Tag: Free and Open Indo-Pacific

‘China Threat to Indo-Pacific; US, India Will Work Together’: US National Security Strategy Document

The US, India and several other world powers have been talking about the need to ensure a free, open and thriving Indo-Pacific in the backdrop of China’s rising military manoeuvring in the region.

Washington: The United States and India will work together both in the bilateral and multilateral setups to support their shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy said on Wednesday as it identified China as “one of the major threats” to American national security.

“As India is the world’s largest democracy and a major defence partner, the US and India will work together, bilaterally and multilaterally, to support our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” said the Strategy, a declassified version of which was released here.

The Strategy, which identified China as “one of the major threats to American national security,” reaffirmed US’s iron-clad commitments to its Indo-Pacific treaty allies Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand.

“We will continue to modernise these alliances. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to the defence of Japan under our mutual security treaty, which covers the Senkaku Islands,” it said.

The US, India and several other world powers have been talking about the need to ensure a free, open and thriving Indo-Pacific in the backdrop of China’s rising military manoeuvring in the region.

Also read: The What, How and Why of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework

China claims nearly all of the disputed South China Sea, though Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam all claim parts of it. Beijing has built artificial islands and military installations in the South China Sea.

“We have entered a consequential new period of American foreign policy that will demand more of the US in the Indo-Pacific than has been asked of us since the Second World War,” according to the National Security Strategy document.

“No region will be of more significance to the world and to everyday Americans than the Indo-Pacific”, it said. “We are ambitious because we know that we and our allies and partners hold a common vision for its future.”

The White House said the National Security Strategy outlines how the United States will advance its vital interests and pursue a free, open, prosperous and secure world.

“We will leverage all elements of our national power to outcompete our strategic competitors; tackle shared challenges; and shape the rules of the road,” it said.

On China, it said the US will effectively compete with Beijing, which is the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order, while constraining a “dangerous” Russia.

“Strategic competition is global, but we will avoid the temptation to view the world solely through a competitive lens, and engage countries on their own terms,” it said.

The White House said the US places a premium on growing the connective tissue on technology, trade and security between its democratic allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and Europe because they recognise that they are mutually reinforcing and the fates of the two regions are intertwined.

“As we deepen our partnerships around the world, we will look for more democracy, not less, to shape the future. We recognise that while autocracy is at its core brittle, democracy’s inherent capacity to transparently course-correct enables resilience and progress,” said the White House about the national security strategy.

“As an Indo-Pacific power, the US has a vital interest in realising a region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, secure and resilient. We are ambitious because we know that we and our allies and partners hold a common vision for the region’s future,” it said.

Why India Needs a Large Aircraft Carrier: An Ex-Submariner Makes the Case

The best instrument for projecting power in the Indian Ocean is a large aircraft carrier that can operate heavy multi-function aircraft that outmatch shore-based aircraft.

India recently overtook the UK to become the fifth-largest economy in terms of GDP and is due to overtake Germany, perhaps by 2025, to become the fourth-largest economy.

As a maritime nation that geographically dominates the Indian Ocean and the biggest Indian Ocean, India needs to project this power to play a dominant role in the ocean and the littorals of choke points that provide access to the water body.

The best instrument for projecting such power is a large aircraft carrier – large enough to operate heavy multi-function aircraft that outmatch shore-based aircraft. Smaller carriers perform a different role in providing air cover to a fleet operating in the oceans, under the control of an integral early warning aircraft like the E-2c Hawkeye. 

The evolution of the large aircraft carrier

Admirals who were brought up in battleships refused to acknowledge for many years that the capital ship of the future would be the aircraft carrier. They did so by fudging the results of the war games played in the 1930s, giving the battleship favourable odds.

But the truth was established once and for all at Pearl Harbour, after which the last of the reluctant admirals began to acknowledge that the Mahanian ‘big battle’ would be decided by carrier air power.

Nevertheless, the carrier was still considered a sea-control ship. It would decisively affect the result of a battle at sea in favour of the fleet operating aircraft carriers. Nobody imagined the carrier as a power-projection platform until the Americans began to build the 60,000-ton Forrestal-class carriers. These affected the course of the Korean War by operating off Korea and establishing air superiority over Chinese MiG-15s and MiG-17s.

Also read: Opinions Divided on Whether Indian Navy Should Acquire a Third Aircraft Carrier

Other navies also aspired to have aircraft carriers, but their vision was limited to sea-control or air-control ships that would ‘protect’ the home fleet from air attacks by enemy warplanes and simultaneously sink enemy surface warships. The age of the power-projection carrier was still some years away.

The only navy that came close to attempting to build a carrier for power projection was the French, which fielded a number of carriers operating aircraft carrying nuclear bombs. Smaller navies like the Spanish, Italian, Australian and Brazilian operated aircraft carriers under 30,000 tons, mainly as air defence ships. The Royal Navy was ambivalent by wanting to remain in the aircraft carrier game but investing inadequately in large carriers. 

