[ad_1]
During a recent visit to an East Asian country, I had the opportunity to meet a senior minister who asked me an interesting question: “Will India lead us?” This was an unusual question given that country’s stature. But it showed India’s growing status and importance in the region.
The rise of India’s importance as a pole in the Indian Ocean region, to which many regional states may be attracted, is an important strategic development of the century. I politely told the minister that the era of “leader and command” was over.
India is not building any military alliances in the region. However, she conducted her foreign policy so seriously that she helped generate hope and confidence in the minds of many leaders in the neighborhood. Even the two power blocs led by America, Russia and China want to maintain good relations with it.
The past century has seen the bipolar politics of military alliances led by the Soviet Union and the United States dominate the geostrategic landscape of the world. But the new century brought new realities. Bipolarity gave way to multipolarity and heterogeneity. Many small states and peripheries emerged as important poles. On the other hand, the increasing influence of non-state forces such as big technology and global NGOs has led to the emergence of a heterogeneous world order.
The ruling establishment in Washington, D.C., from President Joe Biden to the National Security Agency’s Jake Sullivan to Secretary Anthony Blinken, understands that India is an important regional power and non-ally partner for managing this heterogeneous new world order. But some in the think tank circle don’t seem to have emerged from the last-century syndrome. India’s independent stand on the war between Russia and Ukraine has called out some of these critics. They announced that India had renounced its claim to a seat on the Security Council by not opposing Russia. Citing ambiguities about India’s role in the South China Sea, some are now denouncing the US-India relationship as “America’s bad bet on India.”
Over the past two decades, US-India relations have overcome many oscillations of history and gained mature momentum. Credit for the initial combustion process for speeding up the relationship should go to the Vajpayee/Manmohan Singh and George W. Bush governments in the first decade of the century. Modi’s government has introduced a decisive acceleration of this in the past nine years.
From $20 billion in 2000 to $128 billion this fiscal year, bilateral trade has grown more than sixfold in the past two decades. Bilateral defense trade exceeded $20 billion last year.
Some in think tank circles mistakenly interpret this as US philanthropy. It is a proper business relationship between the two countries that benefits both. After abandoning Clinton-era sanctions, when the Bush regime moved for a nuclear deal, the price India paid was to fork out its nuclear enterprise and give access to US inspectors to some of the plants. Fifteen years later, India obtains high-tech weapons systems from America not as charity but for payment.
The United States also benefits from this relationship. Besides IT services and the defense sector, India has made significant investments with US companies in sectors such as aviation. President Biden praised the “historic agreement between Tata-owned airlines and Boeing” for the purchase of 200 aircraft, and claimed that “this purchase will support more than 1 million American jobs in 44 states, many of which will not require a four-year college.” As he noted, it reflected the “strength of the US-India economic partnership” that must be viewed in terms of new realities.
It is possible that there will be a difference of opinion in the short term. From Doha to Ukraine, the US did not see the need to make India a stakeholder in the decision-making process and instead presented the decisions as a fait accompli. While there was no discussion with India when the democratic forces were dumped and Afghanistan handed over to the Taliban, there is an obsessive expectation that India sides with the West in the name of protecting democracy in Ukraine.
India is a civilized country with a distinct value system. Upholding national sovereignty and the rule of law, whether in Ukraine or Taiwan, is an integral part of this value system. But this also prevents India from becoming a party to any conflict. India believes in striving for peace based on the principle of inclusivity. The United States, with its long tradition of constitutionalism and adherence to the rule of law, is a natural partner for India as it seeks to move this value system forward.
India’s participation in the Quartet must also be understood in the right perspective. A country that did not join NATO or CENTO in the last century will never join any “Indo-Pacific NATO” in this century. India is in the Quartet because it serves the common long-term vision of building a liberal and inclusive world order that is severely challenged by the aggressive maneuvers led by China to build an authoritarian and illiberal order.
The Indo-Pacific region is not a single unit with a hegemonic system of power. It is the junction of two important ocean regions – the Pacific and the Indian oceans. While the United States, Japan, and Australia represent the Pacific Ocean (Perth in Australia is a remote port on the Indian Ocean), India is the only power in the Indian Ocean in the Quad. India positively recognizes the imperatives of the United States in the Western Pacific including tensions in the South China Sea. The Pacific Quad partners must also appreciate the fact that as the sole power representing the vast Indian Ocean region of dozens of states, India has distinct priorities and preferences regarding regional challenges.
China remains a common challenge in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. However, the nature of facing this challenge differs from one region to another. It is imperative that the United States appreciate and support India’s primacy in managing Indian Ocean priorities before it can expect India’s involvement in Pacific imperatives.
Bets are not always placed on short-term hypotheses. Sometimes they are laid out with a long-term vision.
Writer, Member of the Board of Governors, India Foundation, works with RSS
[ad_2]
