Asian G-2: Modi and Abe are drawn together
They are betting that Japan and India can influence Asia’s strategic future by reclaiming regional leadership.
It has been the received wisdom for decades that neither Japan nor India can lead Asia in the 21st century. After its Asian ambition was gutted by a comprehensive defeat in World War II, Japan was constrained by its peace constitution. Newly independent India began with the dream to lead Asia. But by the 1960s, New Delhi was tied down by conflict in the subcontinent. Delhi’s Look East policy, unveiled at the turn of the 1990s, was about catching up with Asia that had meanwhile surged way ahead of India.
In the second half of the 20th century, Japan earned an unenviable reputation as an “economic giant, but a political pygmy”. India, by opting out of Asia’s power politics, had made itself into “a big tree that gave no shade”. As Tokyo’s pacifism and Delhi’s non-alignment marginalised Japan and India, it was not difficult to believe that the destiny of Asia was in the hands of China and America.
But the nationalist premiers of Japan and India — Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi — who are meeting this weekend in Delhi have a very different set of ideas. They are betting that Japan and India can influence Asia’s strategic future by reclaiming regional leadership. Translating this ambition into reality, Abe and Modi know, will depend to a large extent on their ability to build an alliance between Tokyo and Delhi.
But the idea of an India-Japan alliance goes against the grain of postwar political traditions in both capitals. India says it does not do alliances. Japan insists that it’s wedded to strict monogamy; its only alliance will be with America. But the assertiveness of a rising China and the growing salience of the US-China relationship are compelling Delhi and Tokyo to rethink their default positions.
As part of his bold effort to make Japan a normal nation, Abe has loosened the constitutional restrictions on Japan’s military policies, accepted a larger share of the American defence burden in Asia, demonstrated the political nerve to stand up to China’s military provocations and expanded security cooperation with a large number of Asian nations, including Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam and India. Abe has also offered an alternative to Beijing’s Silk Road initiatives on infrastructure development in Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific.
Modi, for his part, has begun to shed many of the strategic inhibitions that prevented his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, from taking full advantage of the geopolitical opportunities that have come India’s way over the last decade.
Modi has also begun to move Delhi away from the ideological burden of non-alignment to the concept of a “leading power”, demonstrating a commitment to defending India’s core interests and building more wide-ranging partnerships.
As they reimagined the international roles of India and Japan, Modi and Abe were inevitably drawn together. Japan was on the top of Modi’s foreign destinations and he visited Tokyo in August 2014, weeks after taking charge as India’s prime minister. Abe, who had signalled his special interest in India during his first tenure as PM during 2006-07, has jumped at the prospect of transforming relations with India in partnership with Modi.
Over the last year and a half, Modi and Abe have pressed ahead on four major fronts. The first was to liberate the bilateral relationship from the nuclear issue that has hobbled bilateral relations since 1998, when India declared itself a nuclear-weapon power. Japan’s well-known nuclear allergy has posed difficulties in clinching an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation. Abe, who is working hard to overcome entrenched Japanese resistance, is close to delivering on nuclear cooperation with India.
Second, Abe and Modi have intensified bilateral defence cooperation, which had begun in the last decade. Besides an agreement on the sale of advanced amphibious aircraft, the US-2, Delhi and Tokyo are also likely to sign a framework agreement that will facilitate defence technology transfer and the co-production of weapons. Interesting ideas on maritime cooperation are also on the table.
Third, the two leaders are keen to lend credibility to the ambitious goals of economic cooperation they had set in Tokyo last year. An agreement on building a high-speed railway line between Mumbai and Ahmedabad could be one of the major highlights of Abe’s visit. The two leaders had worked overtime to convince sceptics on both sides to launch the ambitious project to bring the Indian Railways up to speed.
Fourth, Modi and Abe have looked beyond the bilateral to elevate the trilateral engagement with America to the ministerial level. Foreign Ministers
Sushma Swaraj and Fumio Kishida sat down with US Secretary of State John Kerry on the margins of the United Nations meet in September. Modi has brought the Japanese navy back into the annual Malabar exercises with the US in the Indian Ocean. Delhi and Tokyo have also launched an official three-way conversation with Australia.
While this new mini-lateralism is important, the international future of India and Japan is inextricably tied to their bilateralism. Modi and Abe deeply appreciate America’s enduring significance as a security partner. They also acknowledge China’s centrality in their economic calculus. But without a strong India-Japan partnership, Delhi and Tokyo will have to either countenance a Sino-centric Asian order or cope with the wild oscillations in Sino-US relations.