It was in the 1960s that the realisation dawned on the Americans that carriers were meant for more than winning battles at sea.

The US Navy increasingly found itself as being the sole means of implementing US foreign policy against Soviet attempts to foster ‘wars of national liberation’. This meant the application of force, or the threat of using force, at short notice in various parts of the globe.

The decade-long Vietnam War was largely supported by carrier aviation, as were the Israelis in the build-up of tension in the Yom Kippur war. The largest part of the Cold War requirement of overseas application of force was met by the Kitty Hawk-class carriers of approximately 60,000 tons, and later on by the Enterprise class, which were 90,000 tons. 

As a world power, the US began to find itself embroiled in more and more wars overseas, where it became necessary for either a quick application of air power or the threat of using air power. Doctrinally, the shift to a power-projection capability became more and more important, at short notice, leading to the construction of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. This shift towards land attack weapons was observed simultaneously with the Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) becoming the primary armament of all surface ships.

Naval vessels from five nations sail in parade formation for a rare photographic opportunity at sea. Photo: US Navy/PH3 Alta I. Cutler, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

What about India’s realisation?

In the case of the Indian Navy, after the 1971 war, the primary armament of the surface ship had already become surface-to-surface missiles. Aircraft carriers are now required for power projection, as befits the world’s fifth-largest economy. So, it is clear that there is no contest between aircraft carriers and submarines vis-a-vis importance in the Indian Navy.

In fact, even submarines are shifting their main armament from anti-ship to land attack weapons. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has ambitions to build five supercarriers, obviously for power projection in the Indian Ocean through which 65% of its oil and gas passes. Its strategy in the Pacific would be one of sea-denial, riding on the back of its anti-carrier ballistic missile capacity.

So what India currently takes for granted – a free and open Indo-Pacific – will have to be fought for, as China’s GDP approaches that of the US, and the PLA seeks to replace US hegemony with its own carrier force riding on the back of the military benefits of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

In the Indian Navy, no submariner of repute has expressed the opinion that submarines should be acquired instead of aircraft carriers. To influence the choices seen to be available to nations along the Gulf littoral, the Red Sea littoral and the Malacca straits littoral, power projection carriers are imperative. We have already seen how the absence of carrier airpower affected the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) operation in Sri Lanka and the liberation of Male. 

The Straits of Malacca are critical to denying access to the PLA Navy in times of war. Nothing less than a 60,000-ton carrier will do, operating either the F-18 or the Rafale, for India to dominate the Indian Ocean. If Cochin cannot accommodate a 60,000-ton carrier, the government should bypass the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative and order a carrier from the UK of the Queen Elizabeth class, which cost the British government just Rs 32,000 crore and was built in six years.

The accusations of vulnerability against large carriers also don’t hold up. All warships have to go in harm’s way. No weapon system is more vulnerable than the common infantryman – a human being, but that does not make soldiers obsolete. The large carrier is not a naval asset but a national asset – its very presence influences the choices seen to be available in all Indian Ocean littoral countries. 

Admiral Raja Menon was a career officer and a submarine specialist in the Indian Navy. He commanded seven ships and submarines before retiring in 1994 as assistant chief of naval staff (operations).

In First Meeting After Biden Inauguration, Quad Foreign Ministers Ponder Over Myanmar

The usual buzzwords of “free and open” Indo-Pacific, the rule of law and ASEAN centrality also featured in the separate statements issued by India, the US, Japan and Australia.

New Delhi: The continuing fallout from the Myanmar military takeover was one of the topics broached in the conference call between the foreign ministers of India, US, Japan and Australia, which also marked the first meeting of the ‘Quad’ after the new Joe Biden administration took over.

On Thursday, the 90-minute-long phone call was the third ministerial-level meeting of the Quad; the first was in New York in September 2019, followed by their second outing in Tokyo in October 2020.

It was the first time that US secretary of state Anthony Blinken had taken part in a Quad meeting, even though he had already spoken to the three other foreign ministers on the phone separately.

In the continuing tradition of the resumed Quad meetings since 2017, there was no joint statement but separate press releases by the four foreign offices, which had overlaps but also divergences based on their national priority.

The usual buzzwords of “free and open” Indo-Pacific, the rule of law and ASEAN centrality featured in the statement. Japan and India pointedly noted that there was increasing support for the concept of Indo-Pacific, especially from Europe.

All the press releases noted that the exchange of views was around current topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, counter-terrorism, maritime security, cybersecurity, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), supply chain resilience and Myanmar.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs stated that the ministers highlighted their “shared attributes as political democracies, market economies and pluralistic societies”. The Indian readout said the “changes” in the world makes a “strong case for their countries working closely together”. “It was important for the international community that the direction of changes remains positive and beneficial to all,” it added.


Australia described the Quad as “bringing together four like-minded democracies committed to respecting and upholding international rules and obligations through positive, practical engagement to protect and support the sovereignty, prosperity and security of the region”.

The Japanese foreign ministry’s press release was more explicit in pointing fingers at China. The four ministers “shared the recognition that the existing international order has been under challenge in various fields including unilateral attempts to change the status quo”, noted Japan.

According to Tokyo’s readout, the four ministers “concurred to strongly oppose unilateral and forceful attempts to change the status quo in the context of the East and South China Sea”. However, there was no reference to the East and South China sea in statements from India, Australia or the US.


There was a common mention of Myanmar in all the press releases, but the emphasis was varied.

Incidentally, India didn’t refer to any consensus but only noted minister S. Jaishankar’s remarks on the developments of February 1, when the Myanmar military declared an emergency and detained all elected leaders. “In the discussion pertaining to recent developments in Myanmar, the upholding of rule of law and the democratic transition was reiterated by India,” the read out said.

Australia also employed similar phrases to assert its commitment to Myanmar’s “democratic transition”, while labelling the developments as a “military coup”.

The US claimed that the ministers discussed “the urgent need to restore the democratically elected government in Burma” and the “priority of strengthening democratic resilience in the broader region”.

However, the most detailed remarks on the developments in the south-east Asian nation was issued by Japan, with foreign minister Motegi expressing grave concern about the “deteriorating situation in Myanmar”.

He stated that Japan, one of Myanmar’s largest donors, had told the military junta to “immediately stop violence against citizens including shootings” and release all the detained politicians, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

Echoing language used by the US, the Japanese statement also added that the “four ministers shared the view on the need to recover the democratic regime early”.

While India and Australia stated that they looked forward to regular ministerial-level Quad meetings, only Japan and the US mentioned that it will be held on an annual basis.

Seven Years On, India Now Backs a Defence Pact Between the US and Maldives

In 2013, Indian opposition had helped scuttle a Status of Forces Agreement between Maldives and the United States.

New Delhi: In a sign of the changed dynamics in the region, there is strong support in New Delhi for the defence framework agreement signed between Maldives and United States, a pact which brings the island nation firmly into the ‘Indo-Pacific’ side of the emerging geopolitical maritime fault line pitting the US and its allies against China.

The defence agreement demonstrates how much water has swirled around the ocean since 2013, when India had opposed Washington’s proposal to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Maldives, thereby ensuring that idea remained still-born.

On September 10, Maldivian defence minister, Mariya Didi, who is on a visit to United States, signed the “Framework for U.S. Department of Defence-Maldives Ministry of Defence and Security Relationship” with deputy assistant secretary of defence for South and Southeast Asia Reed Werner.

According to the US DoD press release, the framework pact sets forth “both countries’ intent to deepen engagement and cooperation in support of maintaining peace and security in the Indian Ocean, and marks an important step forward in the defence partnership”.

The Wire has learnt that while India was broadly aware that discussions were going on, the text of the agreement was not shared before the signing in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

However, Indian officials told The Wire that New Delhi was supportive of the agreement, as it gave a clear signal where Maldives stood in the Indian Ocean Region. “There cannot be more clarity that Maldives is saying that it is part of the Indo-Pacific”, said an official, using the term in its political sense.

The Indo-Pacific – or the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, as the US calls it – is a construct that envisions the region stretching from the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east as a strategic continuum in which the US, India and other maritime powers with shared interests act in concert to keep Chinese influence in check.

According to Indian officials, the bilateral US-Maldives framework agreement does not contain too many operational details, but rather provides broad strokes on the areas of convergence. “Most of the points mentioned (in the agreement) are very much aligned to our interest, like countering violent extremism, HADR [humanitarian assistance and disaster response] and support for rules based-order in the region,” added sources.

The agreement also setup up an institutional mechanism of a bilateral defence and security dialogue.

The enthusiasm for the agreement in New Delhi for the US-Maldives defence pact is in stark contrast of the circumstances when US had last proposed a defence agreement with Maldives.

In April 2013, a Maldivian current affairs blog, Dhivehi Sitee, had published a leaked copy of a draft SOFA proposed by US.

SOFAs, as the Congressional Research Service explains, are agreements that “generally establish the framework under which US military personnel operate in a foreign country and how domestic laws of the foreign jurisdiction apply toward U.S. personnel in that country”.

After the draft surfaced, there were media reports and opposition claims that the Mohamed Waheed government was allowing the US to set up a base in Maldives. There were repeated denials from senior US diplomats and Maldivian government officials about the possibility of any base and that the scope of the agreement was only related to training of defence personnel.

Eventually, the new Maldives president, Abdulla Yameen, publicly said in January 2014, that he will “not pursue” the SOFA with US. Yameen is currently behind bars on charges of money-laundering.

