Central Idea

• India and the United States have forged a robust friendship, driven by shared interests and mutual benefits. The two nations, bound by historical ties, are increasingly reliant on each other. India’s remarkable economic growth trajectory, with its GDP reaching $3 trillion in just three years, is projected to soar to $25 trillion by 2047. Meanwhile, the US is keen on accessing the Indian market and leveraging its capital and technology, both in military and non-military spheres.

India’s Evolving Landscape

• Economic Growth: India’s economic growth has been remarkable, with the country reaching a GDP of $3 trillion in a short span of three years. It took India 63 years to achieve a $1 trillion GDP, and this accelerated growth is expected to continue. Projections suggest that India could reach a GDP of $25 trillion by 2047, marking a significant milestone 100 years after gaining independence.
• Historical Global Significance: India has a rich historical background and has played a significant role in the global economy. In 1700, India accounted for over 35% of the world’s GDP, making it the largest economy at the time. However, due to various factors, its global share decreased to almost 1% by the economic crises in 1991. Today, India’s share stands at around 4%-5% and is steadily rising.
• Demographic Advantage: By 2030, India is projected to have a working population of one billion people, surpassing the entire population of the G-8 countries. This demographic advantage presents immense potential for economic growth and development.
• Technological Advancements: India has made significant strides in technology and connectivity. The country has achieved extensive internet coverage, which is nearly on par with the coverage in the G-8 nations. Additionally, India’s per capita mobile data consumption now ranks at the top globally, surpassing that of the United States and China combined.
• Green-Friendly Initiatives: India’s infrastructure story includes a significant focus on green initiatives. The government has implemented measures such as a carbon tax on fuel, coal cess, and infrastructure development cess, which have resulted in substantial savings. The funds generated from these measures are directed towards the expansion of railways, roads, and ports, all while promoting environmentally friendly infrastructure.
• Government Reforms and Efficiency: The Indian government has undertaken reforms aimed at improving governance, transparency, and efficiency. Initiatives such as PRAGATI, a platform for reviewing government projects, have expedited decision-making processes and encouraged officials to address long-pending issues. The implementation of the Geospatial Information Systems overlayer, GatiShakti, has further streamlined infrastructure development by preventing unnecessary road and forest cutting.
• Financial Management and Digitalization: India has implemented the Public Financial Management System, which has enhanced transparency, accountability, and efficiency in government financial spending. By centralizing transactions and integrating databases with banks, direct payments to beneficiaries have become more efficient.

How India- US Bilateral Relations are strengthening?

• Strategic Partnerships: India and the US have established strategic partnerships in various areas. This includes defense and security cooperation, counterterrorism efforts, intelligence sharing, and maritime security collaborations. Regular high-level dialogues and joint military exercises have further deepened these partnerships.
• Economic Cooperation: Economic ties between India and the US have grown stronger. Bilateral trade has expanded, and efforts to promote investments and business collaborations have been undertaken. The two countries have also been engaged in discussions on trade issues to enhance economic cooperation and reduce barriers to trade and investment.
• Defense Collaboration: Defense collaboration between India and the US has witnessed significant progress. The two countries have engaged in defense technology transfers, joint production of defense equipment, and increased military-to-military engagements. The US has also designated India as a Major Defense Partner, facilitating closer defense ties and cooperation.
• Strategic Dialogues: Regular strategic dialogues at the highest levels have played a crucial role in strengthening bilateral relations. These dialogues cover a wide range of issues, including political, economic, defense, and security matters.
• Technology and Innovation: India and the US have fostered collaborations in the fields of science, technology, and innovation. This includes joint research and development projects, technology transfers, and academic exchanges. Collaboration in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, space exploration, and renewable energy has been a focus of the partnership.
• People-to-People Exchanges: People-to-people exchanges have played a vital role in strengthening India-US relations. The two countries have encouraged educational collaborations, student exchanges, and cultural interactions. These initiatives promote mutual understanding, foster friendships, and enhance people-to-people ties.
• Global Partnerships: India and the US have collaborated on global issues and initiatives. Both countries have worked together on climate change, sustainable development, healthcare, and counterterrorism efforts. India’s participation in forums like the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) highlights the deepening strategic coordination between the two nations.
• Diplomatic Engagements: Diplomatic engagements between India and the US have been robust and frequent. Regular visits by top-level officials, including visits by the heads of state and government, have strengthened diplomatic ties.

Challenges for the Collaboration

• Trade Barriers and Market Access: Both countries may face trade barriers, including tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and regulatory complexities. Addressing these barriers and working towards greater market access can foster smoother trade relations and economic collaboration.
• Geopolitical Factors: Geopolitical dynamics and regional tensions can pose challenges to collaboration. Differing perspectives on certain international issues and conflicting geopolitical interests may need to be navigated carefully to maintain a strong bilateral relationship
• Intellectual Property Protection: Intellectual property rights protection is crucial for fostering innovation and technology collaboration. Strengthening legal frameworks and enforcing intellectual property rights can promote a conducive environment for joint research and development initiatives.
• Regulatory Frameworks and Harmonization: Aligning regulatory frameworks and standards between India and the US can be challenging. Collaboration requires efforts to harmonize regulations and ensure compatibility in areas such as trade, investment, healthcare, and technology.
• Cultural and Communication Differences: Cultural differences, language barriers, and divergent communication styles can sometimes pose challenges to effective collaboration. Efforts to bridge these gaps, promote cultural understanding, and foster effective communication channels are essential for successful partnerships.
• Political and Policy Changes: Political transitions, changes in leadership, or shifts in policy priorities can impact the trajectory of collaboration between India and the US. Building long-term and sustainable partnerships requires adaptability to changing political landscapes and consistent engagement across administrations.

