China on India-US defence talks agenda

With the US president embroiled in domestic political battles, Mattis calls the shots in defence

When US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis meets his Indian counterpart, Nirmala Sitharaman, in New Delhi on Tuesday, it will be a first handshake between an unusually powerful American incumbent and a greenhorn Indian one.
 
Mattis is not just a vastly experienced combat soldier, who has commanded an infantry battalion in Iraq in 1991, an expeditionary brigade in Afghanistan after 9/11, a US Marine division in Iraq in 2003 and eventually the US Central Command, which covers the world’s most dangerous hotspots from Pakistan to West Asia and North Africa. He is also a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet