[Atlantium]

No nation is friends with another nation. Nations are allies.

Ally : a state formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose.

Friend : a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.

Allies work together for rational mutual purposes, friends work together for emotional reasons.

Besides, humans of all nations have far too many factions and unreasonable emotional responses to ever be fully trusted.

[vishnugupta]

This is a good model to refer to from time to time.

I would add that "ally" doesn't mean co-operate in all spheres. It's perfectly reasonable for two nations to have border skirmishes and have bi/multi-lateral trade agreements simultaneously.

A nation is a multifaceted entity and it isn't possible to model it as one single blob. Inter-nation relationships are very fluid, and evolving all the time.

I find it funny when I see Indian social media flare up with "ban Chinese goods" whenever there are border skirmishes. It's as if trade and border-disputes somehow won't fit together and that there is a very sharp line between "ally" and "enemy".

Unfortunately, politicians take advantage of this sharp divide in people's mind to rally large groups of people against an imagined threat from a nation to garner support/votes. My father-in-law was very agitated about India-China border skirmish thanks to all the media coverage. In his mind Indian economy would be doomed. I asked him if the condition of the shitty public road he travels by each day improve if India won that dispute. He is perfectly fine to accept the crappy day-to-day life (non-existent roads, shitty power supply, un-usable water etc.,) but would suddenly get riled with some random dispute thousands of miles away!

[lenkite]

I guess you are not from a military family. It is pretty well known in military intelligence circles that China wishes to annex the eastern Indian states. They already consider several areas of the Indian eastern states within their national borders - see the official national maps of the PLA.

PLA has official strategy - part of their SOP inculcated into their officer corps - to regularly push incursions into Indian territory and check the response of the Indian central government. We have already lost 1000 square km over the last couple of years. 38,000 square km over the last decade if you consider our formally acknowledged boundaries.

So, yes, unless you wish to lose the Indian eastern states, access to natural resources and secede control over the vast majority of the Indian water supply, one will need to remain vigilant and ready. That includes heavy military readiness.

The other option is to kneel to China and become a vassal state. No double the condition of roads would improve ? All you have to do is love the CCP.

[mola]

Friendship rhetorics between EU and US is not rare, it's the norm. Nations can be friendly.