Way Forward: Toward a Closer Partnership

• Enhanced Strategic Dialogue: Regular high-level strategic dialogues between the leadership of both countries can facilitate a deeper understanding of shared interests, concerns, and priorities. These dialogues can provide a platform to discuss and address key issues, align policies, and explore new avenues for collaboration.
• Strengthen Economic Ties: Both countries should prioritize efforts to enhance economic cooperation. This can be achieved by streamlining trade processes, reducing barriers, and promoting investments in key sectors. Bilateral trade agreements and economic partnerships can be explored to further facilitate economic integration.
• Defense and Security Cooperation: Strengthening defense and security ties is vital for regional stability. Expanding joint military exercises, information sharing, and defense technology transfers can deepen cooperation. Collaborating on counterterrorism efforts, cybersecurity, and maritime security can also enhance mutual security interests.
• Innovation and Technology Collaboration: Encouraging collaborations in science, technology, and innovation can drive mutual progress. Joint research initiatives, technology transfers, and partnerships between research institutions and industries can foster innovation and address common challenges such as healthcare, climate change, and sustainable development.
• Multilateral Engagement: Strengthening collaboration in multilateral forums can amplify the voice and influence of India and the US on global issues. By coordinating positions on international matters, both countries can work together to shape global agendas, address common challenges, and promote shared values.
• Consistency and Long-Term Vision: Maintaining consistency and a long-term vision is crucial for the growth of the partnership. Regardless of political transitions, both countries should prioritize the partnership and ensure that it remains a strategic priority across administrations.

Conclusion

• India and the United States find themselves at a critical juncture, where a deepening partnership can unlock immense potential and drive progress in various sectors. As India continues to grow and modernize, it is essential to leverage the expertise and resources that the United States offers. By embracing a strategic alliance, the two nations can forge a path toward mutual prosperity, elevating their relationship from friendship to a robust partnership.

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Central Idea

• The recent visit of United States Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, to India has bolstered the already robust relationship between the two countries. This visit, focused on technological innovation and military cooperation, marks a significant step forward in the bilateral defence partnership.

Significance of the visit

• Strengthening Defence Partnership: The visit reinforces the already strong defence partnership between the United States and India. It demonstrates the commitment of both nations to deepen cooperation and collaboration in critical defence domains.
• Defence Industrial Cooperation: The establishment of a road map for defence industrial cooperation is a significant outcome of the visit. It aims to enhance defence manufacturing in India through technological collaboration, aligning with India’s self-reliance mission and reducing import dependence.
• Technology Sharing: India’s recognition as a “Major Defence Partner” of the United States, along with the signing of foundational agreements, allows for increased technology sharing between the two countries. This facilitates the exchange of sensitive technologies without India becoming a formal ally, fostering greater collaboration and advancement in defence capabilities.
• Indo-Pacific Focus: The discussions during the visit highlight the strategic importance of the U.S.-India defence partnership in the Indo-Pacific region. Both nations share concerns over China’s assertive actions, and the visit underscores their commitment to address shared security challenges and maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific.
• Space Sector Cooperation: The launch of the Indus-X initiative and the existing Space Situational Awareness arrangement strengthen cooperation in the space sector. These initiatives enhance information-sharing, collaboration, and innovation in space-related technologies between the United States and India.
• Economic Impact: The visit emphasizes broader industrial cooperation between Indian and U.S. companies in the defence sector. It highlights the significant investments made by American companies in India and the U.S. government’s support for India’s defence modernization.

Facts for prelims

Outcomes of the visit

• Road Map for Defence Industrial Cooperation: One of the major outcomes of the visit was the establishment of a road map for defence industrial cooperation. This road map aims to boost defence manufacturing in India through greater technological collaboration between the two nations. It outlines specific measures and initiatives to expedite co-development and co-production projects, fostering stronger connections between the defence sectors of India and the United States.
• Launch of the Indus-X Initiative: The visit witnessed the launch of the Indus-X initiative, which provides a new impetus to defence innovation engagement between the two countries. Building upon the existing bilateral Space Situational Awareness arrangement, the Indus-X initiative enhances information-sharing and cooperation in the space sector. It sets the stage for collaborative advancements and joint initiatives in space-related technologies.
• Strengthened Defence Partnership: The visit further solidified the U.S.-India defence partnership, emphasizing the “Major Defence Partner” status of India. This recognition allows for increased technology sharing and more frequent cooperation between the two countries. It reflects the trust and confidence placed in India and strengthens the foundation for deeper collaboration in the future.
• Indo-Pacific Security Cooperation: Discussions during the visit reaffirmed the strategic importance of the U.S.-India defence partnership in addressing common security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. Both countries recognize the shared concerns regarding China’s assertive actions and aim to work together to ensure a free, open, and rules-based Indo-Pacific. The visit underscores their commitment to strengthening security cooperation in the region.
• Advancement in Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI): The visit injected new momentum into the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI), which aims to enhance co-production and co-development in the defence sector. The elevation of the India-U.S. strategic partnership through the iCET (Critical and Emerging Technology) agreement has been instrumental in revitalizing the DTTI and providing specific momentum to collaborative efforts in the defence industry.
• Preparation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s State Visit: The visit of the U.S. Defence Secretary set the groundwork for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming state visit to the United States. It paved the way for potential major announcements and agreements, especially in the area of defence cooperation, further strengthening the partnership between the two nations.

What is The Indo-Pacific Imperative?

The Indo-Pacific imperative refers to the shared interests and concerns of India and the United States in the region, particularly regarding regional security challenges, economic connectivity, and freedom of navigation.

• Common Threats: Both India and the United States recognize the challenges posed by China’s assertive actions in the Indo-Pacific region. The combined threat assessments by both countries point to China as a common and conspicuous challenge. This includes China’s expanding military capabilities, including its growing naval presence and subsurface activities in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
• Regional Security Cooperation: The discussions during the visit focused on countering coercive actions by China and addressing other regional security concerns, such as Russia’s aggressive actions and transnational issues like terrorism and climate change.
• Free and Open Indo-Pacific: India and the United States share a vision of a free, open, inclusive, and rules-based Indo-Pacific region. They are committed to upholding the principles of freedom of navigation, peaceful resolution of disputes, and respect for international law.
• Regional Cooperation Mechanisms: The U.S.-India defence partnership serves as a crucial pillar in various regional cooperation mechanisms in the Indo-Pacific. Through bilateral and multilateral engagements, including the Quad (comprising the United States, India, Japan, and Australia), India and the United States aim to enhance coordination, interoperability, and capacity-building efforts to address regional challenges effectively.
• Counterbalance to China: As China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific grows, the U.S.-India defence partnership plays a significant role in providing a counterbalance to China’s assertiveness. By strengthening cooperation, sharing information, and developing shared capabilities, India and the United States can collectively address common security challenges and maintain regional stability.

