NEW RULES FOR THE GREAT GAME

Under the Modi Government, India is re-calibrating its relationship with the Great Powers, as the Obama visit stands proof. Now, it will be interesting to see how New Delhi projects these new bilateral equations in multilateral forums

This past fortnight has been a particularly busy one for Indian diplomacy. It started with US President Barack Obama’s visit to the country which was followed by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s relatively low key trip to China which included a trilateral meeting with Russia. Both visits are parts of larger processes wherein India, under the Narendra Modi Government, is re-defining the terms of its engagement with Great Powers. President Obama’s visit builds upon the Prime Minister US tour in September 2014 while Ms Swaraj’s Beijing trip sets the stage for the next India-China summit. Following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s India visit last November, Mr Modi is now scheduled to travel to China in May, just before he completes his first year in office. In between, Russian President Vladimir Putin was in New Delhi for the annual India-Russia summit, and all the heads of Government also had an opportunity to deliberate during the G20 summit in Australia last year.

Though it’s too early to present a full picture of India’s foreign policy under BJP-led NDA regime, some of the salient features of the Modi doctrine, at least with regard to Great Power engagement, are becoming clear. At the top of the list is the end of anti-Americanism which has been best symbolised by the presence of the US President as the Republic Day parade. Though the US has long since ceased to be a subject of suspicion in contemporary public discourse, especially among the youth who have been raised on a staple diet of Americana, within India’s encrusted political and bureaucratic circles, the residues of that reflexively anti-US posture have remained. 

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had sought to change that discourse but could only do that much with just one term in office. Thankfully, his successor Manmohan Singh, much more pro-America than the average Congress politician, continued without his efforts. Mr Singh dragged the Left-leaning political class, kicking and screaming (and quite literally so), into the 21st century geo-political scene and forced them to accept that India stood to benefit from a partnership with America. This is what led to the signing of the historic nuclear deal that legitimised India’s status as a nuclear power and also paved the way for the country to do nuclear commerce globally. It was also during Mr Singh’s tenure that defence cooperation was incorporated into the bilateral, another hugely symbolic policy shift, that also opened up the market for billions of dollars of weapons and technology trade.

Unfortunately, Mr Singh had exhausted all his political capital in the early years of his first term, and could not take the India-US project to its logical conclusion. Americans, who had lobbied the world to make an exception (no matter how well-deserved) for India, saw the 2010 nuclear liability law as a betrayal of sorts for it shut out US suppliers from the Indian market. Meanwhile, Indian politicians like Mr AK Antony, who served as the Defence Minister in the UPA Government, actively scuttled American projects and repeatedly spurned Washington’s offers to upgrade the relationship.

It is against this backdrop that the Obama visit needs to be evaluated. As some commentators have pointed out, tangible deliverables from the summit have been few: For example, though the Modi Government has said that it has ironed out most of those problems with regard to the operationalisation of the nuclear deal, the agreements are yet to be signed. But that’s okay. Often, complex negotiations such as these get stuck at the bureaucratic level and high-level political exchanges help remove the blockages. This is what the Obama visit, and the Modi visit before that, achieved. Equally importantly, the overwhelmingly positive optics of the visit, which critics have sought to write-off as style statements without substance, were, in fact, necessary to send out a clear and unambiguous message that India and America are friends and partners, and they will be doing business together, irrespective of how that fits into your ideological leanings.

The second big take-away from the Obama tour was the revitalisation of the American rebalancing policy in the Asia-Pacific, with India at its strategic core. The US-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region didn’t get as much attention as the extensive US-India Joint Statement but it was here that the strategic aspect of the relationship came into full bloom. The US has now made clear that it wants India to play a leading role as a ‘security provider’ in the Indo-Pacific region (to use a term that Ms Hillary Clinton had famously used). In  other words, it wants India to ‘balance’ China’s tendencies to become the neighbourhood bully. Now, this is technically an old policy, as anybody who remembers Washington’s ‘pivot to Asia’ will tell you.

But the latter never quite took off, especially from India’s perspective. The Obama Administration was seen as pandering to Beijing, and more so, after the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 that damaged America’s credentials as the world’s only superpower. Also, a still instinctively anti-US and somewhat diffident India did not appreciate either being dragged into a potential US-China crossfire or being portrayed as bulwark against China. America’s pivot to Asia (which hinged on solid India-US ties) didn’t quite dovetail with its ‘pivot to India’. The latter came first, in the early 2000s, with the Bush Administration; but it was petering out by the time the Obama Administration introduced the Asia Pivot.

Now, it seems that the two are better aligned. Apart from India and the US being on a much stronger footing than before, the Obama Administration has also firmed its view on the India-China dynamic, while India, under the Modi Government, is willing to play a more assertive role in the region. Additionally, America’s efforts to bring in more regional actors (Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, apart from Japan) into the equation go well with India’s own Look East policy and its overall idea of an Asian century.

China, expectedly, is not happy with the developments. Yes, it can play Pakistan if it feels India is getting out of hand but that card is fast becoming a double-edged sword. Nonetheless, as Minister Swaraj’s recently concluded Beijing trip shows, China is not making a big deal about any of this — at least, not right away. We’ll know more when Mr Modi visits China. Remember, President Xi’s visit was dampened by Chinese transgressions along the Line of Actual Control. Either way, the focus of the Modi Government’s China policy is on economic issues. The Chinese tend to let these move at their own pace, without linking them to strategic issues.

Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how India projects these new bilateral equations in multilateral forums. For example, the Russia-India-China joint communiqué, signed in Beijing by Ms Swaraj, had the usual anti-US tone, similar to many a BRICS declaration. Talk about India joining the SCO also includes concern over how much Delhi will be able gain from joining forums that are considered to be China-dominated. Finally, despite all the promised cooperation between the US and India on clean energy and climate change issues, there are still no guarantees that the two will find common ground in Paris later this year.

This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on February 5, 2015