WASHINGTON, June 10: The United States is grooming India into a junior partner to balance China’s influence in the Indian Ocean region and to keep a check on a ‘recalcitrant’ Pakistan, says a US think-tank.

Stratfor, a think-tank which publishes weekly intelligence reports and is known in the US as the ‘shadow CIA’, says that such a strategic partnership would not only protect US interests in the region, but could also powerfully demonstrate to Islamabad that it would not stop a resurgent India from attacking Pakistan.

The report also suggests that a strategic partnership between Washington and New Delhi would also help take India out of Iran’s orbit.

Stratfor considers the evolving relationship between the US and India as a potentially deep one. “The United States will provide India with nuclear technology, development capital, and military hardware and training; in return, India will help safeguard US interests in the Indian Ocean region.

“The partnership could also powerfully demonstrate to Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf that the United States would not act to block a resurgent India from attacking Pakistan (not that such a scenario is likely) and also help take New Delhi out of Iran’s orbit,” the report says.

The United States hopes that an India more involved in the Malacca Strait and with an improved navy will make China nervous.

As Malacca is a chokepoint for Chinese trade and energy supplies, the naval frontier is essentially the only potential conflict point between New Delhi and Beijing, which otherwise are for all intents and purposes a continent away from one another.