Conclusion

• The visit of the U.S. Defence Secretary to India and the impending state visit of PM to the United States lay a strong foundation for an enduring U.S.-India defence partnership. The potential future prospects encompass various aspects, including enhanced defence cooperation, technological advancements, regional security collaborations, and the strengthening of defence industry partnerships. These prospects herald a promising future for two nations committed to forging a robust and mutually beneficial relationship.

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Context

The possibility of India’s continuing rise over this century seems to be on a stronger wicket today than it did a decade ago, marred as the early 2010s were by political instability and economic turmoil.

Historical background of dominance of world economy by the East

• Prior to the era of colonial exploitation followed by self-inflicted stagnation due to communist economic policies adopted across the region, the ancient civilisations of India and China dominated the world economy
• There existed a deep history of scientific innovation and technological prowess, which spread by osmosis and intercourse from the East to the West.
• The West, led principally by Great Britain, then stole a march over Asia with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
• Emergence of the US: A pyrrhic victory for Britain in the Second World War marked the formal transfer of the Western bloc’s leadership to the US.

Geopolitics in 2020s

• Emergence of China: China is now home to a manufacturing-led and technology-driven economy, competing head-on with the US in areas like biotech, robotics, artificial intelligence, and advanced materials.
• India, which faced an economic setback when the liberalisation process largely came to a halt between 2004-2014, is back on its feet, with consistent commitment and concerted policy action focused on building domestic capabilities in critical technologies as well as in key manufacturing industries and pursuing important structural economic reforms.
• Common threat of China: From seeing non-democratic China as a benign partner, the US now sees it as a threat, the present preoccupations in Europe notwithstanding.
• India, which for a time welcomed Chinese involvement in its economy, has also recalibrated after the 2020 Galwan face-off.
• Unlike India and the US, which are both well-established republics with deep democratic cultures, China is “a party with a state attached to it”.
• Concerns for India:  Being inextricably linked by geography, Beijing’s ambition to dominate its periphery and proximate region is of particular concern to India.

What this mean for India-US relations?

• Natural allies: Given this background, India and the US are natural allies to confront the challenges posed by an expansionist and aggressive China in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
• New areas of cooperation: There are clear signals of unprecedented cooperation between the two countries in areas like national security, defence production and most prominently, new-age information technology and internet industries where American financial firms and blue-chip corporates are contributing growth capital as well as know-how.
• Closer cooperation in scientific research and critical emerging technologies is imperative.
• Reducing India’s dependence for defence equipment: In particular, as some American lawmakers highlighted when providing India with exemption under CAATSA that the American defence industry should contribute to reducing India’s dependence on Russian armaments and equipment.
• Technology cooperation: Connected to the expansion of defence-industrial ties is the broadening of technology collaboration in areas like artificial intelligence, drones, advanced materials, space technology, semiconductors, and biotech in India, beyond the consumer tech and software sectors.

Conclusion

Demographic and economic trends firmly position India as a global force that will have the weight to stride alongside America and China, who would constitute the other two geopolitical — and ideological — poles over the 21st century.

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Context

It may be too early to say how the American withdrawal from Afghanistan would shape regional geopolitics in Asia and the great power contest between the United States and its competitors. But it is certainly one of those developments that will have a far-reaching impact on global politics.

Two narratives about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan

• There are two dominant narratives about the American withdrawal.
• Realignment in foreign policy: The first narrative is that the U.S. exited the country on its own will as it is undertaking a larger realignment in its foreign policy.
• Failure to win the war: The other one is that the U.S. failed to win the war in Afghanistan and, like in the case of Vietnam, was forced to withdraw from the country.
• Focus on China: The reorientation that is under way in American foreign policy, focused on China, certainly played a role in the Afghan withdrawal.
• But that does not obscure the fact that the world’s most powerful military and economic power failed to win the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban even after fighting them for 20 years.

Erosion of the US’s ability in shaping geopolitical outcomes

•  The gradual erosion of the U.S.’s ability in shaping geopolitical outcomes in faraway regions has already shaken up the structures of American unipolarity.
• Withdrawal from Afghanistan is not an isolated incident: The Afghan withdrawal was not an isolated incident.
• In Iraq and Libya, it failed to establish political stability and order after invasions.
• It could not stop Russia taking Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. In Syria, it was outmanoeuvred by Vladimir Putin.
• Finally, the way American troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban to power strengthened this perception of great power fatigue and emboldened America’s rivals to openly challenge the U.S.-centric “rules-based order.”

Three geopolitical challenges facing the US

• [1]Aggressive Russia: Russia has amassed about 175,000 troops on its border with Ukraine.
• Western intelligence agencies claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin could order an invasion of Ukraine.
• Russian sphere of influence: From the migrant crisis in Belarus to the troop mobilisation in Ukraine, Russia is unmistakably sending a message to the West that the region stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the eastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a Russian sphere of influence.
• [2] Iran issue:  Iran, which has stepped up its nuclear programme after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear deal, has refused to hold direct talks with the U.S. 
• Iran insists that the U.S. should first remove the sanctions and give assurance that a future President would not violate the terms of the agreement.
• [3] Assertive China: China is sending dozens of fighter jets into the so-called Taiwan Air Defence Identification Zone almost on a weekly basis, triggering speculation on whether Beijing was considering taking the self-ruled island by force.
• As the U.S. is trying to shift its focus to the Indo-Pacific region to tackle China’s rise, China is becoming more and more assertive in its periphery, seeking strategic depth.

Implications

• Limited choice: The pivot to Asia has limited America’s options elsewhere. For example, what could the U.S. do to deter Mr. Putin from making the next military move in Europe.
• With regard to Iran, if the U.S. blinks first and lifts the sanctions, it could be read as another sign of weakness.
• If it does not and if the Vienna talks collapse, Iran could continue to enrich uranium to a higher purity, attaining a de facto nuclear power status without a bomb (like Japan), which would be against America’s declared goals in West Asia.
• The Afghan withdrawal and the downsizing in West Asia suggest that America’s strategic focus has shifted towards China.

