China’s ‘aggressive’ actions caused India to join Quad, says Mike Pompeo in new book

Former Secretary of State for United States Mike Pompeo's book has made some shocking revelations with regards to international relations and foreign policy. This includes India's stance with China, wherein both Asian countries are locked in a standoff for almost thirty one months now. 

Pompeo in his book stated that India was forced to change its strategic position and reverse its otherwise independent foreign policy and join the four-nation Quad, owing to China's aggressive actions. 

The strain in relations between India and China arose in 2020 when the Chinese and Indian army engaged in a deadly clash in Galwan Valley in Eastern Ladakh in June.

Since then India and China has held several disengagement talks which has resulted to nothing.  India has maintained that the bilateral relations between the two countries cannot be normal unless the border skirmishes have been resolved. 

In his latest book 'Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love' that hit the stores on Tuesday, Pompeo called India the "wild card" in Quad because it was a nation founded on socialist ideology and spent the Cold War aligning with neither the US nor the erstwhile USSR.

"The country (India) has always charted its own course without a true alliance system, and that is still mostly the case. But China's actions have caused India to change its strategic posture in the last few years," Pompeo wrote in his latest book.

Pompeo, 59, explains how the Donald Trump administration succeeded in bringing India on board the Quad grouping.

The US, Japan, India and Australia had in 2017 given shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the Quad or the Quadrilateral coalition to counter China's aggressive behaviour in the resource-rich Indo-Pacific region.

"China forged a close partnership with Pakistan - India's arch rival - as one of the first steps in its Belt and Road Initiative.

"In June 2020, Chinese soldiers clubbed twenty Indian soldiers to death in a border skirmish. That bloody incident caused the Indian public to demand a change in their country's relationship with China," Pompeo writes.

"India banned TikTok and dozens of Chinese apps as part of its response. And a Chinese virus was killing hundreds of thousands of Indian citizens. I was sometimes asked why India had moved away from China, and my answer came straight from what I heard from Indian leadership, 'Wouldn't you?' times were changing - and creating an opportunity for us to try something new and pull the US and India more closely together than ever," Pompeo writes.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea.

China claims sovereignty over all of the South China Sea.

Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan have counterclaims.

Beijing has also built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region.

Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are also vital to global trade.