Fateful Triangle: How China shaped US-India relations during the Cold War by Tanvi Madan

In the current world order and geopolitics, some developments are considered axiomatic: the changing balance of global power talks on India’s potential as a counter to China, and India-US convergences on the issue of managing China. In the extant literature, these events are generally projected as contemporary occurrences. However, as Tanvi Madan’s book deftly communicates, these patterns of geopolitics are not new. They were present during the Cold War era and determined the trajectory of Indo-US ties. The book brings out the details and nuances of Indo-US diplomatic history from 1949 to 1979 and how China shaped their bilateral equation. By delving deep into this underexplored research area, Madan breaks the tradition of examining the US-India Cold War ties through the Pakistan prism. The book offers an in-depth analysis through extensive archival work from the US and India, which is presented chronologically and in an easy-to-understand narrative. Madan argues that although both India and the US were wary of China’s rise, they shared periods of convergence and divergence over their perception of the China threat
and how to respond to it.

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