Mike Pompeo: China’s aggressive actions caused India to join Quad

Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State for the United States, in his latest book ‘Never Give an Inch: Fighting for America I Love’ has made some shocking revelations with regard to international relations and foreign policy.

Mike 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.

Pompeo wrote, “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,” in his latest book.

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

“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,” the former Secretary of State for the United States wrote in his latest book.

“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 wrote.

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India has maintained that the bilateral relations between the two countries cannot be normal unless the border skirmishes have been resolved.

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 behavior in the resource-rich Indo-Pacific region.