Conclusion

This transition, from American unipolarity into something that is still unknown, has put America in a strategic dilemma: Should it stay focused on China, preparing itself for the next bipolar contest; or continue to act as a global policeman of the liberal order that is under attack from multiple fronts?

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Context

While there are regular interactions among officials at various levels and across sectors, as well as people-to-people engagement, there are no formal interactions between Members of Parliament in India and members of the U.S. Congress.

US Congressional Delegation (CODEL) visit to India

•  CODEL travels across the world during the periods when Congress takes a break from legislative work.
• Interactions during these travels are important in shaping relations with foreign countries.
• In November, a congressional delegation (CODEL) travelled to the Indo-Pacific Command countries, including the Philippines, Taiwan and India.
• In New Delhi, the six-member delegation interacted with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, and representatives of the Dalai Lama.
• The members of the delegation noted the “increasing convergence of strategic interests” between India and the U.S. and said they would like to “further enhance cooperation… to promote global peace and stability”.
•  Mr. Modi appreciated the consistent support and constructive role of the U.S. Congress in deepening the India-U.S. comprehensive global strategic partnership.
• Enhancing bilateral relationship on critical issues: Mr. Modi and CODEL exchanged views on enhancing the bilateral relationship and strengthening cooperation on contemporary global issues such as terrorism, climate change and reliable chains for critical technologies.
• Demand for the presidential waiver for India: Two days after returning from his trip to India, CODEL member Senator Tommy Tuberville favoured India getting the presidential waiver under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
• Significance of CODEL visit: Members of the U.S. Congress play an important role in determining foreign policy, which at times is dictated by the demands of constituents.

Way forward

•  Despite the robustness in India-U.S. relations, there is no institutional communication or interaction between MPs in India and members of the U.S. Congress.
• Establishment of India-US Parliamentary Exchange: The joint statement at the end of the 2+2 Dialogue in 2019 stated: “The Ministers looked forward to the establishment of India-US Parliamentary Exchange to facilitate reciprocal visits by Parliamentarians of the two countries”.
• Indian Parliamentary Group: India can take it forward through the Indian Parliamentary Group, which acts as a link between the Indian Parliament and the various Parliaments of the world.
• At present, there are eight Parliamentary Friendship Groups of India’s including Japan, Russia, China and the European Union.
• The U.S. is absent from this list.

Conclusion

The significance of the CODEL visit is not lost in the U.S. as members of the U.S. Congress play an important role in determining foreign policy, which at times is dictated by the demands of constituents.

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Context

The fate of the grand strategic ambitions of the Indo-US relationship may depend substantially on how well they collaborate in two areas to which their joint attention is only belatedly turning — climate and trade.

Importance of climate change and trade to India-US partnership

• Strategic partnerships capable of re-shaping the international global order cannot be based simply on a negative agenda.
• Shared concerns about China provide the U.S.-India partnership a much-needed impetus to overcome the awkward efforts for deeper collaboration that have characterised the past few decades.
• What risks being lost is a reckoning with how interrelated climate and trade are to securing U.S.-India leadership globally, and how their strategic efforts can flounder without sincere commitment to a robust bilateral agenda on both fronts.

India-US collaboration on climate change and challenges

• India and the U.S. are collaborating under the Climate and Clean Energy Agenda Partnership.
• In parallel, there are hopeful signs that they are now prioritising the bilateral trade relationship by rechartering the Trade Policy Forum. 
• At COP26 in Glasgow India announced a net zero goal for 2070, it has called for western countries to commit to negative emissions targets.
• Challenges: India’s rhetoric of climate justice is likely to be received poorly by U.S. negotiators, particularly if it aligns with China’s messaging and obstructs efforts to reach concrete results.

Collaboration on trade

• The failure of the U.S. and India to articulate a shared vision for a comprehensive trade relationship raises doubts about how serious they are when each spends more time and effort negotiating with other trading partners.
• Protectionist tendencies infect the politics of both countries these days, and, with a contentious U.S. mid-term election a year away, the political window for achieving problem-solving outcomes and setting a vision on trade for the future is closing fast.

Climate-trade inter-relationship

• Climate and trade are interrelated in many ways.
• If governments, such as India and the U.S., coordinate policies to incentivise sharing of climate-related technologies and align approaches for reducing emissions associated with trade, the climate-trade inter-relationship can be a net positive one.
• India and the U.S. could find opportunities to align their climate and trade approaches better, starting with a resolution of their disputes in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on solar panels.
• The two countries could also chart a path that allows trade to flow for transitional energy sources, such as fuel ethanol.
• Shared strategic interests will be undermined if India and the U.S. cannot jointly map coordinated policies on climate and trade.
• The most immediate threat could be the possibility of new climate and trade tensions were India to insist that technology is transferred in ways that undermine incentives for innovation in both countries or if the U.S. decides that imports from India be subject to increased tariffs in the form of carbon border adjustment mechanisms or “CBAMs”.

Conclusion

Concerted action on both the climate and trade fronts is mutually beneficial and will lend additional strength to the foundation of a true partnership for the coming century.

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A number of important developments has taken place over the past several weeks. They may appear disconnected but in fact add up to a significant shift in regional and global geopolitics.

Four major recent developments

1. Withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan: The complete takeover of the country by the Taliban
2. Significant domestic political changes in China: The ideological and regulatory assault against its dynamic private high-tech companies and now its real estate companies
3. Announcement of the Australia-UK and US (AUKUS): It represents a major departure in US strategy by its commitment to enable Australia to join a handful of countries with nuclear submarines
4. Convening of the Quad physical summit in Washington: A major step towards its formalisation as an influential grouping in the Indo-Pacific going beyond security

Risks and opportunity for India

These four developments, taken together, present India with both risks but also with opportunities.  In affirmation, one can conclude that the opportunities outweigh the risks.

[A] Risks in Afghanistan

• The Afghan situation is a setback for India in the short run.
• The political capital and economic presence it had built up in the country over the past two decades has been substantially eroded.
• The Taliban government is dominated by more hard-line and pro-Pakistani elements.
• They will help deliver on the Pakistani agenda of preventing a revival of Indian diplomatic presence and developmental activity in Afghanistan.

