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The international security environment is witnessing a power shift
from the hegemonic power, the United States, towards the rising
powers, China and India. This power shift will have a significant
impact on global geopolitics. Power shifts have rarely been peaceful
throughout history. The challenge before the USA, China and India,
therefore, is to steer their triangular relationship in a direction
that would avoid heightened security competition, which could
potentially lead to conflict and instead seek ways to maintain peace
and stability in Asia through constructive engagement. The
US-China-India triangle is not sui generis since there are other major
powers like Russia, Japan and the EU, which also play a part in the
global strategic landscape. However, as the Brazil-Russia-India-China
(BRIC) report by Goldman Sachs points out, China and India will join
the USA as the three largest economies in the world, in the first half
of the 21st Century, which would collectively give them greater clout
than any other geometric configuration.
The origins of the Indo-US strategic partnership lay in the fall of
the Soviet Union and the collapse of Indian economy in the beginning
of 1990s, which forced India to reposition itself strategically. The
sudden withdrawal of the Soviet security net meant that India had to
reassess its security policy and especially, its relationship with the
USA, the sole remaining superpower. At the same time, India also had
to reassess its economic policy in the wake of near bankruptcy of
economy resulting from the failed socialist policies of the past. As C
Raja Mohan notes, “fundamental changes in foreign policy take place
only when there is a revolutionary change, either at home or in the
world.”1 According to Raja Mohan, there were five changes in India’s
foreign policy that followed. India made a transition from the
collective national consensus on building a socialist society to a
consensus on building a modern capitalist one. It also moved from the
past emphasis on politics to a new stress on economics in the making
of foreign policy. It shifted from Third Worldism to promotion of its
own self-interest. It rejected the anti-Western mode of thinking.
Finally, India made a transition from idealism to pragmatism.2
These changes would largely guide India’s relationship with the major
powers in the 21st Century. The economic reforms initiated by the
Narasimha Rao - Manmohan Singh duo in 1991 were crucial in lifting
India into a higher trajectory of growth and advancing its claims as a
major power. India’s decision to test nuclear weapons in 1998 was a
product of the changing strategic environment in its neighbourhood and
the close strategic cooperation between its two nuclear neighbours ie,
Pakistan and China. This gave rise to UN Security Council Resolution
1172, backed by all the five permanent members, which demanded that
India and Pakistan roll back their nuclear programmes. When President
Clinton visited China soon after, a joint statement was issued
condemning India and Pakistan, raising concerns of the USA colluding
with China against India. It was a significant challenge for Indian
diplomacy to overcome the sanctions imposed on the country by the
international community, especially the USA, in the aftermath of the
tests. The USA's role in bringing the Kargil conflict to an end was a
significant step in the process of bridging the trust deficit. The
insistence of the Clinton Government, on India meeting the so-called
nuclear benchmarks, including the signing of the CTBT and the adoption
of strategic restraint, however, meant that the relationship could not
progress to the next level.3
It was left to the Bush administration to enable the Indo-US bilateral
relationship achieve its full potential. As early as 2000, Condoleezza
Rice wrote in a Foreign Affairs article that: “There is a strong
tendency conceptually to connect India with Pakistan and to think only
of Kashmir or the nuclear competition between the two states. But
India is an element in China’s calculation, and it should be in
America’s, too. India is not a great power yet, but it has the
potential to emerge as one.”4 George W Bush was also impressed with
India’s democratic credentials, even before he took office as
President. India’s support to the new US government on key strategic
objectives like missile defence, which had little support even among
US allies, helped create a new climate in bilateral relations, which
received a further boost after 9/11 when India reached out to the USA
with its offer of military bases. While the US decision to rebuild
ties with Pakistan in the wake of 9/11 created a feeling of déjà vu in
India, it did not significantly affect the progress of Indo-US
relations, nor did India’s refusal to send troops to Iraq.
While the US National Security Strategy of 2002 acknowledged India as
a “growing world power with which we have common strategic interests”,
it was not until the second Bush term that the USA made a conscious
decision in March 2005 to raise the stakes and decide to “help India
become a major world power in the 21st Century.”5 The first step in
this direction was the New Framework for the USA-India Defence
Relationship signed in June 2005, which stated that “the USA-India
defence relationship derives from a common belief in freedom,
democracy and the rule of law, and seeks to advance shared security
interests”, including “defeating terrorism and violent religious
extremism”, “preventing the spread of WMD” and “protecting the free
flow of commerce”. It also agreed to conduct “joint and combined
exercises”, “collaborate in multi-national operations when it is in
their common interest” and “expand two-way defence trade” among other
things.6 The Indian Navy had even earlier provided support for US
shipping through the Malacca Straits in 2002-2003 as protection
against terrorist attacks.
