US Strategy and India Interest Policy and Media: A Study with Special Reference to India’s Territorial Conflicts

US-India relations have traversed vast and uneven terrain to forge a comprehensive strategic partnership today. They have also spanned a wide spectrum of change. The book unravels a range of Washington’s attitudes towards India over half a century focussing on India’s international territorial conflicts covering both the Cold War and post Soviet periods. This work attempts an exciting dual level analysis of the dynamic interface between interest policy and media projections. At one level the changing global geopolitical strategic and domestic compulsions that informed US responses to India’s conflicts with Portugal over Goa the Chinese aggression and Pakistan’s aggressions in Kutch Kashmir and most recently Kargil are examined. They range from Cold War strategic prisms and India’s power status to post-Soviet mutualities spurred by globalisation and terror. The book then juxtaposes this interest matrix with images constructed by the US print media of India and its conflicts underscoring the international and strategic dimensions of political communication. How did the free press of a democratic US conduct itself? What were the links between image contouring and interests of policy? How did Cold War trajectories that impaired India’s security inform the negative stereotyping of India? Why were images of India’s conflicts from Goa to Kashmir distorted? The revelations are of critical contemporary relevance because while the Cold War ended long back false narratives entrenched through media imperialism continue. Images need urgent corrective reconstruction as India’s strategic space continues to be sharply compromised.