Future of Taliban

• In the longer run, it seems unlikely that the Taliban will give up its obscurantist and extremist agenda.
• This may lead to domestic inter-ethnic and sectarian conflict.
• The unwillingness of the Taliban to cut its links with various jihadi groups, including those targeting Afghanistan’s neighbours, may revive regional and international fears over cross-border terrorism.

How should India defer the Taliban?

• India’s response should be to bide its time, strengthen its defences against an uptick in cross-border terrorism.
• India can keep its faith with the ordinary people of Afghanistan, provide shelter to those who have sought refuge.
• It can join in any international effort to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

[B] Domestic political change in China

• This is taking an ideological and populist direction.
• The country’s vibrant private sector is being reined in while the State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) are back in a central role.
• After the tech sector, it is the large real estate sector that is facing regulatory assault.

Concerns for investors

• This is leading to deepening concern among foreign investors, including those who have long been champions of long-term engagement with China.

Opportunities for India

• It is not coincidental that while in NYC, our PM had meetings with the CEOs of Blackstone and Qualcomm, both of which are heavily invested in China but are reconsidering their exposure there.
• If India plays its cards well, this time round there could be significant capital and technology flows from the US, Japan and Europe diverted towards India because it offers scale comparable to China.
• Since India has benign partnerships with the US, Japan and Europe, there are no political constraints on such flows.

[C] AUKUS and QUAD

• The AUKUS and progress made by the Quad serve to raise the level of deterrence against China.
• It is useful since it has now become the core of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy. China will be more focused on its activities.
• The Quad now represents, from the Chinese perspective, a second order threat.

Underlying opportunities

• This offensive against China suits us since we are not ready to embrace a full-fledged military alliance which will constrain our room for manoeuvre.

Why should India gauge these opportunities?

• China has given up the expectation that it could unify Taiwan through peaceful and political means, including through closer economic integration.
• It has lost its credibility after the recent crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong.
• China may advance its forcible takeover of Taiwan before the AUKUS gets consolidated.
• The nuclear submarines for Australia may not be built and deployed for several years.
• We may, therefore, be entering a period of enhanced uncertainty and danger in the Indo-Pacific.

India’s area for introspection

• The constraints are policy unpredictability, regulatory rigidities and bureaucratic red tape in India.
• Some of these issues are being addressed, such as dropping of retrospective taxation.
• But there is still a long way to go.

Way forward

All these developments has heightened risk perception among international business and industry who have hitherto seen China as a huge commercial opportunity.

• For India, some bold initiatives are required to take advantage of the window of opportunity that has opened.
• It is a narrow window with a very short shelf life.
• If grasped with both hands, then it could deliver double-digit growth for India for the next two or three decades.
• This will shrink the asymmetry of power with China and expand India’s diplomatic options.

Conclusion

• India should not be caught off guard. Failure of deterrence in the Indo-Pacific will have consequences beyond the region and change the geopolitical context for India.
• For now, let us focus on what we can do to advance India’s economic prospects, for which the times are unexpectedly more propitious.

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Context

As the Indian leadership reviews US ties this week with the visiting Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, a paradox stands out.

Deepening Indo-US ties

• India and the US have come a long way since the 1990s.
• There is growing political and security cooperation, expanding economic engagement, widening interface between the two societies, and the intensifying footprint of the Indian diaspora in the US.
• Convergence of interests: That ambition, in turn, is based on the unprecedented convergence of Indian and American national interests.
• Agenda for cooperation: The two countries have already agreed on an ambitious agenda for bilateral, regional and global cooperation.

Debate in India over Indo-US relation: A paradox

• The discourse within India’s strategic community continues to be anxious.
• Some of the questions that animate the media and political classes have not changed since the 1990s.
• Issues in the debate: Debate focuses on US’s stand on the Kashmir issue, democracy and human rights and its impact on India-US relations.
• Contradictory fears: There are also contradictory fears such as whether the US extend full support in coping with China.
• While we expect the US to give guarantees on supporting us, we insist that India will never enter into an alliance with the US.
• Small state syndrome in India: As India’s relative weight in the international system continues to grow, it creates much room for give and take between India and the US.
• Yet, a small state syndrome continues to grip the foreign policy elite.
• The situation is similar on the economic front.
• Although India is now the sixth-largest economy in the world, there is unending concern about the US imposing globalisation on India.
• Even as India’s salience for solutions to climate change has increased, India’s debate remains deeply defensive.

Factors responsible paradox

• Missing the big picture: The narrow focus on the bilateral precludes an assessment of the larger forces shaping American domestic and international politics.
• That, in turn, limits the appreciation of new possibilities for the bilateral relationship.
• Underinvestment in American studies: The problem is reinforced by India’s under-investment in public understanding of American society.
• Russia and China have put large resources in American studies at their universities and think tanks.
• The Indian government and private sector will hopefully address this gap in the not-too-distant future.

Policy shifts unfolding in the US

• Domestic economic policies: If the economic policy drift in the last four decades was to the right, Biden is moving left on the relationship between the state and the market — on raising taxes, increasing public spending and addressing the problem of sharp economic inequality.
• Economic policy and globalisation: Biden has also joined Trump in questioning America’s uncritical economic globalisation of the past.
• If Trump talked of putting America First, Biden wants to make sure that America’s foreign and economic policies serve the US middle class.
• Foreign policy: Biden has concluded that four decades of America’s uncritical engagement with China must be reconstituted into a policy that faces up to the many challenges that Beijing presents to the US.
•  Biden is also focused on renewing the traditional US alliances to present a united front against China.
• He is also seeking to overcome Washington’s hostility to Russia by resetting ties with Moscow.

Question of democracy and human rights

• Democracy is very much part of America’s founding ideology.
• But living up to that ideal at home and abroad has not been easy for the United States over the last two centuries.
• Delhi and Washington will also have much to discuss on the challenges that new surveillance technologies and big tech monopolies pose to democratic governance.
• The exclusive American focus on democracy promotion has been rare, costly and unsuccessful.
• India’s own experience at spreading democracy in its neighbourhood is quite similar.
• But that discussion is only one part of the expansive new agenda — from Afghanistan to Indo-Pacific, reforming global economic institutions to addressing climate change, and vaccine diplomacy to governing new technologies that beckon India and the United States.

