it imports the same bloc-logic your Question 1 answer already found analytically flawed. What’s actually forming is closer to a lattice of overlapping Mini laterals and not a coherent third pole.

The Empirical Case for a Middle-Power Coalition

The evidence for a genuine shift is substantial and dated to mid-2026. The Indo-Pacific is not moving towards a simple bipolar order” but “becoming a more networked system” where Japan, India, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam “seem to be making efforts to shape a change. Crucially, this piece frames India as the clearest example of the pattern: New Delhi deepens Quad security cooperation with Washington while remaining simultaneously active in BRICS, the SCO, and Global South groupings — “not neutrality,” but “a deliberate strategy designed to maximise national freedom of action”.lowyinstitute

This is compounding at the institutional level. The 11th Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi on May 26, 2026 produced concrete deliverables — a jointly built port in Fiji, critical minerals and energy security pacts, and the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration, described by commentator Manish Tewari as “the most operationally tangible initiative the Quad has produced so far”. Alongside the Quad, a parallel lattice already exists: the Blue Dot Network (US-Japan-Australia infrastructure standards, since 2019), the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (Japan-India, since 2017), the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (India-Japan-Australia), and trilateral security dialogues like Australia-Japan-India — none of which require binary alignment.Cold-War-2-trump-Xi-13-May-26.docx

Why “G-Minus-Two” Is the Wrong Frame

The label imports bloc-thinking that the actual behaviour contradicts. Every middle power named — India, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore — is deliberately avoiding the creation of a rival pole. A grouping engineered around “options” rather than collective bargaining power cannot function as a coherent “G-minus-2” counterweight, because its members retain divergent, even contradictory, relationships with both Washington and Beijing simultaneously — India in the Quad and the SCO; Vietnam holding partnerships with every Indo-Pacific great power at once, a pattern scholars call a “multipolar balance” rather than coalition-building.

The structural weaknesses are also self-evident like Quad “operates through convergence rather than obligation. It can facilitate, coordinate, and signal, but it cannot compel or guarantee”. There is no permanent secretariat, no binding mutual defence clause, indicating whether Washington’s own commitment is receding just as the grouping needed to mature. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s Shangri-La remarks — “we need partners, not protectorates… no freeloading” — signal Washington itself is stepping back from underwriting the architecture, which undercuts any reading of this as a deliberately constructed anti-China axis with American backing.

A More Accurate Formulation

What is happening is better described as networked minilateralism, not a “G-minus-2.” The distinction implies:

• A G-minus-2 would imply a coherent third bloc with shared strategic purpose, collective bargaining leverage, and internal cohesion comparable to what a G-2 would represent for the US and China — which none of these groupings possess, by design.

• Networked mini-lateralism — Quad, AUKUS, Blue Dot Network, Supply Chain Resilience Initiative, India-Japan-Australia trilateral, ASEAN-centred arrangements — is issue-specific, overlapping, non-exclusive, and deliberately avoids binding commitments, precisely because its members (India foremost) want maximum optionality rather than bloc discipline.

This is fully consistent with the multipolarity thesis of my  Cold War 2.0 article: middle powers are “playing increasingly important roles in shaping outcomes through strategic balancing avoiding bloc politics” . That is the opposite of forming a “minus-two” pole — it is the deliberate proliferation of overlapping, non-exclusive coalitions that makes any clean tri-polar or G-minus-2 framing analytically premature. The middle powers are thus building a “lattice,” not a “bloc” — the distinction is the whole point of why this Indo-Pacific order resists Cold War 1.0-style categorisation.

Conclusion

Taken together, these five questions dismantle the notion that US-China relations can be read through any single lens — G-2 co-governance, pure confrontation, or clean accommodation. What emerges instead is a rivalry conducted through calibrated, reversible instruments: tariffs traded for agricultural purchases, rare-earth suspensions rather than removals, and Taiwan managed as leverage rather than settled as principle. Beijing’s pursuit of parity recognition, documented in its own scholarly and policy discourse, sits uneasily with its refusal to accept the co-governance obligations that genuine G-2 status would demand — confirming that hierarchy, power asymmetry and systemic constraint make the G-2 concept structurally unworkable even between its two supposed principals.Cold-War-2-trump-Xi-13-May-26.docx

For India and the wider Indo-Pacific, the lesson is that neither superpower détente nor superpower rivalry offers a comfortable equilibrium — both carry distinct costs, and the appropriate response is not alignment with either but the deliberate construction of optionality. The networked mini-lateralism visible in the Quad’s 2026 deliverables, alongside India’s parallel border-stabilization track with China, illustrates this hedge in practice rather than theory. As this interview concludes, the prudent course for the rest of the world “lies in strategic autonomy backed by economic resilience, technological self-reliance, diversified partnerships and flexible diplomacy” — a principle that each of the five answers here has independently reaffirmed.

Five Strategic Takeaways

1. The G2 is structurally unviable.
A duopoly cannot adequately represent a multipolar world in which India, the EU, Russia, Japan and the Global South retain significant strategic weight.

2. Trump has moved tactically, not strategically.
Trade de-escalation does not equal strategic accommodation. Taiwan and technology remain core areas of competition.

3. China seeks parity without necessarily accepting G2 obligations.
Beijing’s objective is greater recognition of its status while retaining freedom of action and its Global South positioning.

4. India faces risks from both US-China accommodation and confrontation.
Accommodation can reduce India’s strategic leverage; confrontation can create supply-chain, technology, economic and diplomatic pressures.

5. The emerging alternative is networked minilateralism.
Quad, SCO, BRICS, AUKUS, Supply Chain Resilience Initiative and other overlapping arrangements indicate a “lattice” rather than a third bloc.

About the Author

Major General (Dr) S B Asthana, SM, VSM, PhD (Veteran)

The views expressed are the personal views of the author, who retains copyright. The author is a globally acknowledged strategic and security analyst, and former Director General of Infantry, Indian Army, and former Director at the United Service Institution of India. A prolific strategic-affairs commentator with over 600 published works and more than 5,000 global TV appearances, he writes on geopolitics, military doctrine and Indian defence policy.

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