Business Standard – The Acorn

Being credible

New Delhi must not buckle to Chinese pressure in its engagement of Indo-Pacific countries.

After hiatus of over a year, I resume my monthly column in the Business Standard on the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Indo-Pacific region. As the edit page is behind a paywall, I will put up unedited drafts, excerpts or the published column a day or two after it is published.

The central argument of the first innings of this column (September 2010-October 2015) was a simple one: that India should recognise that East Asia is a part of its extended neighbourhood and that it is in our national interest to invest in the stability and security of the Indo-Pacific region.

Why? Because by the mid-2000s, China under Hu Jintao was shedding the facade of ‘peaceful rise’ and beginning to take assertive positions on its territorial disputes and claims in the waters off East and South-East Asia, causing the countries of the region to look towards India for support. In their strategic calculus, if they fail to bring the United States, China and India into a balance, they had little choice but to hop onto the Beijing bandwagon. Month after month, your columnist exhorted New Delhi to exploit the geopolitical and geoeconomic opportunities that Beijing had unintentionally created.

That prescription is just as valid today as it was seven years ago. Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping has moved from assertive to aggressive, always arrogant and increasingly adventurous. The men in black suits and hair dye in Beijing have not only completely blown the cover story of ‘peaceful rise’ but have managed to antagonise the regional powers in the Indo-Pacific.

Even as Beijing pushes Chinese hegemony under clever phrases such as “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR), Maritime Silk Road and “China Pakistan Economic Corridor” (CPEC), it does so in the absence of the regional goodwill that enabled its entry into the ASEAN-centred economic and security architectures in the early-2000s. South East Asian countries watch with increasing anxiety as their more of their ASEAN counterparts are attracted or coerced onto China’s camp. The divide that your columnist had predicted within ASEAN is now gaping wide.

President Xi appears to have moved beyond merely maintaining China’s claim in a dispute to pressing it. He might have calculated that Beijing is now strong enough to negotiate where it cannot just coerce the other side into caving in. In November last year, Hong Kong authorities seized military vehicles belonging to the Singapore Armed Forces on their way back from routine exercises in Taiwan. Given that the Singaporean armed forces have been training in Taiwan since the 1970s with China’s tacit non-disapproval, it is clear that Mr Xi deliberately upped the ante. Similarly, Beijing coerced Mongolia into submission after the latter allowed the Dalai Lama to visit the Gandan Monastery in Ulaanbaatar the same month. Since the Dalai Lama had visited Mongolia at least eight times earlier, Beijing’s reaction this time stands out as extraordinary.

This week, China sent its aircraft carrier through the Taiwan straits quite likely signalling a more aggressive stance on that issue. This comes a few weeks after it challenged the US Navy in the region by stealing an underwater drone from under its noses. It is uncertain how the incoming administration of Donald Trump will handle the military dimension of its relations with China, but Mr Xi is not done with testing the nerve of Washington’s new establishment.

As much as there is a regional demand for India to play a stronger role in regional security, it has become harder and riskier for New Delhi to do so. The Modi government is reportedly considering selling medium-range surface-to-air missiles to Viet Nam. Both New Delhi and Hanoi will come under Chinese pressure and possible retaliation if the deal goes through. It would be imprudent for New Delhi or Hanoi to back down under pressure. It is in Beijing’s interest to create a perception that India is unreliable as a partner, whose promise falls short of delivery. Chinese commentators suggested as much after Beijing arm-twisted Mongolia over the Dalai Lama’s visit, drawing attention to the fact that New Delhi’s promised $1 billion line of credit failed to save Ulaanbaatar from China’s economic coercion.

New Delhi should thus be scrupulously careful about the commitments that it makes, implies, or might be construed. Once made, it should not hesitate to keep them in the face of China’s opposition. With rising risks and emerging uncertainties, credibility is the new currency in the Indo-Pacific.

This is by no means an argument to deliberately antagonise China: it is in India’s interests to nurture a close relationship with its northern neighbour. To be an effective swing power, we must enjoy better relations with China and the United States than they have with each other.

This will not come by wishing for it, especially if the wishing is one-sided. Nor will it come by succumbing to Chinese hegemony. To the extent New Delhi accumulates economic strength and demonstrates foreign policy credibility, Beijing is likely to reciprocate India’s desire for amicable bilateral relations.

The Asian Balance: The case for military diplomacy

The men in uniform can play a useful role in foreign policy

Excerpts from today’s Business Standard column:

India does not engage in military diplomacy in any meaningful form.

This is part of the reason why India finds itself in a bind with respect to Pakistan, where it needs to engage the real power centre but finds itself with no means to. It is not a matter of matching protocol, for it is not purely military matters that we wish to discuss with General Kayani. Washington, in comparison, handles this a lot better through Admiral Mullen and General David Petraeus, the Af-Pak theatre commander, who are the primary interlocutors with the Pakistan army. Given that these admirals and generals are engaged in diplomatic activities of serious importance to India, can we afford to stay out of the military diplomatic loop?

This is not to say that New Delhi must set its generals and admirals off on diplomatic missions next week. Rather, India must make military diplomacy part of its foreign policy toolbox and create the capacities, structures and processes necessary to put it into action.

Diplomacy must enter the syllabuses of our military academies. Trained military officers must be deputed to Indian embassies and missions around the world, both to add to the numbers of defence attaches as well as to perform non-military functions. Not only will this expose military officers to the conduct of diplomacy but also address another problem — the inability of the Indian Foreign Service to ramp up its numbers fast enough to meet the growing demand. Furthermore, the socialisation of defence and foreign service officers through such postings will create benefits in the long term, in terms of greater understanding and policy coordination.

What about structures? As the late K Subrahmanyam consistently argued, India must restructure its armed forces along the lines of the US, with a joint chiefs of staff and tri-service theatre commands. Like it has done for the US, such a structure will lend itself to the conduct of military diplomacy.

However, while we wait for the political and defence establishments to develop an appetite for major reforms, it is possible to make adjustments to the existing structures to get some mileage. Why not make a senior defence officer the National Security Advisor? Why doesn’t the National Security Council have senior military officers in top leadership positions? Indeed, a general in the NSC can well be the point person to engage the Pakistani army establishment. [Read the whole piece at Business Standard]

The Asian Balance: What if China becomes a democracy?

Business as usual, with some relative advantage and why we need Reforms 2.0

Excerpts from today’s Business Standard column:

It is extremely unlikely, but let’s say the fragrance of Jasmine flowers wafts across the Great Wall and perfumes China’s Han heartlands. A post-revolution China could take many forms, but let’s say that it turns into a democracy while retaining its existing international boundaries. Let’s set aside these two big “if’s” for a moment and ask what such a scenario would mean for India.

There are three fundamental questions. Will democratic China change its outlook, positions and policies with respect to India? Will it be any easier to deal with? And therefore, is a democratic China in our interests?

…it is likely that democratic China, like the People’s Republic, will see itself as the successor to the glorious empires of history (and its) geopolitical interests will not be too different from the People’s Republic’s.

There is also nothing to suggest that China will stop using Pakistan and other countries in India’s immediate neighbourhood as proxies and surrogates. Even the methods might not change. After all, if the US and France sell arms to the Pakistani army why can’t democratic China do the same? Let’s not forget that the US was very much a democracy when it abetted Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme.

Will democracy make it be any easier to deal with the northern neighbour? Again, unlikely. Democracy in the eastern, western and southern neighbours has done little to transform their relations with India. Why should it be any different with China?

None of this implies that a democratic China is not in our interest. From a foreign policy perspective, the main reason to prefer a democratic China is to be able to mutualise the democratic disadvantage.

It is harder for democracies to doggedly pursue the quest for power. (See this post from 2006). Democracies are also more transparent. To the extent that we are familiar with Democratic China’s domestic political landscape it will be an improvement over the current situation, where we know little about the way the cards are stacked. Transparency will also make China’s politics more manipulable, and thus neutralise an asymmetric advantage that it has over India today.

Preference is one thing, capability another. A democratic, coalition-run India does not have any serious means of promoting democracy across the Himalayas. It does, however, have the power of example. The Communist Party of China contends that prosperity can only be achieved by suspending freedom. We can prove it wrong. The Beijing Consensus can be challenged, in China and outside, by fully dismantling the Delhi straitjacket, and implementing second-generation economic reforms. [Business Standard]

The Asian Balance: On the East Asian dance floor

It’s up to you to find your partner

In my Business Standard column today argue that “the (East Asia Summit) club only provides the dance floor. India will have to court its dancing partners on an individual basis.”

Excerpts:

[Although] the EAS is set to become the pre-eminent regional grouping, bilateral alignments remain in a state of flux.

A divide is emerging between countries that have a dispute with China, and countries that don’t. The former — a list that includes Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei — will seek greater security in the form of alliances with the United States and India.

These countries want a closer tango, not least in the security arena. During Defence Minister A K Antony’s visit, his Vietnamese counterpart General Phung Quang Thanh welcomed Indian Navy ships to make more port calls and offered maintenance facilities at Vietnamese ports. Last month, South Korea signed two defence cooperation agreements with India encompassing a broad range of activities, including exchange of visits, R&D, training and joint exercises. An agreement is still some distance away, but the very fact that India and Japan are currently negotiating a civil nuclear agreement is already a sign of how far Tokyo has travelled.

India will have to go beyond defence and invest in building deep, broad and balanced economic relationships with these countries. As the experience with Russia has taught us, a merely defence-centred bilateral relationship can often be troublesome.

On the other side of the divide, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and even Australia — countries which do not have territorial disputes with China — while desiring an outcome where the big powers balance each other out, will be reluctant to do anything that might attract Beijing’s unpleasant attention. Not unlike the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms of historical South East Asia that preserved their independence by paying nominal tribute to the Chinese Emperor in return for being left alone. [Business Standard]

The Asian Balance: Recognising good neighbours

My new monthly column in Business Standard is called The Asian Balance. It “will devote itself to chronicling and interpreting the unfolding geopolitics of East Asia. It will be a unabashed advocate of Looking East far beyond the Straits of Malacca. Rebuilding the economic, cultural and political relationships that India historically shared with the countries and the peoples to its East has never been more important to our future than it is today.”

The first piece is up. Here’s an excerpt:

Three factors will shape the Asian balance: first, nuclear weapons—what I call the New Himalayas—will shift the India-China contest away from a direct military conflict along the land border. It will take place, among others, in and around the Indian Ocean. It will play out in the form of increased Chinese presence in the waters off India’s coast and renewed US engagement of Asean countries. The big question is to what extent will India be a player in areas that China considers its backyard.

Second, the small- and medium-sized countries of the region will prefer a balance where no single power dominates over them. If they do not see this forthcoming, they are likely to join the stronger side. What this implies is that the importance they give to their relationship with India will depend on their assessment of whether New Delhi has the capability, and the will, to contribute to the balance.

Third, unless there is an addition to the number of nuclear powers in East Asia, there will be a preference to create and work through regional multilateral institutions like the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) and the East Asia Summit (EAS). The absence of direct nuclear deterrence in the Western Pacific has emboldened China to claim almost the entire South China Sea as its own. All the activity in East Asia trying to form one big workable grouping is premised on the unfounded hope that a powerful China will play by the rules it promises to. [Business Standard]