An India-Japan alliance, in contrast, can actively shape the outcomes in US-China relations and promote a stable Asian balance of power. An alliance between India and Japan has been a tantalising idea for nearly a century. Modi and Abe can move Delhi and Tokyo closer to that goal by pushing for deeper economic interdependence, political coordination of their regional policies, and strategic collaboration between their armed forces.
Raja-Mandala: Delhi to Rawalpindi
Along with the Bangkok breakthrough, a line of communication has been established with Pakistan’s army chief
After much trial and error, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi appears to have found an appropriate framework for engaging Pakistan. New Delhi’s challenge now is to hold its nerve, amid the reflexive criticism at home of the government’s Pakistan policy, and make something of the political space that Modi and his advisors have been bold enough to generate in Paris and Bangkok.
If Modi’s 160-second meeting with Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif, on the margins of the Paris conference on climate change last week, had set the stage for the Bangkok breakthrough, equally significant has been the apparent establishment of a long overdue line of communication with the other Sharif — Raheel — who is Pakistan’s all-powerful army chief.
The appointment of Lieutenant General Nasir Khan Janjua, days after his retirement in October this year, as the new national security advisor in place of veteran civilian leader Sartaj Aziz underlined General Raheel Sharif’s quest for total dominance over Pakistan’s foreign and national security policies. It also opened the door for Delhi to directly connect with the army leadership in Rawalpindi.
The accident-prone nature of the India-Pakistan dialogue tells us that the space created in Bangkok over the weekend might not last too long. No round of bilateral talks in the last quarter century could be sustained beyond a brief period. For, the political cycles across the border are rarely in alignment.
The diplomatic trick, then, lies in seizing the moment and moving decisively on a range of issues in the run-up to Modi’s planned visit to Islamabad to attend
the South Asian Summit in mid-2016. Fortunately for the Modi government, much ground had already been covered during the tenure of former PM Manmohan Singh.
From normalisation of trade relations to the demilitarisation of the Siachen Glacier, and from building pipelines across the Radcliffe Line in the Punjab to defining a framework for the resolution of the question of Jammu and
Kashmir, many potential agreements are on the shelf waiting to be dusted up. Generating forward movement is the only way to prevent a slide back in the next few months.
A sustained dialogue, in turn, has occurred only when India could directly engage Pakistan’s military leadership. One such period began in late-2003, when then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his advisors established a channel of quiet negotiation with General Pervez Musharraf. This resulted in the institution of a ceasefire all across the International Border, the Line of Control in Kashmir and the Siachen Glacier, and the negotiation of an agreed framework for talks with Pakistan covering all subjects of mutual interest, including terrorism, Kashmir and economic cooperation.
Manmohan Singh ran with the baton passed by Vajpayee and presided over an expansive period of engagement that came to a close in early 2007, when Musharraf’s power began to ebb. The election of a civilian government led by Asif Ali Zardari in 2008 and the more complex internal dynamic of civil-military relations saw an extended period of uncertainty. The ambivalence of General Ashfaq Kayani, who succeeded Musharraf as army chief, the terror attack on Mumbai at the end of 2008, and the steady erosion of Zardari’s authority undermined Singh’s effort to revive the peace process.
Although Modi and Nawaz Sharif seemed eager to make a fresh beginning, Delhi’s attempt at rewriting the terms of engagement with Pakistan ran into the Pakistan army’s resistance. The lack of effective contact between Delhi and Rawalpindi added to the complications.
The appointment of Janjua and the contacts between him and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval over the last few weeks may have begun to change that. The presence of the two foreign secretaries at the Bangkok talks suggests greater coherence across the two establishments as they prepare to negotiate on substance. The inclusion of Asif Ibrahim, the PM’s special envoy on counter-terrorism and former director of the Intelligence Bureau, in the Indian delegation to the Bangkok talks raises hopes for much-needed exchanges between the security agencies.
At Bangkok, the two sides have also got past the problem of “sequencing” in the talks — what comes first, terrorism or Kashmir — that has hobbled recent efforts. They have now returned to the tried-and-tested formula of “simultaneous” talks on all issues of concern, which include terrorism for India and Kashmir for Pakistan.