This was followed in July 2005 by a joint statement on full civil
nuclear energy cooperation, which cemented the growing strategic
convergence between the two countries. It called for the separation of
India’s nuclear facilities into civilian and military, and bringing
India’s civilian facilities under international safeguards in exchange
for nuclear energy cooperation. The deal opened the doors for India to
participate in civilian nuclear commerce with members of the Nuclear
Suppliers Group (NSG) while allowing it to retain its nuclear weapons
programme, despite being outside the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The inability of Pakistan to gain a similar agreement symbolised the
de-hyphenation of the two countries, which President Bush confirmed
with his remark in Islamabad that “Pakistan and India are different
countries with different needs and different histories. So, as we
proceed forward, our strategy will take in effect those well-known
differences.”7 In her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Secretary of State Rice noted that “This strategic
achievement will advance energy security, further environmental
protection, foster economic and technological development in both of
our countries, bolster international security, and strengthen the
global non-proliferation regime. All of these benefits, however, must
be viewed in a still larger and greater context: What this initiative
does to elevate this relationship to a new, strategic height.” In
December 2006, the US Congress approved the deal by passing the Hyde
Act and in July 2007, both sides agreed on the text of the bilateral
pact known as the 123 agreement. However, the agreement has run into
domestic political opposition in India, although the government is
still hopeful of seeing it through.
Apart from democracy as a shared value, economic complementarities,
terrorism, and counterproliferation, another factor behind the
emerging Indo-US strategic partnership is the maintenance of a stable
balance of power in Asia. It does not suit the USA to have a major
regional crisis but its strategy is to retain the ability for
intervention, if such a crisis occurs. But considering that the USA
has many other challenges, it also looks to encourage regional
partners in security responsibilities. India fits in as a partner in
ensuring stability. Rice elaborated on the role of the USA-India
relationship vis-à-vis China in a speech in Japan in 2005: “I really
do believe that the USA-Japan relationship, the USA-South Korean
relationship, the USA-Indian relationship, all are important in
creating an environment in which China is more likely to play a
positive role than a negative role. These alliances are not against
China; they are alliances that are devoted to a stable security,
political and economic, and indeed, values-based relationships that
put China in the context of those relationships, and on a different
path to development than if China were simply untethered, simply
operating without that strategic context.”8
In 2003, the then Secretary of State Colin Powell described the
USA-China relations as the best since President Nixon’s visit to China
in 1972. Jonathan Pollack of the US Naval War College has suggested
that “Sino-American relations in the early 21st century constitute a
strategic surprise.”9 The primary reason was 9/11 which has given the
USA and China a window of opportunity to deal with their own
pre-occupations, the war against terror and economic development
respectively, and avoid confrontation in the short to medium term.
However, official US documents view China’s growing military
expenditure with concern. The Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR)
released by the US Department of Defence in 2006 identifies China as
having “the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United
States” and states that “shaping the choices of major and emerging
powers requires a balanced approach, one that seeks cooperation but
also creates prudent hedges against the possibility that cooperative
approaches by themselves may fail to preclude future conflict.”10
According to the US National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2006, “as
China becomes a global player, it must act as a responsible
stakeholder that fulfills its obligations and works with the USA and
others, to advance the international system that has enabled its
success: enforcing the international rules that have helped China lift
itself out of a century of economic deprivation, embracing the
economic and political standards that go along with that system of
rules, and contributing to international stability and security by
working with the United States and other major powers.” The NSS adds
that “our strategy seeks to encourage China to make the right
strategic choices for its people, while we hedge against other
possibilities.”11 The Pentagon’s 2007 report to Congress on China’s
military power acknowledges that its goal of modernising national
defence is proceeding on course.
The USA's concerns were articulated by the then Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld in a speech in Singapore in 2005 in which he asked:
“Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing
investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?
Why these continuing robust deployments?”12 The USA remains
dissatisfied with China’s stand on contentious issues like Iran and
North Korea on which it expects a more cooperative response. The issue
of the USA's trade deficit with China, which crossed $ 200 billion in
2005, and its associated job losses in the USA, also looms large. The
Bush administration has resisted taking action against Chinese
products, although there is pressure from Congress to do so, if China
does not further adjust its currency and protect intellectual property
rights.
