The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will be in New Delhi in February or March next year for the next round of dialogue with their counterparts External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh.
The decision to have the meeting early next year was taken at the “intersessional” 2+2 meeting earlier this month. Officials are talking about the decision to have a “spring meeting.” While the 2+2 is at the ministerial level, the intersessional meeting, roughly halfway between the big meetings is at the level of joint/additional secretaries from the Indian side and assistant secretaries of the American government.
India has the 2+2 system with only a handful of countries. They, apart from the United States, include the other Quad countries–Japan and Australia– and Russia. A 2+2 meeting with the Japanese took place in Tokyo while the intersessional meeting was going on here.
