US partnering with India to enable it to play a broader stabilising role in the Indo-Pacific region: Pentagon

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The US will partner India to help New Delhi play a "broader stabilising role" in the strategic Indo-Pacific region, a senior defence official from the Pentagon has said. The Biden administration has taken several steps to strengthen India-US defence relationship since it assumed power in January 2021.

“As India is taking a look at how it accelerates its own defence modernisation, in order to expand the role that it already plays as what I would describe as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean region, but more broadly in the Indo-Pacific, the United States wants to make sure that we are partnering with India to better enable it to play that broader stabilising role in the region,” a senior defence official told PTI on Saturday.

“We have been very focused on ways that we are advancing interoperability between the US and the Indian military. Obviously, the signature initiative I would highlight here is the tri-service exercise that we have between, which from our view is better equipping both of our militaries to be prepared for the kinds of challenges we will face in the future, which will require joint responses on both sides,” the official said.