The previous chapters have demonstrated that China–Russia strategic cooperation has progressed considerably and consistently since the end of the Cold War. However, if the evidence of growing strategic cooperation is presented without comparison, the depth of such cooperation risks appearing greater (or smaller) than it actually is. While the upward trend in China–Russia strategic cooperation is evident, assessing the level of that cooperation and the amount of its progress requires comparison. As shown below, the US–India alignment shares certain features with the China–Russia alignment. At the same time, both alignments have been the subjects of expert debates regarding their depth and sustainability, and there has been no systematic, theory-grounded assessment of US–India alignment explicitly applying an alignment framework.

The analytical framework offered in Chapter 2 provides the metrics for comparative mapping of different interstate relations along the stages of alignment formation, which facilitates understanding of those relations. At the same time, systematic application of that framework to the case of US–India alignment, besides its empirical value, is also significant from the standpoint of a plausibility probe (George & Bennett, 2005; Levy, 2008; Eckstein, 1991). Given the nature of the task, this chapter will explore the parameters of US–India alignment in a more abridged form, with the overarching goal of assessing the level of cooperation compared to the China–Russia case.