Beijing’s information warfare is so successful that the very mention of the term ‘Asian Nato’ makes many Indians jump out of their skin. The visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has not proposed the creation of an ‘Asian Nato’; there was no occasion for India to have endorsed it. All that India and Japan have agreed is to have occasional political consultations with the other democracies in Asia Pacific, the United States and Australia. A few multilateral exercises do not a military alliance make. Meanwhile, is Nato really such a bad word? Why should New Delhi complain when Nato soldiers are dying in Afghanistan fighting our enemy, the Taliban, and America wants to bomb terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan? The real problem is the issue of Chinese sabre-rattling about Indian foreign policy choices.

Modern diplomatic history is replete with China’s repeated efforts to undermine India, its only rival in Asian leadership. At Bandung in 1955, where India went out of the way to invite an isolated Communist China, Premier Zhou Enlai betrayed Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Since then China used Pakistan and the smaller South Asian nations to keep India off balance. Beijing keeps India out of the decision-making structures of East Asia Summit process and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. For the first time in decades, India is in a position to return the compliment by deepening its cooperation with Japan and the United States.

It seems only the CPM, which wants India to do everything in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’, would like the nation to forgo the new diplomatic possibilities coming its way. The Indian government has got it just right — participate in the creation of a ‘strategic triangle’ with Russia and China on the one hand and work with the US, Japan and Australia to develop the Asian “democratic quad” on the other. India is not merely staying true to the policy of non-alignment; it is relearning the art of balance of power.