US still has much at stake in Asia

Ditto India, which was perceived as having approached quasi-ally status with the US after signing a series of foundational agreements from logistics exchange to information sharing, in addition to a newfound taste for US-made weaponry which now lines its tense border with China.

- 

US-India ties are said to be at their worst in a quarter-century over punitive tariffs, disagreements on Russian oil imports, and an apparent souring of the personal friendship between Mr Trump and India's Narendra Modi.

But the security relationship - India conducts more war drills with the US than with any other power - continues to build. In September, the US and Indian armies practised high-altitude warfare in Alaska. In November, India did high-intensity sea drills with the US, Japan and Australia. Just recently, the Indian Navy's P-8i Poseidon aircraft conducted joint antisubmarine and maritime surveillance exercises with US Navy Poseidons over the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, visually bookending the "Indo-Pacific" in a dramatic demonstration of interoperability and information sharing.

The NSS asserts that the US must continue ties with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through Quad, in the common interest of "preventing domination by any single competitor nation".

A MATTER OF MINERALS

If parts of the NSS may lend themselves to a Rorschach test of mixed signals, as a former Pentagon official quipped to me, the least ambiguous of Trump 2.0 policies is his full-court press on strategic minerals - critical minerals vital for defence, high technology and semiconductors.

Beijing's weaponisation of rare earths - much of whose production it controls - has turned out to be America's biggest vulnerability vis a vis China. Until the turn of the century, the US used to be a major producer of these minerals, but environmental concerns caused it to close most mines. At the same time, Beijing swiftly expanded rare-earth mining and processing.