While President Yameen had decided to shelve SOFA, Maldives did sign on to China’s maritime silk road connectivity project in December 2014. Under opposition criticism, the then Maldivian foreign minister Dunya Maumoon had claimed that even India had welcomed the MSR project during the Chinese president’s visit. This led to the Indian ministry of external affairs jumping in and noting that the project “was neither raised, nor discussed on the visit of President Xi Jinping to India”.

One of the key reasons that Maldives dropped SOFA was because New Delhi was opposed to it. “Yes, we did discourage a SOFA in 2013 as it would have justified a similar agreement with China and an offer to us as well, leaving an outcome that was less desirable than the existing state. And in 2013 both [the US and Maldives ] listened to us,” an Indian official, who had been privy to those developments, told The Wire.

Seven years on, a senior government official asserted, the circumstances have changed dramatically for India, with a much friendlier government in Maldives following the 2018 presidential elections and entwined security ties with Washington. “It was imperative not to provide space to China here,” he said.

The Maldives government is also currently facing a sustained campaign from the opposition, PPM-PNC alliance, to corner it on defence relations with India. This campaign largely started after India gave a Dornier aircraft, which the opposition used to start an “India Out” campaign. Last Sunday, the Maldives chief of defence forces held a press conference where he categorically stated that “no foreign armed forces are present” in the archipelago.In

China-US Contention Has Opened Up Space for Other Powers, Including India

Whether China succeeds in her internal reordering and her external quest for primacy depends to a considerable extent on how the US and China handle their relationship.

This is the first article in a two-part series on the rise of China and its impact on world order, and India. Read the second part here.

We live in an amazing, paradoxical age – an age of contrasts, an age of extremes, and an age of rapid change. Never before in history has such a large proportion of humanity lived longer, healthier, more prosperous or more comfortable lives.

And yet, we have probably never had a stronger sense of standing on the brink of a precipice, of possible extinction and of the fragility of human life — by climate change or nuclear war or other violence. Global battle deaths are back up to the highest levels since the Cold War and the 68.5 million displaced persons around the globe in 2017 are at the levels of 1945-46 (after World War II and during the Chinese civil war).

The global prospect

The world today is between orders. The so-called “rule-based liberal international order” – which was neither liberal, nor particularly orderly for most of us – is no longer attractive to those who created and managed the order from WWII until the 2008 global economic crisis. At its height, that order brought unprecedented prosperity to a large segment of humanity while simultaneously exacerbating inequality, bringing identity, emotion and demagoguery to the fore in politics, and making possible technological revolutions (in energy, information technology, digital manufacturing, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and other fields) which promise to upend our lives, economies and societies in fundamental ways in the near future.

Indeed, if the world seems out of joint there is an objective reality to support that conclusion. Today the world is effectively multipolar economically — relative shares of global GDP, the location of economic activity in the world, and the contribution of large emerging economies to global growth all show this to be so. At the same time, it remains unipolar militarily. The Royal Navy, at the height of Empire, had a two-power standard, that the Royal Navy should be at least as large as the next two biggest navies put together. The US Navy today is equivalent to the next 13 navies put together, and the US defence budget is equal to the next seven largest national defence budgets in the world.

Today nuclear deterrence prevents conflict at the highest level and pushes it down to lower levels of the spectrum of violence – into civil wars, small wars, asymmetric violence and conflict and the non-state domain.

Politically, the world is confused rather than being orderly or structured. It is the imbalance between the distribution of economic, military and political power in the world that is the source of our sense of insecurity, of events being out of control, and that creates spaces that groups and local powers like the Islamic State and Pakistan exploit. In the past, such imbalances were settled by conflict and war. Today nuclear deterrence prevents conflict at the highest level and pushes it down to lower levels of the spectrum of violence – into civil wars, small wars, asymmetric violence and conflict and the non-state domain.

Since the 2008 crisis, we have seen a slow, weak and hesitant economic recovery in most of the world. We should probably get used to the post-miracle world since the global boom from WWII to 2008 was a blip in historical terms. The world (but not India) now faces depopulation, deleveraging and de-globalisation.

Despite grim prospects for the world economy as a whole, the UN forecasts that if China grows at 3%, India at 4% and the US by 1.5%, by 2050, China’s per capita income would be 40% of US levels, and India’s at 26% – where China is today. China would be the world’s largest economy (in PPP terms), India the second, and the US the third.

By that time, both India and China will be overwhelmingly urban.

This would be an unprecedented situation where the largest economies will be among the most powerful states, but will not also be the richest.

China’s rise and the shifting balance of power

Asia is no exception to the great transition at the global level, indeed it is where the transition is most marked as Asia returns to global centre stage, economically and politically speaking.

What we see in Asia today as a result of decades of globalisation and the rise of China, India and other powers is an unprecedented situation: the continental order in Asia is being consolidated under new auspices and the maritime order in the seas near China is contested.