Conclusion

As they intensify the bilateral cooperation, the two sides will hopefully turn the Indo-US partnership from a perennial curiosity to a quotidian affair.

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Digital data revolution

• The Industrial Revolution restructured the global manufacturing order to Asia’s disadvantage.
• But in the ‘Digital Data Revolution’, algorithms requiring massive amounts of data determine innovation, the nature of productivity growth, and military power.
• Mobile digital payment interconnections impact society and the international system, having three strategic implications.

3 implications of mobile digital payment interconnections

1) Symbiotic nature of military and civilian system

• Because of the nature and pervasiveness of digital data, military and civilian systems are symbiotic.
• Cybersecurity is national security, and this requires both a new military doctrine and a diplomatic framework.

2) Productivity advantage of data to Asia

• The blurring of distinctions between domestic and foreign policy and the replacement of global rules with issue-based understanding converge with the growth of smartphone-based e-commerce, which ensures that massive amounts of data give a sustained productivity advantage to Asia.

3) India can negotiate new rules as an equal with US and China

• Data streams are now at the centre of global trade and countries’ economic and national power.
• India, thus, has the capacity to negotiate new rules as an equal with the U.S. and China.

How data shaped US-China relations

• Innovation based on data streams has contributed to China’s rise as the second-largest economy and the “near-peer” of the U.S.
• The national security strategy of the U.S. puts more emphasis on diplomacy than military power to resolve conflicts with China, acknowledging that its military allies have complex relationships with Beijing, as it seeks to work with them to close technology gaps.
• China’s technology weakness is the dependence on semiconductors and its powerlessness against U.S. sanctions on banks, 5G and cloud computing companies.
• But China’s digital technology-led capitalism is moving fast to utilise the economic potential of data, pushing the recently launched e-yuan and shaking the dollar-based settlement for global trade.

How global strategic balance will be shaped by data standard

• China has a $53-trillion mobile payments market and it is the global leader in the online transactions arena, controlling over 50% of the global market value.
• India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) volume is expected to cross $1 trillion by 2025.
• The U.S., in contrast, lags behind, with only around 30% of consumers using digital means and with the total volume of mobile payments less than $100 billion.
• The global strategic balance will depend on new data standards.
• The U.S., far behind in mobile payments, is falling back on data alliances and sanctions to maintain its global position.

India’s role in digital economy

• With Asia at the centre of the world, major powers see value in relationships with New Delhi.
• India fits into the U.S. frame to provide leverage.
• China wants India, also a digital power, to see it as a partner, not a rival.
• And China remains the largest trading partner of both the U.S. and India despite sanctions and border skirmishes.

Way forward for India

• India, like China, is uncomfortable with treating Western values as universal values and with the U.S. interpretation of Freedom of Navigation rules in others’ territorial waters.
• New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific vision is premised on “ASEAN centrality and the common pursuit of prosperity”.
• The European Union recently acknowledged that the path to its future is through an enhanced influence in the Indo-Pacific, while stressing that the strategy is not “anti-China”.
• The U.S. position in trade, that investment creates new markets, makes it similar to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Conclusion

India alone straddles both U.S. and China-led strategic groupings, providing an equity-based perspective to competing visions. It must be prepared to play a key role in moulding rules for the hyper-connected world, facing off both the U.S. and China to realise its potential of becoming the second-largest economy.

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Relations between Russia, China and the US have not always been the same. The changes in triangular dynamic offers lessons for India. The article deals with this issue.

India’s changing relations with great powers

• The recent visit of Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to Delhi and Islamabad is among multiple signs of India’s changing relations with the great powers.
•  At the same time, Delhi’s growing strategic partnerships with the US and Europe have begun to end India’s prolonged alienation from the West.
• Also, New Delhi’s own relative weight in the international system continues to increase and give greater breadth and depth to India’s foreign policy.

Shifts in triangular relations between Russia, China and America

1) Russia-China relations

• The leaders of Russia and China — Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong — signed a formal treaty of alliance in 1950.
•  Russia invested massively in the economic modernisation of China, and also gave it the technology to become a nuclear weapon power.
• However, by the 1960s, their relations soured and two were arguing about ideology and a lot else.
• The Sino-Soviet split had consequences way beyond their bilateral relations.
• None of them more important than the efforts by both Moscow and Beijing to woo Washington.
• The break-up between Russia and China also opened space for Delhi against Beijing after the 1962 war in the Himalayas.
• Under intense American pressure on Russia in the 1980s, Moscow sought to normalise ties with Beijing.
• Stepping back to the 1960s and 1970s, China strongly objected to Delhi’s partnership with Moscow.

2) Russia-US relations

• Russia, which today resents India’s growing strategic warmth with the US, has its own long history of collaboration with Washington.
• Moscow and Washington laid the foundations for nuclear arms control and sought to develop a new framework for shared global leadership.
• But Delhi was especially concerned about the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty system, with all its constraints on India’s atomic options, that Moscow and Washington constructed in the late 1960s.

3) US-China relations

• Despite fighting Korean War with the US in the early 1950s, China normalised relations with the U.S. in 1971 to counter the perceived threat from Russia.
• Deng Xiaoping, refused to extend the 1950 security treaty with Russia that expired in 1980.
• China turned instead, towards building a solid economic partnership with the US and the West that helped accelerate China’s rise as a great power.

Lessons for India

• The twists and turns in the triangular dynamic between America, Russia and China noted above should remind us that Moscow and Beijing are not going to be “best friends forever”.
• India has no reason to rule out important changes in the way the US, Russia and China relate to each other in the near and medium-term.
• In the last few years, India has finally overcome its historic hesitations in partnering with the US.
• India has also intensified its efforts to engage European powers, especially France.
• Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to India later this month promises a fresh start in India’s difficult postcolonial ties with Britain.
• India is also expanding its ties with Asian middle powers like Japan, Korea and Australia.
• Despite the current differences over Afghanistan and the Indo-Pacific, India and Russia have no reason to throw away their mutually beneficial bilateral partnership.
• The current troubles with China seem to be an unfortunate exception to the upswing in India’s bilateral ties with global actors.