If China is unable to make concessions on issues of interest to the
USA, the trend of the USA hedging its bets by strengthening ties with
other Asian powers is likely to continue. Dan Blumenthal makes a case
that China’s military buildup is not a ‘peculiarly American obsession’
and that “Asia-Pacific countries are responding to strategic
uncertainty characterised in large part by China’s rise through the
traditional way of modernising their militaries and embracing America
as the off-shore balancer.”13 The India-USA strategic partnership is
at one level a reflection of the desire of both countries to maintain
a stable balance of power in Asia. As Fareed Zakaria has written,
criticising demands that India be made to cap its nuclear arsenal as
part of the deal, “It has been American policy for decades to oppose
the rise of a single hegemonic power in either Europe or Asia. If
India were forced to halt its plutonium production, the result would
be that China would become the dominant nuclear power in Asia. Why is
this in American interests? Should we not prefer a circumstance where
there is some balance between the major powers on that vast
continent?”14
Although relations between India and China had a setback following the
nuclear tests of 1998 and the subsequent suggestion by Prime Minister
Vajpayee in a letter to President Clinton and other heads of state
mentioning China’s role in India’s deteriorating security environment,
both countries have moved on since then. Prime Minister Vajpayee
himself made a trip to China in 2003, which went a long way towards
the rebuilding of trust. As Jing-dong Yuan has pointed out, the visit
was significant for marking the “growing consensus and converging
interests between Beijing and New Delhi, covering a wide range of
bilateral, regional and global issues,” especially “in developing a
fair, equitable, international political and economic order.”15
Vajpayee’s recognition of Tibet as part of China was looked upon
favourably by the Chinese government as a symbol of India’s desire to
reach out to its neighbour. Both countries also decided to upgrade
their negotiations to resolve the boundary dispute to the level of
Special Representatives and eleven rounds of meetings have been held
so far. The two countries went ahead and signed a Strategic and
Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Prosperity during the visit of
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao to India in 2005. China reciprocated
India’s gesture on Tibet by finally recognising Sikkim as a part of
India. China also indicated that it was open to the possibility of
India becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council, although
it did not give any firm assurance of support.
Economic engagement has also played a significant role in bringing
both countries together. The complementarity of Chinese hardware and
Indian software is a symbol of the vast possibilities that this
process of economic engagement holds out. According to Premier Zhu
Rongji in 2002, “India is No. 1 in software and we are No. 1 in
hardware. If we put the software and hardware together, we together
can be No. 1 in the future.”16 It has been said that “in view of the
role that China-India bilateral trade and commerce have played in
reviving and strengthening their rapprochement following India’s
nuclear tests of May 1998, their bilateral economic engagement has
finally established its credentials as the most agreeable, as also the
single most reliable pillar amongst China-India confidence building
measures (CBMs).”17 Bilateral trade has increased from US $ 5 billion
in 2002 to cross US $ 25 billion in 2006 and China could overtake the
USA to become India’s largest trading partner by the end of 2007.
However, India’s trade surplus turned into a deficit in 2006 and the
current composition of trade is asymmetrical with Indian exports
consisting mainly of raw materials whereas, Chinese exports are mainly
value added products.
India’s concerns over China relate to its relationship with Pakistan
as well as other countries in the subcontinent. The transfer of
nuclear and missile technology from China to Pakistan enabled the
latter to carry out a proxy war against India in Kashmir over the last
two decades. China’s so-called string of pearls strategy involving the
construction of naval facilities in Pakistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka
has led to concerns in India about strategic encirclement and of China
seeking a larger footprint in the region. China is also assisting
Pakistan in conventional weaponry including co-production of the JF-17
fighter aircraft. China’s application to join the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as an observer suggests
that it is open to playing a greater role in South Asia. China is
further developing its ties with Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar,
although it is unlikely that any of these will approach the scale of
the China-Pakistan relationship.
On the border issue, China has not budged on its claim to Tawang and
also refuses to provide visas to Indian nationals from Arunachal
Pradesh. China has a sophisticated approach of sending mixed messages
at different forums. This pattern is part of a historical Chinese
world view of how they should operate. At a strategic level the image
is of a mature, rational player. There are reassuring statements made
by the Prime Ministers of both the countries. But at the tactical
level, there are-what appear to be irrational actions to keep the
surface tension going. On the border issue, Chinese officers send
periodic messages to their Indian counterparts to remove bunkers from
territory in which Indian forces have always been present. Those who
have interacted with China in war and in peace know of this double
edged or two-track approach. China’s view of history and the future
creates a dynamic strategy in which tactical aggression is combined
with strategic stability which is seen in their pattern of behaviour.