The balance of power in Asia and the world has shifted. For the first time in history, China is comfortable enough on land – with no real enemies now that the West has pushed Russia into her arms – to turn to the oceans on which she depends for her prosperity. China seeks primacy in the seas around her. This is a historic transition that she has never successfully managed before. Her only previous attempt in the early Ming dynasty failed. What is new for Asia is the attempt to centre both continental and maritime orders on one single power.

Also read: China’s Coming of Age as a Maritime Power

The response of existing power holders to this shift in the balance, like Japan and the US, has been to tighten the first island chain security and other ties that China sees as containing her, and to seek partners for a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific”, an ill-defined concept that implicitly concedes the continental order to China, and does not fully meet India’s security needs since we are both a continental and a maritime power. Several voices in the present US administration also seek to limit China’s rise by using the US’s technological and other superiorities.

The reaction of other countries in the region such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam has been to balance and hedge against rising Chinese hard power by building military strength and by working together in defence, security and intelligence. This is a natural balancing phenomenon, that has resulted in the world and history’s greatest arms race in Asia in the last three decades, fuelled and made possible by the wealth that globalisation brought to the hard Westphalian states east of India.

To our west, new technologies empowered non-state actors, rogue regimes and radical movements. East and West, we see a continuous belt of weapons of mass destruction – nuclear and chemical, don’t even mention biological – from the Mediterranean (Israel) to the Pacific (North Korea).

Uncertainty and insecurity

If the rapid shift in the balance of power and uncertainty have led states to behave in ways that exhibit grave insecurity, this has been heightened by worry or disquiet about China’s behaviour as a power. That China seeks primacy has been clear since 2008, but whether she is able or willing to provide the global public goods that the world has got used to remains in doubt.

Will China provide for the security of the commons – the high seas, cyber and outer space – or provide access to her own markets, or build coalitions and work with others to sustain a predictable international order? On present behaviour the answer must be no to all three questions. China’s preference remains to deal with each country bilaterally.

When the US imposes tariffs on Chinese exports, she negotiates bilaterally and has not taken her complaints to the WTO or its dispute resolution mechanisms, even though she would be in the right in terms of the WTO’s role and rules. The preferred pattern is what we saw on climate change before the Paris agreements when China and the US negotiated an understanding and brought it to the international community to accept. If they are able to resolve their trade issues bilaterally, which is unlikely, they might then consider what they bring to the WTO, including how to reform it into their effective instrument. The WTO itself is irrelevant.

This is about power, not trade.

Nor is the US wiling or capable of enforcing an international order in Asia, as she did, to a great extent, from the 1970s onwards. The Trump administration, like the one before it, has made it clear that partners and allies are expected to do much more themselves, and that “America First” amounts to a withdrawal to a much more transactional form of engagement with Asia.

Also read: The Fishing Community at the Centre of China’s Maritime Conflict

For a short period in the past, China sought “a new type of major power relations” with the US which could have amounted to a condominium. But the present state of China-US relations and their limited success in cooperating even on issues where their declared policy is the same, as on the North Korean nuclear weapons programme, suggests that a G-2, unlikely as it is, could no longer deal with the region’s security issues.

China and the US

Whether China succeeds in her internal reordering and her external quest for primacy depends to a considerable extent on how the US and China handle their relationship.

Despite their economic co-dependence on each other, we have seen how the US has imposed tariffs and demanded a series of fundamental structural changes in the way China grows and acts, whether in the “Make in China 2025” programme, in market access, in her IPR practices and forced technology transfers and so on.

Credit: Reuters

These are reminiscent of US demands on Japan in the 1970s and 1980s but, as the Chinese have reminded the US, they are not Japan – a subordinate ally dependent on the US for their security – and are not willing to sign the equivalent of the Plaza Accords as Japan did. I believe that the causes of China-US contention today are structural and that what we are seeing is a phase transformation in China-US relations where elements of contention will outweigh the elements of cooperation in their relationship for some time to come.

Also read: A US-China Trade Deal Is Likely, but Will Not Resolve a Deteriorating Relationship

The root problem is that neither can be seen to give way. China cannot afford to accept US terms which effectively prevent China’s continued rise. And the US cannot abandon her policy since WWII of preventing the emergence of a peer competitor on the world stage. This is not to say that there will not be deals and understandings and considerable business between the US and China. There will be. But the deals, like President Trump’s June understanding with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, will not change the fundamental dynamic on issues that matter.

China’s trajectory

China herself has little choice but to continue on the path that she has chosen. She has a moment of relative advantage in Asia and in the world economy today before her demography starts limiting her rise and her economic growth reverts to mean, as happened to all the other rapid industrialisers in Asia, and before natural strategic reactions by other powers to her rise in a crowded Asian geography begin to operate and limit her freedom of manoeuvre.

Internally, she faces the task of continuing and stabilising one-party rule when reform itself has reduced the ability of the state to produce economic outcomes, direct society and control people’s lives. Today she spends more on internal security than on national defence. And she faces a crisis of success. The reforms that she declared necessary in the third plenum of the 18th Central Committee in 2013 cut at the interests of the main supporters of the regime – state-owned enterprises, banks, party cadres and the People’s Liberation Army – which is why they have remained largely unimplemented.