Consider the question “What are the lessons India can draw from the  twists and turns in the triangular dynamic between America, Russia and China.”

Conclusion

India has successfully managed the past flux in the great power politics; it is even better positioned today to deal with potential changes among the great powers.

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The article highlights the paradigm shift in the U.S. foreign policy in which the U.S. engages with a country on several parallel lines with little or no scope for a trade-off between them.

Changes in the U.S. foreign policy

•  US foreign policy is no longer based on old friend-or-foe classification under which transgressions by a “friend” or an “ally” were overlooked if the country was helpful to US self-interests.
• Instead, the US foreign policy paradigm has shifted to one where a country’s position on an issue — trade, climate change, security, or human rights — is the categorising principle and not the country.
• Put differently, engagement with countries will be done on issues with little or no trade-off among them.
• Competition, cooperation, and confrontation can all characterise the US’s bilateral engagement depending on the specific issue.
• For example, trade will involve competition while climate change and pandemics will necessitate cooperation.
• Human rights and national security issues could be confrontational.

Smart sanctions

• A key instrument of foreign policy will be the now well-honed system of “smart” sanctions.
• Sanctions in the past were directed at a country as a whole but such sanctions were counterproductive and created anti-US sentiment.
• In its latest version, smart sanctions do not target countries, but specific individuals, firms, and institutions for a variety of alleged transgressions.
• US businesses and individuals cannot transact with sanctioned entities.
• The Magnitsky Accountability Act of 2012, for example, targeted those involved in the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and others responsible for human rights abuses in Russia.
• When this was found to be successful, an executive order, passed in 2017, extended the provisions in the Magnitsky Act, to all who are corrupt or violate human rights in the world.

What does this mean for India

• Unlike in the antiquated rational-actor paradigm where there are imagined trade-offs across issues, in the new framework the US engages with countries on parallel lines.
• The engagement is multifaceted across trade, intellectual property rights, climate change, security, terrorism, and, importantly, human rights, with limited trade-off across them.
• Whether cooperation, competition, or confrontation dominate the nature of the engagement will depend on the specifics not whether India is a friend or a foe.

Conclusion

This marks the shift in the U.S. foreign policy, if others, including India, do not adapt to this paradigm shift, then they will find engagement with the US starkly different and surprisingly difficult.

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India is a member of both the Quad and the BRICS. Is not it the contradiction? The article answers this question and maps the transformation of India’s relation with the U.S. over the years.

Is India’s participation in BRICS and Quad contradictory?

• Global Times, the Chinese newspaper last week speculating on the implications of the historic Quad summit for the BRICS.
• In calling the Quad a “negative asset” for the BRICS the Global Times was highlighting what it sees as a contradiction in India’s participation in both the forums.
• The paper argues that India has worsened “India-China and India-Russia relations” and halted progress “in the development of BRICS and SCO”.
• Global Times warns that if India continues to get closer to Washington, India “will eventually lose its strategic autonomy”.

Understanding India’s strategic autonomy

• “Strategic autonomy” is the framework that guided Delhi’s international relations since the Cold War.
• In the early 1990s, strategic autonomy was about creating space for India against the overweening American power.
• Why the space was needed? It was mainly because of the U.S. stance on two important aspects: Kashmir issue and nuclear program.
• President Bill Clinton had questioned the legitimacy of Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India and declared the US’s intent to resolve Delhi’s Kashmir dispute with Pakistan.
• Washington insisted that rolling back India’s nuclear and missile programmes was a major objective of US foreign policy.
• All that changed over the last three decades.

8 elements of  transformation of India’s relations with the U.S and China

• A rising China has emerged as the biggest challenge to India and the US is increasingly an important part of the answer.
• A few elements stand out.
• First, China has become more assertive on the contested boundary, therefore, the support from the US and its Asian allies has been valuable.
• Second, on the Kashmir question, China raises the issue at the UNSC while the US is helping India to block China’s moves.
• Third, on cross-border terrorism, the US puts pressure on Pakistan and China protects Rawalpindi.
• Fourth, the US has facilitated India’s integration with the global nuclear order while Beijing blocks Delhi’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
• Fifth, the US backs India’s permanent membership of the UNSC, China does not.
• Sixth, India now sees the trade with China hollowing out India’s manufacturing capability.
• Its objective on diversifying its economy away from China is shared by the US and the Quad partners.
• Seventh, India opposes China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a project that undermines India’s territorial sovereignty and regional primacy.
• India is working with Quad partners to offer alternatives to the BRI.
• Finally, India sees China’s rising military profile in the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean as a problem and is working with Washington to redress the unfolding imbalance in India’s neighbourhood.

India’s approach to BRICS and SCO

• The BRICS was part of India’s strategy in the unipolar moment that dawned at the end of the Cold War.
• India’s current enthusiasm for the Quad is about limiting the dangers of a unipolar Asia dominated by China.
• But India will continue to attach some value — diplomatic if not strategic — to a forum like the BRICS.
• After all, the BRICS forum provides a useful channel of communication between Delhi and Beijing at a very difficult moment in the evolution of their bilateral relations.
• The BRICS is also about India’s enduring partnerships with Russia, Brazil, and South Africa.
• India also values its ties with the Central Asian states in the SCO.
• The BRICS could certainly become a productive forum someday — when Delhi and Beijing mitigate their multiple contentions.

Consider the question “A rising China has emerged as the biggest challenge to India and the US is increasingly an important part of the answer. Examine the elements that support this underlying transformation of India’s relationship with the two countries.”

Conclusion

No amount of words in a BRICS declaration can hide the sharpening contradictions between India and China today. The absence of joint statements did not mask the growing strategic congruence among the Quad nations in recent years.

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The India-US ties have advanced by leaps and bounds. Yet, there is a persistent underestimation of India’s capacity to rework its great power relations. The article deals with this issue.

