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and the reason for the mission.

and all of the related metadata of the details and assets of the mission.

Based on only a little understanding, India's geopolitical position makes it neutral in US-Russia/Soviet and US-China rivalries. India could and can securely ignore the rivalies:

Its location isn't strategic (valuable) to those rivalries, unlike Europe or Japan; for example, India shares a border with China but the Himlayas are an uncrossable barrier for large military operations - India is no threat to and is not threatened by China in a serious way, and is far from Russia and its strategic interests.

Its enormous size and population make it very expensive to influence militarily or politically, unlike smaller countries in Africa, for example. Those factors plus India's location made them less economically dependent on the rivarly countries. And India was very poor, so it provided little value to control economically.

For India, the obvious choice was and is to stay out of those fights - they have little to gain and much to lose, both in money spent on military, and other geopolitical costs including sovereignty. Instead, they can sit securely in South Asia and invest in themselves (or the leaders can cash in on corruption).

Now India has much more value economically, but that also makes them more secure. They verbally becoming more aggressive, but they have few targets and it seems like the commonplace tactic of nationalism.

> the situation may have been more complex than that

It always is on a micro level, but India is not becoming a US ally.

There is an interesting video by Sarah Paine on Youtube discussing the geopolitics of this. (Paraphrasing from memory) she says that the US tried to be friends with both but, because the scars of partition were so painful, this wasn't possible and they just ended up pissing off both. Apparently Pakistan was very strategic due to the presence of US listening posts and U2 bases.

As the article mentions, this was about their shared worry of Mao's China and their nuclear advances. India then as now has a strong connection to the USSR/Russia -- they flew, and still fly, MiG planes, for example.

It was mutual.

The US shifted to becoming de facto allied with China in the early 1970s as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, and Pakistan helped with the initial backdoor diplomacy [0][1] that lead to US-Chinese normalization in the 1970s.

India, having fought a war against both Pakistan and China in the 1960s, pivoted to the Soviet Union as a result, who were also miffed at China because of the Sino-Soviet split and were looking for a bulwark.

> Historians of this time period usually describe India as having a more frigid relationship with America by the mid 1960’s with India moving closer to the Soviet Union and the United States moving closer to Pakistan

A major reason was Brzezinski - LBJ and later Carter's foreign policy czar.

He was a "realist" whose primary goal was boxing in the USSR (he spent his early childhood in Moscow during the Stalinist purge and Poland before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). As such, he pivoted the US away from India in favor of Pakistan and China.

The is why the US went from building IITs and allowing it's tech companies like Burroughs and IBM building joint ventures in 1960s India to de facto sanctions in the 1970s.

Kissinger followed a similar policy as Brzezinski, and IMO a major reason was that both grew up in pre-War Europe and their past experiences colored their views as a result.

[0] - https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2015/10/pakistan-and-ch...

[1] - https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/papers/pakistan-china-relations-...

Thanks. To pick on one important word ...

> ditching ... Taiwan in favor of ... China

Is that really an accurate description? The US continued to explicitly support Taiwan's political and military separation from China, and compelled China to agree to it - as long as Taiwan didn't try to leave China and form another country, they could remain as they were (and are).

The change was that the US had formerly recognized Taiwan as the government of all China and therefore possesor of China's UN Security Council seat, and in their deal with Mao switched to recognizing China.

The following is my understanding: The civil war ended 1949; the Communists won, and the Nationalists fled to Taiwan. That is well-known; the following is a bit of speculation: For awhile, arguably it might have been plausible to deny Communist rule and imagine the Nationalists could govern China, maybe by reinvading and another uprising like those China had experienced since 1911 - the Communists were very weak. But by 1970 the result of the civil war must have been clear and the idea of the Taiwanese Nationalists as government of mainland China was a pointless fiction.

But it was very important to the Communists and a valuable chit in a negotiation. Taiwan's hurt feelings were irrelevant - they were dependent on the US and couldn't do anything about it. Recognizing the reality of Communist mainland control had little cost and great gain.

Alpha radiation has very little in the way of penetration. I can be basically shielded by tin foil.

As the Pu238 decays it will transform into other materials that will probably emit beta and gamma radiation which could be detected. And also the shielding might get compromised over time (hopefully not!)

But at least when it was new this would not have been an option. Heat was the only detectable emission coming off it.