Also read: How US Sanctions Are Strengthening China’s Global Power

Globalisation has made China more dependent on the outside world than ever before in her history. This Chinese leadership confronts a situation that no Chinese leadership has ever faced: of a powerful China dependent on the outside world while being acutely conscious of China’s internal brittleness.

International primacy is now seen as necessary to secure China’s rise or, to use the Chinese leadership’s words, China’s rejuvenation. It is China’s dependence on the world for energy, commodities, technology and markets that drives her to consolidate Eurasia and attempt to transform herself into a maritime power. The resulting tensions between internal priorities, traditional mindsets of a continental Asian power, and the realities of China’s situation are what make predicting China’s trajectory difficult, and make bad choices likely.

The impact of US tariffs and the prospect of the US confronting China has added stresses to China’s calculus. In the long run, China will work to ensure that she is not placed in this position in the future, not by decoupling from the US but by building her own leverage and by creating countervailing opportunities for herself in the world.

For me, the best analogy is the Chinese reaction to the 1996 Taiwan Straits crisis when she was humiliated in her own back yard. Since then she has militarised the seas around Taiwan (the South China and East China seas), built up her naval forces, tightened Taiwan policy, and raised the costs of intervening in the enclosed seas near China which are now virtually a Chinese lake.

Shivshankar Menon was India’s national security adviser till 2014.

This article is adapted from a transcribed and edited version of the valedictory address delivered by Shivshankar Menon at the India Forum on China@Goa hosted by the Institute of Chinese Studies,  December 7 to 9, 2018

Asia’s Three Futures and the Place of India and China in It

There is opportunity again for India’s transformation in the emerging global situation, if we take advantage of it.

This is the second article in a two-part series on the rise of China and its impact on world order, and India. Read the first part here.

At the systemic level, the Asia-Pacific faces at least three possible geopolitical futures: of a regional order centred on a single power, earlier the US and now China; of an open, inclusive multipolar concert of powers or collective security architecture; or, the pattern most familiar in history, of several powers of varying size and capability contending for primacy and influence and to maximise their individual interests. To me it seems that the last scenario is the most likely, the second the most desirable, and the first the least stable or likely.

India and China

What does this mean for India and China’s complex relationship?

China is and will be a significant factor in whether we are able to transform India. It is not the only one or the most important one. If we do not handle our internal affairs and economy better and keep treading water as we have for five years, what we do with China is unlikely to matter, and we will miss the bus anyway. But China, and the world that she shapes, will be increasingly important to us as we grow and develop.

India too, like China, is much more dependent on the outside world than before –  for energy, fertiliser, non-ferrous metals and other essential imports, for technology and capital, and for access to markets. Over half our GDP is accounted for by external trade in goods and services.

Shipping containers, including one labelled “China Shipping,” are stacked at the Paul W. Conley Container Terminal in Boston, Massachusetts, US, May 9, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder/Files

By 2014, India and China together accounted for about half of Asia’s total GDP. In PPP terms they are the world’s largest and third largest economies. Most of this is of course China. China and India’s combined share of world GDP in 2016, of 17.67% (in nominal terms) or 25.86% (in PPP terms) is still well below their share of world population of 37.5%, but represents a significant economic force today.

Between India and China, however, the gap has widened in the last 30 years. And that gap is widest in social indicators. China is about three decades ahead of India on most social indicators, one decade ahead on indicators of income, and about par on digital parameters. The gap in healthcare, measured in life expectancy (in which India is 30 years behind China), is similar to literacy (72.23% in India to 93.36% in China in 2015). Both societies display growing inequality despite rapid economic growth.

While India and China have a common economic interest in the world economy, as the two greatest beneficiaries of globalisation and of the decades of open trade and investment, their political relations have become more fraught in the last few years. The signs of stress are known to all.

Also read: The Reality of Narendra Modi’s Foreign Policy Failures Laid Bare

My prescription, for what it is worth, is to engage China bilaterally to see whether we can evolve a new modus vivendi, to replace the one that was formalised in the 1988 Rajiv Gandhi visit which successfully kept the peace and gave the relationship a strategic framework for almost 30 years. That framework is no longer working and the signs of stress in the relationship are everywhere from India’s NSG membership application, to Masood Azhar’s listing by the UN to Doklam (where Chinese behaviour differed from previous such instances but India’s did not).

The one factor above all others that has brought renewed stress into the India-China relationship is China’s much stronger strategic commitment to Pakistan, evident since President Xi Jinping’s 2015 visit to Pakistan which announced the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The more we rise, the more we must expect Chinese opposition and we will have to also work with other powers, and in the subcontinent to ensure that our interests are protected in the neighbourhood, the region and the world. The balance will keep shifting between cooperation and competition with China, both of which characterise that relationship.

