A New Passage to India: Key to the Indo-Pacific
Overcoming historic mistrust between the world’s oldest and largest democracies
In its May 31, 2022 report, “India sees a second chance to pivot to the Indo-Pacific in new group that excludes China, CNBC had a positive outlook on the prospect of India shifting out of its decades-old, professed “neutral” posture on the world stage:
“The launch of the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in Tokyo during President Joe Biden’s first official trip to Asia last week gives India a chance to make its own pivot to the Pacific.
New Delhi’s move to solidify its alliance with Washington comes amid news that the U.S. overtook China to become India’s largest trade partner in the fiscal year ending March 2022.”
However, on the same day, Foreign Affairs in its commentary, “India’s Last Best Chance,” took a more expansive, albeit cautious, view of the burgeoning U.S.-India relationship:
“But if the United States wants to move New Delhi further into its camp and away from Moscow’s, it should take additional measures. Washington could give New Delhi even more access to sensitive U.S. technologies that would enhance Indian defense capabilities. It could also provide incentives to U.S. private companies to co-develop and co-produce additional high-tech military equipment in India. It might make its military gear more affordable for India. Recent media reports indicate Washington may be getting ready to take a step in this direction by providing a $500 million Foreign Military Financing package to incentivize India to purchase U.S. weapons. (Given India’s robust defense requirements, however, this is still a small amount.)
What Washington should not do is pressure India to criticize Russia. New Delhi strongly values having an independent foreign policy, and so it would bristle at being told how to act. But U.S. officials can be clear that they will offer India more help, more quickly, if the country reduces its reliance on Russian military systems.”
More easily said than done.
The Foreign Affairs commentary apparently did not sit well with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” anchor, who responded via Twitter as follows:
As an Indian-American, who grew up in India and has lived in the U.S. since 1983, I was surprised by Joe Scarborough’s ostensibly short-sighted view of the post-WWII geopolitical reality that has played out in the Indo-Pacific region. So, I responded to his tweet accordingly:
Neo-China-Russia Axis — Déjà vu or Cold War II?
“Morning Joe” often claims to be a student of history, but I suspect his knowledge of the subcontinent’s history is either weak or biased by Cold War realpolitik. Then there is also that inherent expectation among several U.S. foreign policy aficionados — in which they assume developing nations will kowtow to the immediate needs of the world’s only remaining superpower. More often than not, they do so without giving due consideration to the longer-term development, growth, and security requirements of these countries. Also, history has proven that browbeating has never worked in our favor among developing nations — especially in the Indo-Pacific region — apart from Japan in the immediate aftermath of WWII.
The elephant in the room — from engaging China to constraining it.
Nonetheless, it’s understandably grating when we see a nation, like China — which we helped propel out of poverty and become the world’s second largest economy in less than five decades — turn against us and return to its “second world” enclave of yesteryear. Especially given that after the Soviet Union collapsed, the second world shrunk dramatically in its geopolitical influence and continues to be a losing proposition in the long term.
Thus it isn’t at all surprising that the Biden administration has been stepping up U.S. efforts to deal with an increasingly belligerent China. Per the May 26, 2022, New York Times report,
“U.S. Aims to Constrain China by Shaping Environment Around It, Blinken Says:”
“Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Thursday that despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China remains the greatest challenger to the United States and its allies, and that the Biden administration aims to “shape the strategic environment” around the Asian superpower to limit its increasingly aggressive actions.
China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,” Mr. Blinken said in a speech laying out the administration’s strategy on China. “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”
The New York Times report went on to suggest:
“However, Chinese officials will almost certainly regard major parts of the speech as the outlines of an effort at containment of China, similar to previous American policy toward the Soviet Union.”
It got me wondering about how during the Cold War, we “engaged” with China as part of an overall strategy to “contain” the U.S.S.R. more effectively. Today, it’s the equivalent of a neo-Russian empire that Putin can only dream of and which was one of the main reasons he attacked Ukraine.
As the Ukraine War continues, we are back to containing Russia while remaining engaged with China, despite considering it to be “the greatest challenger to the United States and its allies.” What gives? Because we simply cannot contain the world’s second largest economy any more effectively than Russia can capture Ukraine as it had hoped to?
China is the bull in the China shop.
Meanwhile, China has “integrated” Hong Kong into its fold by effectively dismantling its democratic government despite pledging to govern Hong Kong under a “one country, two systems” strategy after it became a “special administrative region” of China in 1997. The Economist in a May 26, 2022 report, “Political prisoners are packing Hong Kong’s jails,” noted:
“The number of political prisoners in Hong Kong has soared as a result of the government’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2019 and 2020. A report published on May 23rd by Hong Kong Democracy Council, an activist group based in Washington, found that there are now 590 political prisoners in the territory, up from 26 in June 2019, the month that the protests started. Since then, more than 1,000 people have been sentenced for political reasons. The situation continues to decline.”
Consequently, China leaves little to the imagination of what it would do were it to usurp Taiwan by force. So, with containment not an option, the Biden administration is looking at “constraining” China as an alternative strategy — but will this work? Which brings us back to the importance of the U.S.–India partnership in our larger Indo-Pacific strategy.
In its May 31, 2022, report, “Blinken’s Indo-Pacific Blueprint,” the Wall Street Journal explained the significance of the Indo-Pacific as follows:
“For both economic and strategic reasons, during the last two centuries American foreign policy has consistently sought to prevent any single power, Asian or European, from dominating the Indo-Pacific. That meant opposing Japanese ambitions before and during World War II, Soviet expansionism during the Cold War, and Chinese efforts to dominate the region today. These efforts naturally attract the support of other powers threatened by the ambitions of a rising hegemon. India, Australia, Japan and many other countries in the region worry about Chinese power. They are natural allies of the U.S.”
It’s worth noting that the common factor between all three of these wannabe hegemons is that they were or are run by autocratic regimes and it’s why they failed or will fail in their efforts to dominate the region. People around the world yearn to be free even if they might be willing to sacrifice a little liberty for some amount of security. What China offers the nations of the Indo-Pacific is questionable security at the expense of not only their liberty but also their valuable national resources and longer-term economic well-being. At the end of the day, the Indo-Pacific nations must recognize that while America might not be perfect, they simply cannot let perfect be the enemy of the good. What we offer them is good and China is never going to be able to beat that — the repressed people of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and throughout China would vouch for that if they were given a voice. Unfortunately, as in Putin’s Russia, they don’t have much of a say in how their country is governed.
A new passage to India.
The Biden administration recognizes that of the region’s major democracies — who are key to its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) — it’s India that needs to be carefully nurtured given its huge economic potential, its historical distrust of the United States, and its disproportionate reliance on Russia for its defense needs. By making the IPEF a framework and not a binding trade agreement, the U.S. has made it easier for reluctant nations of the Indo-Pacific to participate. In fact, the Economic Times of India in its June 1, 2022, report, “Can IPEF do for India what WTO did for China?” suggested as much:
“One of the IPEF’s pillars, resilient supply chains gives an opportunity to India to establish its credentials as a reliable supplier of goods to the world. The IPEF nations will look at fellow countries for the supply chain rejigs and India being a large nation, stable polity and demographic dividend fits the bill to supply.”
The report concludes as follows:
“The IPEF, with a membership accounting for about 40 per cent of the global GDP, is set to provide India with another opportunity to be part of a mega economic arrangement, but outside the influence of China.
As China’s growth took speed after it joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO), for India, IPEF can give the next big trigger growth after IT, pharma and auto exports provided in the last two decades.”
On the Indo-Pacific security front, India is already a part of the four-nation (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad as it is more popularly known as. After its most recent meeting, per a May 25, 2022, Times of India report, “Quad pledges $50 billion package with ‘tangible benefits’ to check China,” the Quad appears to be getting more vocal than it has been since its inception:
“The second in-person Quad summit saw more concerted effort, after the IPEF launch on Monday, to check Chinese influence in the region with the 4-nation grouping committing $50 billion for sustainable and demand-driven infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and announcing a Maritime Domain Awareness surveillance initiative to combat illegal fishing by the Chinese.
Addressing the summit, PM Narendra Modi said Quad’s “constructive agenda” will strengthen its image as a force for good and that their mutual trust and determination was giving new energy and enthusiasm to the democratic forces.
In remarks aimed at China, the Quad said in a joint statement it will champion adherence to international law, and maintenance of freedom of navigation and overflight, to meet challenges to the maritime rules-based order, including in the East and South China Seas.”
It’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth… that matters.
Finally, as an observer for the past four decades — from the American side — of the tenuous Indo-American relationship, I have read various editorials, commentaries, and opinion pieces about the politics of the subcontinent. They’ve rarely analyzed the Indian psyche accurately. The Indian subcontinent has a history and culture that goes back several millennia. Just prior to India’s independence in 1947, it was invaded and occupied for almost 400 years, first by the Moghuls and then the British. Despite its tumultuous history and a brutal partition at independence, India has largely remained a secular democracy for the past 75 years. If many Indians appear outwardly servile yet sanctimonious, it’s because inwardly they are wary of foreigners, who are skeptical of their deeply held religious beliefs. India’s Hindu majority is steeped in a religious philosophy ingrained in the inviolability of the truth. In fact, the Sanskrit phrase, “Satyameva Jayate,” is embedded in India’s national motto and encompasses its spiritual identity. Satyameva Jayate, which means “truth alone triumphs” is part of a mantra from the ancient Hindu scripture of the Upanishads.
So, instead of Joe Scarborough questioning India about being on the “right” side of history and alliances, he might have been better off suggesting that India be on the side of the truth. Readers tempted to mock harping on “truth” as political naïveté might want to recall another U.S. president, who had dubbed the Soviet Union as “an evil empire” in 1983 to much ridicule, only to see it collapse a little over eight years later. While partner nations may have their own versions of reality, the truth is absolute — as the brutality of the Ukraine War, which was the underlying impetus for Joe Scarborough’s tweet, clearly establishes. For readers wondering if I am engaging in semantics, I encourage them to read my essay, “Top 10 Differences Between Truth and Reality,” which discusses this topic at length.
Nonetheless, it would be prudent to conclude that we are generally headed in the right direction as the U.S. fine tunes its overall Indo-Pacific strategy by:
1. Constraining China in its hegemonistic objectives without disengaging economically and engaging militarily with it.
2. Bringing India into a new 21st century East-meets-West alliance by building trust and focusing on the truth.
3. Expanding on the IPEF and Quad initiatives to keep the neo-China-Russia axis in check.
This strategy could be our winning passage not only to India, but also across the broader Indo-Pacific. In diplomacy, as in all manner of relationships, patience is a virtue — especially in democracies where everyone has an opinion. But the rewards are invariably worth the wait — and so let it be with the Indo-Pacific, where eventually the truth will triumph!