This does not mean that Doval and Janjua have found a way to crack the problems of cross-border terrorism, 26/11 trials and Kashmir. Building trust through sustained engagement and concluding agreements on economic cooperation, however, could provide a more favourable context to address the difficult issues of terror and Kashmir.
It’s now up to External Affairs Minister
Sushma Swaraj, who heads to Islamabad this week to attend an international conference, to articulate Delhi’s new political will for a mutually beneficial engagement with Pakistan.
Raja-Mandala: Modi’s multilateral moment
Tue, Dec 01, 2015
Whatever the outcome in Paris, this round marks an important shift in India’s climate diplomacy
As he joins world leaders at the Paris conference on climate change this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will showcase his effort to develop a new Indian approach to global challenges. Whatever the eventual results from Paris, the current round of climate talks marks an important shift in India’s multilateral diplomacy.
Consider, for example, Modi’s summation of India’s negotiating position on climate change before he headed to Paris: All nations have the responsibility to limit global warming. The emphasis on “all nations” seems to fly in the face of India’s past rigid position on the historic responsibility of the developed nations to bear the immediate burden in mitigating climate change.
No, the PM is not giving up on the idea of “common but differentiated responsibility” (CBDR), so central to the Indian discourse on climate change. If India swore by “differentiation” in the past, Modi is now drawing attention to the “common”. Writing in Monday’s edition of the Financial Times, Modi insisted that abandoning the CBDR principle would be “morally wrong”. At the same time, the PM also stressed the importance of a global partnership that does not “put nations on different sides”.
That there’s a fundamental divide between the “Global North” and the “Global South” has long been an article of faith for India’s multilateralism. And nowhere else has this proposition been defined more clearly than the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which divided countries into developed and developing and put the burden of moving towards a low-carbon future on the former. It codified that the North must also provide the finance and transfer technology to assist developing countries in moving towards low-carbon growth alternatives.
As a realist, Modi might have had no problem in recognising that the context that produced the UNFCCC has altered fundamentally over the last two decades. The question of climate change has become a pressing issue — in the international as well as domestic arena. It has also been plain that developed countries have been working hard to break free from the principle of CBDR and other obligations under the UNFCCC. They want emerging economies like China and India to take much more responsibility for mitigating climate change.
If the UNFCCC made the CBDR a holy cow, the governments and Western NGOs have begun to claim that any further use of coal, anywhere in the world, is an unpardonable sin. The purists in New Delhi would have loved to see Modi’s India defend the CBDR to the death against the anti-coal crusaders.
In developing a negotiating strategy for Paris over the last 18 months, Modi has underlined that India’s essential interests — winning time and space for continued coal-use for power generation as it moves towards a new energy mix at home and gaining access to renewable energy technologies — can’t be secured by mere moral posturing. All international negotiations are subject to power politics. Delhi is also aware that for all the talk about the “Global South”, there’s considerable differentiation among the developing countries. China, for example, has cut its own deal with the United States.
Delhi’s leverage and potential for leadership in Paris does not come from posturing; it derives instead from the size of India’s economy and the future impact of its energy choices on global climate. It also comes from the capacity to formulate and promote sensible compromises between competing interests on climate change.
Having changed the tone of India’s official discourse on climate change, signalled Delhi’s commitment to ensuring a productive outcome in Paris and taken a number of steps — as on carbon taxation and setting expansive targets for renewable energy production — Modi has put Delhi in a better position than ever before in the climate negotiations. In a perverse twist, Delhi’s past image as a “spoiler”
has given Modi much room to play in Paris as he promises Indian leadership on climate change.
After decades of Indian defensiveness at international forums, Modi is signalling a new strategy that plays hardball on India’s core national interests, demonstrates tactical flexibility, avoids ideological argumentation, builds new coalitions, and contributes to positive outcomes.
Although his many admirers and detractors might not like the comparison, Modi is returning India to the Nehruvian conception of international leadership.
In the early years after Independence, Delhi was not bogged down by the idea of leading the “Global South” in a perennial confrontation with the North. Nehru saw India as one of the few natural leaders of the international system capable of setting the global agenda, from human rights to nuclear-testing. He matched that vision with practical steps that promoted synergy between the national and the international. India today has much larger economic heft to influence global outcomes. The current effort in Paris to bring India’s multilateral diplomacy in line with its new weight in the international system has been long overdue.
Raja-Mandala: Japan’s counter to China’s silk road
Tue, Nov 24, 2015
As countries ranging from Britain to Brunei and Tanzania to Tajikistan jumped on Xi’s Silk Road bandwagon, Japan, the other Asian giant and the world’s third-largest economy, watched warily.
For nearly two years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been dazzling the world with his One Belt, One Road (Obor) initiative. Armed with massive cash reserves and a huge surplus of industrial capacity, Xi has been ready to build roads, airports, power projects, and high-speed railway systems all across Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific.
As countries ranging from Britain to Brunei and Tanzania to Tajikistan jumped on Xi’s Silk Road bandwagon, Japan, the other Asian giant and the world’s third-largest economy, watched warily. In a series of speeches, most recently in Kuala Lumpur on the margins of the East Asia Summit, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has now laid out a framework for competing with China on the export of mega infrastructure projects.
The unfolding economic rivalry between China and Japan is great news for Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, who has put building world-class infrastructure at the centre of his domestic agenda. If he can get New Delhi’s domestic act on infrastructure right, Modi will be able to mobilise unprecedented support from China and Japan.
Even more important, Japan’s new activism will allow Delhi to mitigate some of the perceived threats from China’s growing economic presence in the subcontinent and beyond. If China is seen as limiting Delhi’s room for manoeuvre in the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean, Japan promises to create new opportunities for leading regional economic integration in its neighbourhood.
China’s new infrastructure drive has been backed by the establishment of the $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Beijing has also earmarked a $40 billion Silk Road infrastructure fund. It has also set up the New Development Bank under the banner of the five-nation forum, BRICS, with an initial capital of $50 billion.
As Xi put his personal and political prestige on the belt and road initiative, India found itself between a rock and a hard place. Given its historical rhetoric against Western financial institutions, Delhi was quick to join the AIIB and helped found the BRICS bank. But when it came to Beijing’s proposals to develop infrastructure linking the subcontinent to China, Delhi was deeply discomfited. It was also reluctant to accept Chinese funding to develop major infrastructure projects in India.
Modi has altered some of this by becoming more open to Chinese investments and asking them to undertake a feasibility study on a high-speed train corridor between Chennai and Delhi. If the essence of India’s economic ambivalence towards China endured, Abe might now be able to put Delhi out of its strategic misery.
Last May, Abe announced that Tokyo will invest $110 billion to promote “quality infrastructure” in Asia over the next five years. If Japan’s dollar volume matches that of China, note Abe’s attempt to differentiate from China with the emphasis on “high quality”. Japanese officials believe that the quality of Chinese infrastructure is inferior to that in Japan.
They also argue that the hidden costs of Chinese proposals will come to haunt many of the projects being launched under the Obor initiative. Analysts in Tokyo point to the debate in Sri Lanka, where the new government in Colombo has sought to review the terms and conditions of the various mega projects that the Rajapaksa regime had signed with Chinese companies. Addressing this weakness, Abe is highlighting the importance of “sustainable infrastructure development”.
In a series of visits to various regions across Asia, Abe has been pitching for Japan’s project exports. While it has lost some big deals to Beijing, Tokyo has begun to edge out Chinese competition elsewhere. In Indonesia, it lost a bid to develop a high-speed rail line between Jakarta and Bandung. In Bangladesh, Japan won a port at the Matarbari island on the southeastern coast.
Refusing to join the China-promoted AIIB, Japan is trying to rejuvenate the Asian Development Bank that it has led for many decades. In Kuala Lumpur over the weekend, Abe outlined a plan to liberalise the ADB’s terms of lending.
While China is relatively new to infrastructure development beyond its borders, Japan has been at it for many decades. Japanese technology and finance have been at the forefront of building road and rail corridors and airports, including in China. Japan’s overseas assistance arm, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), has supported many such projects in India, including the Delhi Metro and the Delhi-Mumbai corridor. While Jica’s activity has been expansive, Tokyo lacked a larger strategic framework to guide its infrastructure promotion. But Japan’s traditional development aid has now acquired a strategic dimension under Abe, as he tries to fend off China’s drive to expand its economic and political influence in Asia.
For nearly a decade now, Delhi has wrung its hands as China unveiled a series of spectacular infrastructure projects in and around India. In partnership with Japan now, Delhi can imagine bold new connectivity initiatives within India and beyond, and better negotiate its future participation in Chinese projects in the region.