A publicity image for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. Credit: Daily Pakistan

The important thing, for me, is the need to rapidly accumulate usable and effective power, even while the macro balance will take time to right itself.

As for the effect of the present geopolitical situation on India-China relations, the prevailing uncertainty means that India and China must display more skill and caution in our dealings with the world and each other. But it also means that at a time of change, there are opportunities for the capable. Let me illustrate what I mean:

  • The return of power politics has made life more predictable. We should assume rationality, hope for the best but prepare for the worst. India and China have good and successful experience of CBMs and crisis management, which could have wider uses in Asia.
  • A concern is the consolidation of Eurasia under the Belt and Road Initiative. It is hard to tell whether and how it will work. However, connectivity useful and you should use what works for you.
  • On maritime contention, now that we are both so dependent on the outside world as a result of reform and opening up, India and China have a common interest in freedom of navigation and security in the seas that carry our trade and energy.
  • New security issues include cyber security and the militarisation of outer space – defence and offence – where there are both challenges and opportunities. There is a clear common interest in acting on climate change.
  • As global economic prospects dim, India and China – as the greatest beneficiaries of globalisation – have a common interest in keeping trade and investment flows open. Both countries have common interests in keeping energy flowing and cheap, in opposing protectionism and so on. However, domestic politics, the rise of authoritarians, ultranationalism, and strong mercantilist instincts in the leaderships, are pulling them in the opposite direction.
  • The heightened China-US contention should lead both China and the US to ameliorate points of friction in other relationships. This means not picking new fights and postponing old ones to concentrate on their primary preoccupation, which is each other. There are signs of this in China’s behaviour towards India and Japan in the Wuhan summit and the Abe visit.

The real question is whether these could amount to anything more than a tactical response to an immediate situation. The fact is that these are not short but medium to long term factors operating on India-China relations. It is therefore in both sides’ interest to explore whether they create conditions for a new strategic framework for the relationship, or even to manage and solve core issues such as the boundary, our common periphery, both countries’ use of outside balancers in their relationship with each other, and so on.

I am convinced that India and China must find a way forward that is better than our past, that enhances the well being of one-quarter of humanity. And that requires a degree of pragmatism and a new strategic framework for India-China relations.

A new modus vivendi

What might a new framework consist of? It would include respect for each other’s core interests; new areas of cooperation like counter-terrorism and maritime security and crisis management; a clearer understanding of each other’s sensitivities; settling or at least managing differences; and, a strategic dialogue about actions on the international stage. The new security issues, like maritime security which is increasingly important to both India and China, can be positive sum issues, if not looked at territorially. Both have an interest in keeping the sea lanes open and secure for their trade and energy flows and should be discussing them and cooperating.

Credit: Reuters

Credit: Reuters

It would include a revised framework for economic cooperation in the periphery that we share. China has reportedly proposed extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to India. If we are to solve the trade imbalance, we must broaden the economic relationships to manufacturing, investment etc. Should not the two countries connect trans-Himalayas, using transit through Nepal to improve such trade, and China begin to treat both sides of Jammu and Kashmir equally in practice, while reverting to her stated position in the 1990s that J&K is disputed and to be settled by India and Pakistan between themselves?

If so, we might see a changed economic paradigm in the India-China relationship which would not appear so mercantile and exploitative to the average Indian. This would go beyond engaging China’s financial and other capabilities to build Indian infrastructure, as the present Indian government has attempted.

Also read: India-China Informal Summit a Good First Step, Need Actions Next

India too will need to adjust to new economic realities. For example, the rise of China and her economic strength has made the extent of India’s engagement in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)  a matter of debate in India – this at a time when trade in goods accounts for almost half of India’s GDP. Equally, India now has an interest in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, since $ 66 billion worth of her exports and about 33% of our trade passes through that waterway, but the nature and manner of safeguarding that interest are still an issue in India.

We thus face a double opportunity.

Tactically, China-US contention – which I think is structural and therefore likely to continue for some time with a paradigm shift away from cooperation to increasing contention, despite temporary deals and “victories” declared by one or both – opens up opportunities and space for other powers. Both China and the US will look to put other conflicts and tensions on the back burner while they deal with their primary concern, the other. We have seen this effect already in the Wuhan meeting and the apparent truce and dialling back of rhetoric by both India and China, even though this does not extend to a new strategic framework or understanding or to a settlement of outstanding issues.

Strategically speaking, there is opportunity again for India’s transformation in the emerging global situation if we take advantage of it. Is this the pie in the sky?  Lack of ambition has been part of the problem in the India-China relationship over the last few years. We will never know unless we try. And we must try. Our grasp must exceed our reach.

Shivshankar Menon was India’s national security adviser till 2014.