It works by creating fear, so much so that the Indian government has
for the first time asked its ministers not to attend any reception for
the Dalai Lama. However, China has to remain careful since the entire
edifice that it has created as a rational, responsible player will
come crashing down by creating a major conflict in its relationship
with India.
The first quadrilateral US-Japan-Australia-India dialogue took place
in Manila this year. This was an initiative of the then Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe. It was followed by joint naval exercises between
the four countries and Singapore in September 2007. This led to some
voices in China expressing anxiety about the possible emergence of an
Asian NATO. Mohan Malik cites a commentary in the Chinese publication
Huanqiu Shibao, which noted, “The fact is that Japan, Australia and
India are respectively located at China’s northeast, southeast, and
southwest, and all are Asian powers, while the USA's power in the
Pacific is still unchallengeable. Hence, should the “alliance of
values” concentrating military and ideological flavors in one body
take shape, it will have a very great impact on China’s security
environment.”18
China’s concerns over the emerging Indo-US relationship are apparent
from its opposition to the nuclear agreement. China has held that the
USA-India nuclear cooperation must conform to the rules of the global
non-proliferation regime, which should not be weakened by exceptions.
If the deal goes through, China is holding out the possibility of
striking a deal of its own with Pakistan. As an article in the
official People’s Daily in 2005 stated: “Now that the United States
buys another country in with nuclear technologies in defiance of an
international treaty, other nuclear suppliers also have their own
partners of interest as well as good reasons to copy what the United
States did…A domino effect of nuclear proliferation, once turned into
reality, will definitely lead to global nuclear proliferation and
competition.”19 At the same time China also agreed to cooperate with
India in civilian nuclear field during President Hu Jintao’s visit to
India.
The nuclear isolation of India that had held its relations with the
USA hostage for decades had to be ended.20 This realisation in
Washington and New Delhi was a major strategic turning point in the
history of Indo-US relations. It was in fact the culmination of the
process of re-positioning India, that had started after the collapse
of the Soviet Union and India’s own near economic collapse. This
repositioning with its strategic and economic shifts had been started
by Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Jaswant
Singh stayed on that course. It is in a way apt that Manmohan Singh
brought that process of repositioning India in the new international
order to its present advantageous juncture. Today, India is in the
enviable position of having stable relations with all major military
and economic powers. It is a condition that had been five decades in
coming and one that is to be valued and sustained.
If, as Manmohan Singh reminds Indians frequently, the future lies in
sustained economic and technological growth, India can ill afford to
be without a solid relationship with the USA. The USA leads the world,
and despite occasional spells of delusion about its military ability
to set the world right, would continue to lead the world. Its real
power, its capacity to do good, is an asset to Indian strategic needs.
India on the other hand believes, to use Raja Mohan’s phrase, ‘in
marching to its own drummer’.21 The two great nations will need to
work on each other’s strengths. That is the strategic need of the
future. The nuclear deal is one part of that larger strategic mosaic.
India’s nuclear capability is in fact a reality, as shown by the
underpinnings of the nuclear deal. It is evidence of India coming of
age. There is confidence within India that it can play a role
commensurate with its potential as an emerging power and that its
nuclear capability will remain a source of stability in both the
regional and the global contexts.
As a swing state being courted by all other major powers, India has to
perform a balancing act. The Indo-US strategic partnership cannot be
entirely free from the context of the Sino-US relationship, which will
act as a cloud on India’s relationship with the USA because India has
no control over US policies and China’s responses to those policies.
This will in turn be influenced by the flux in the global strategic
calculus, which is shifting rapidly, both due to changing power
equations as well as leadership changes. The challenge before India
lies in managing these two bilateral equations under this state of
uncertainty and being able to build favorable relationships with both
the USA and China. India will be cautious in playing the US card
against China since it does not view its relations vis-à-vis both
countries as a zero-sum game. This would also be in US interests
according to Robert Sutter who suggests that “US Government leaders
should seek to advance US interests in Asia without overt competition
with China that would try to force Asian governments to choose between
Washington and Beijing.”22 Indeed India is also participating in a
trilateral dialogue with China and Russia, which has held two meetings
in 2007. As Pranab Mukherjee has said, “We are no longer bound by the
Cold War paradigm where good relations with one power automatically
entailed negative consequences with its rivals.”23 In this context,
the view of Raja Mohan that India must offer reasonable assurance that
its partnership with the USA is not directed against China in order to
ensure that it joins the Asian balance of power without causing
unnecessary turbulence is pertinent. An Indo-US strategic partnership
that is built on the premise of confrontation with Beijing would
deliver a serious blow to India’s hopes of emerging as a major power
centre in Asia that is seen as a force for stability by the region as
a whole.
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