With help from diplomacy
Sat, Nov 21, 2015
Modi can leverage foreign policy, in political and economic terms, to repair his domestic image
You never let a serious crisis to go to waste,” said Rahm Emanuel, the then White House chief of staff, as a financial disaster threatened America at the dawn of
Barack Obama’s presidency. We don’t know whether Prime Minister
Narendra Modi is aware of the “Rahm Theorem”. But he appears conscious of the need to alter the political narrative after the electoral debacle in Bihar.
A week, it is said, is a long time in politics. If the Bihar results seemed to diminish Modi’s standing, the PM has reasons to bet that he can engineer an early turnaround. Might foreign policy be of some help to the prime minister?
There is no dearth of advice on a possible new course. The political part of it suggests that the PM must crack down on the extremists of the Sangh Parivar, who have eroded Modi’s support in the mainstream. The economic part suggests an acceleration of reforms and concentration on a few major deliverables that can credibly improve the PM’s chances for re-election. While Modi’s ability to push through big legislative change has been undermined by the Bihar results, there is much the government could do through executive action. We have seen some initial moves on reform already on liberalising the rules for foreign direct investment. More is expected to follow.
But what about diplomacy? Foreign policy rarely figures in domestic political strategies. Whether it is the advanced nations or developing ones, the wallet always matters more than the grand themes of world politics. But diplomacy does offer some political opportunities for leaders who find the going tough at home.
Walking the global stage may not get you many votes, but it certainly helps boost the PM’s political image. Diplomacy also helps leverage external opportunities for more rapid internal economic development. While the gestation time can be long, the sense of concrete movement on major transformative projects can boost national economic sentiment.
In some contexts, critical external partnerships help improve domestic political standing. Recall Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s embrace of the Soviet Union as the
Congress party split in 1969. Moscow helped her win the support of the Left in the country to fend off her Congress rivals on the right.
The international setting also helps the PM to send important political messages home. If the protests in London underlined the gathering external storm, Modi has hinted at the prospects for political course correction. Facing tough questions on growing intolerance in India in his joint press conference with British PM David Cameron in London, Modi promised to protect the constitutional rights of every citizen. The PM knows that these can’t be empty assurances. As he travels around the world, the questions of domestic disharmony are going to shadow him unless there is a visible improvement at home.
Modi has before him a season of expansive diplomacy — having just returned from the UK and Turkey, he now leaves for Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. In December, Modi heads to Paris for the climate summit, receives Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe in New Delhi, and meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. All these encounters will allow Modi to showcase his diplomatic standing and get a major external boost for his economic plans at home.
Dealing with great powers and global issues might generate some political excitement, but it does not have a great impact on domestic politics. Recall the great controversies during 2005-08 over then PM Manmohan Singh’s historic civil nuclear initiative with the US. The CPM, which pulled the plug on the coalition, came a cropper in the 2009 parliamentary elections, while the Congress returned with a larger majority.
Issues relating to the neighbourhood, however, have much greater political resonance at home. Developments within Nepal have been of some importance in the recent Bihar elections. Sri Lanka’s civil war has long cast a shadow over Tamil Nadu. Bangladesh has always loomed large over eastern India. The recent beef controversy drew Bangladesh into it as senior NDA leaders threatened to eliminate the cattle trade across the long frontier with Bangladesh. The question of illegal migration is bound to figure prominently in the Assam elections next year.
The
BJP’s attempt to make Pakistan a factor in the Bihar campaign underlines the important and enduring connection between the internal and external in the subcontinent. The bitter legacies of Partition and the many accumulated grievances since weigh heavily on the political evolution of the subcontinent within and across borders. Modi is in a good position to ease the growing communal polarisation at home by taking sensible steps towards Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Modi can take political credit for getting the contentious land boundary agreement with Bangladesh approved in Parliament. New Delhi’s ties with Dhaka have now entered a very productive phase. The PM can do more by negotiating effective mechanisms for border management with Bangladesh. Progress in that direction could quickly transform the political dynamic in the eastern subcontinent.
Resuming the peace process with Pakistan might seem a lot more difficult. It is worth recalling though that PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whom Modi cites quite often in relation to Jammu and
Kashmir, made consistent efforts under lot more difficult circumstances to improve ties with Pakistan at the turn of the millennium. Vajpayee’s quest for peace with Pakistan played no small role in limiting the communal conflict under the first BJP-led government in India.
It is no secret that productive engagement between India and Pakistan will have significant positive effects on the internal politics of both countries. If the PM plucks the low-hanging diplomatic fruit with Pakistan, his efforts to detox the domestic environment will get a big boost.