This article is adapted from a transcribed and edited version of the valedictory address delivered by Shivshankar Menon at the India Forum on China@Goa hosted by the Institute of Chinese Studies,  December 7 to 9, 2018

The Case for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific

Well before Trump became president, the US’s long-established China policy – a combination of engagement and deterrence sometimes called ‘congagement’ – was beginning to look threadbare.

Michael D. Swaine’s recent critique of the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy has generated a wide debate. The Wire has invited strategic affairs analysts from across the region to address some of the issues raised in the article.

There is much to dislike about Donald Trump and his handling of American domestic and foreign policy. There are also good reasons to doubt that the ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy reflects his preferences and will be implemented with consistency and competence.

It is hard, however, to see that FOIP will destabilise Asia, as Michael D. Swaine argues. The the region is, after all, already unstable, thanks to Beijing’s over-confident assertiveness, more than a decade of mixed messaging and half-hearted action from Washington, and 18 months of Trump’s fickle and foolish personal diplomacy. It is not obvious that FOIP will make matters markedly worse, if it does indeed have an impact on the US’s approach to the region, and there is reason to think it might make them better.

To Swaine, FOIP is unnecessarily ‘confrontational’ concerning China, representing a ‘departure’ from settled policy that may provoke a new Cold War. He thinks it embodies a ‘zero-sum’ view of international relations and a ‘cartoonish depiction’ of Beijing’s intentions. He calls for Washington take an alternative ‘untried path’: deepening economic integration and interdependence, establishing a ‘mutually beneficial balance of power’, and establishing ‘understandings’ on contentious issues, like Taiwan or North Korea.

There are two flaws in this argument. The first is that Swaine’s ‘untried path’ looks a whole lot like the well-trodden road the US has travelled since the early 1990s, which has not delivered what it promised, and has been subjected to growing criticism in Washington. The second is that Swaine’s analysis does not pay sufficient attention to the ways in which Beijing’s behaviour has changed in the decade since the global financial crisis plunged the US economy into recession, nor to the direction in which the People’s Republic is now travelling, at home and abroad.

Well before Trump became president, the US’s long-established China policy – a combination of engagement and deterrence sometimes called ‘congagement’ – was beginning to look threadbare. For a generation, Washington has aided China by allowing it access to markets and technology, according it due place and respect in international institutions, and dissuading it, though a network of alliances and partnerships, from settling disputes by force.

The idea behind congagement was simple: if China was given room to develop, it would eventually reform. Growing wealth would create a middle class and the demand for internal liberalisation. And over time, as China moved away from one-party rule and authoritarian governance, and became less likely to threaten its neighbours, the US could dial back its military deployments and even its security guarantees to its regional allies.

Whether FOIP will work is moot.

The problem is that China has grown richer, but not reformed. Instead, Beijing has been spending heavily on reinforcing Communist Party control, indoctrinating hyper-nationalism into its population and extending its military capabilities. It has ramped up the pressure on neighbouring states with which it has territorial disputes – India, Japan, and the smaller claimants around the South China Sea – and on the de facto state of Taiwan. It is flexing its economic muscle to punish those states that make choices that do not align with its preferences, or that speak out about Beijing’s abuses of human rights, interference in others’ political processes and theft of intellectual property.

Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, moreover, Beijing has made it increasingly clear that the party-state sees itself in ideological competition with the West. Under his direction, China is also looking both to regain, as it sees it, all the territory it thinks was taken from it during its ‘Century of Humiliation’, by force if necessary. And it is also seeking to reduce its dependence on foreign goods, especially high technology items, and make others dependent on its own, using the Belt and Road Initiative and other mechanisms.

FOIP is one response to these developments in China and on its borders, and to the failure of congagement. It runs parallel to the Trump administration’s haphazard, risky efforts to pressure Beijing to modify its trade and financial practices and respect intellectual property using tariffs and other punitive measures.

Whether FOIP will work is moot. Swaine thinks it won’t. He argues it is ‘starkly aggressive’ and will engender mistrust in Beijing. He suggests India, Japan and the other regional allies, including Australia, won’t back the strategy, as they lack will or capacity in varying measures, or are simply too economically dependent on China.

This reading of the region is, I think, outdated. It does not reflect the anxiety felt across the region at China’s recent behaviour, nor the willingness of some of these states to stand up to Beijing and bear significant costs. Japan has weathered multiple crises in bilateral relations, despite its substantial economic ties to China. Last year, Indian forces faced down the People’s Liberation Army in a border dispute that could easily have led to war. In recent months, Australia has taken the lead in exposing Beijing’s political interference activities, risking economic punishment. Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea have also all paid prices for challenging China on one issue or another.

These states have acted in these way because their stakes in the rules-based order are high. None of them savour the prospect of regional order run from Beijing, in which they are treated in the same high-handed, arbitrary, capricious, and frequently brutal way in which it treats it own citizens. They want to see the US properly engaged in Asia and committed to uphold its commitments, not distracted and unpredictable, as it has been for much longer than Trump has been in office.

Ian Hall is a professor of international relations at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia.