India joins a security alliance that includes China and Pakistan?
President Vladimir Putin announced Friday that India and Pakistan will join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group dominated by Russia and China and also including former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
There are economic opportunities, to be sure.
But this is no alliance with friends. India will keep an eye on foes China and Pakistan while making sure neither can do damage to India's still-important arms supplier, Russia.
This is a real Indian alliance:
Senior foreign affairs officials from the [India, Japan, and Australia] gathered in New Delhi last month to explore how they might work together to meet shared regional security challenges.
Following the meeting - the first of its kind - Japanese Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Akitaka Saiki said the three nations "are on the same page" with regard to China's "aggressive attitude", while Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese undercut suggestions that the trilateral meeting could be considered an "anti-China front".
This is the actual grouping of nations with a common threat.