Expanding partnership

• India-US relations have been on a steady upward trajectory over the last three decades.
• This partnership withstood significant political transitions in both countries and managed to overcome many difficult barriers.
• The US is now India’s most comprehensive partner.
• The Russia relationship is long on defence but short on commerce.
• India’s commercial ties with China are large, but tilted heavily in Beijing’s favour.
• Collective Europe is big on commerce but small on security cooperation.
• The US has a sizeable presence in both economic and security dimensions and the political common ground with India has steadily expanded.

So, why persistent doubt in India about the US partnership

• One part of it is the ingrained ideological bias in the dominant foreign policy elite.
• Delhi’s stilted debate on the US is, unfortunately, reinforced by the sad absence of investment in institutional capabilities to study American politics, economics and international relations.

Issues with our assessment of relations with India

• There is an enduring reluctance of India’s foreign policy community to either acknowledge or accept the unfolding transformation of India’s ties with the US.
• There is also continuing underestimation of India’s capacity to rework its great power relations to meet India’s changing interests and circumstances.
• It was widely held that the Indo-Pacific and the Quad will become footnotes in Biden’s foreign policy.
• This in turn was based on the bet that Biden is likely to embrace China rather than confront it in the manner that Trump did.
• All these assumptions turned out to be inaccurate.
• Concern for democracy and human rights has always been part of US foreign policy ideology.
• But no state, not even a revolutionary one, can run its foreign policy on a single-point agenda. 

Underestimating India’s agency to shape the partnership

• Even as it continuously misjudged the US, the Indian foreign policy elite has not appreciated India’s agency to shape the relationship with America.
• The conviction that Delhi is perennially under US pressure to accept policies harmful for itself further distorts the discourse in the media and among the chattering classes.
• The evidence from the 1990s — one of India’s most vulnerable moments after Independence — should have corrected this misperception.
• The traditional discourse finds it hard to come to terms with the twin factors shaping India’s new approach.
• One is the significant increase in India’s material capabilities.
• India’s aggregate GDP increased ten-fold between 1990 ($270 billion) and 2020 (about $2,700 billion).
• Equally important is the new political will in Delhi.

Consider the question “There is a continuing underestimation of Delhi’s capacity to rework its great power relations with the US to meet India’s changing interests and circumstances. Critically examine.” 

Conclusion

The new India no longer wrings its hands in dealing with the US; it relishes the large room for strategic bargaining with America. Even more important, Delhi is no longer a reluctant partner to Washington.

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Quad as new feature of Indo-Pacific

• Australia’s participation in the Malabar exercises marks the emergence of the Quad as a new feature of the Indo-Pacific geopolitics.
• The question is India’s ability to take full advantage of the possibilities after the US elections to construct a wide range of new international coalitions.
• Likely changes could envelop a range of old institutions like the Five Eyes and the G-7 grouping that coordinates Western policies on global economic management.
• We could also see the creation of a new League of Democracies that will addres issues like including the defence of shared values, commerce, corruption, taxation, climate change and digital governance.

Phases of India’s international aspiration

• The consolidation of the Quad reflects the political will in Delhi to break free from old shibboleths and respond to security imperatives.
• The post-Quad era opens a new phase in which India, for the first time, can help shape global institutions.
• First phase: Idealism was the hallmark of India’s internationalism in the 1950s, the harsh politics of the Cold War quickly dampened it.
• Second phase: In the 1970s, India embraced the radical agenda of a New International Economic Order, as the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77. The results were meagre.
• Third phase began with the end of the Cold War.
• And as India’s own economic model collapsed, India had to focus on economic reform and prevent the world from intruding too much into its internal affairs.
• The fear of the US activism on Kashmir and nuclear issues saw Delhi turn to Russia and China in search of a “multipolar world” that could constrain American power.
• The BRICS forum with Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa became emblematic of this strategy.
• Delhi also figured out that it was not possible for BRICS to constrain Beijing, since China was so much bigger than the other four members put together.
• Fourth phase in India’s multilateralism is marked by three features — the relative rise in Delhi’s international standing, the breakdown of the great power consensus on economic globalisation, and the breakout of the US-China rivalry.

Efforts to tackle China

• The Trump administration has already sought to imagine the Quad’s possibilities beyond the defence domain.
• The invitation to India to join a Five Eyes meeting came amidst the bipartisan calls in the US Congress for the expansion of the forum and the inclusion of India.
• The “Quad Plus” dialogue has variously drawn in Brazil, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam for consultations with the Quad members on coordinating the responses to the pandemic.
• India is also engaged with Japan and Australia in developing resilient supply chains to reduce the reliance on China.
• President Trump has proposed the expansion of G-7 grouping to include Australia, India, Russia and South Korea.
• The last few months has seen the Trump administration promote a “Clean Network” that eliminates untrustworthy vendors from telecom systems, digital apps, trans-oceanic cables and cloud infrastructure.
• Clean Network is now a broader effort to build secure technology ecosystems among like-minded countries.
• Britain is said to be developing plans to convene a coalition of 10 democracies, including India, that can contribute to the construction of secure 5G networks and reduce the current dependence on China.
• France and Canada have invited India to join the Global Partnership on artificial intelligence that now includes 15 countries.
• The objective is to promote responsible development of AI that is consistent with shared democratic values.

Conclusion

Delhi’s participation in the sweeping rearrangement of the global structures will have major consequences for India’s economic prosperity and technological future. Unlike in the past, Delhi now has the resources, leverage and political will to make a difference to the global order

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The growing pace of India-US bilateral engagement has raised hopes in several quarters. However, there are several issues that must be considered and need to avoid excessive optimism. 

Timing of 2+2 dialogue

• The India-US 2+2 third meeting was held in Delhi only a week before the US presidential elections.
• The government felt that it was important to seal the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) without delay.
• Other reason could be government’s assessment that there is bipartisan support in the US for higher and positive bilateral ties.

Need for caution in India’s approach

• In India-US ties, the leading outside consideration is China.
• A Biden presidency, should that be the choice of the American people, would seek to ensure that China’s rise is not at the cost of the US’s global pre-eminence.
• However, the strategy and methods it employs would be different from that of its predecessor.
• Further, even a Trump 2 administration, with the election done, may change course in its China approach.
• Hence, caution and prudence are good diplomatic watchwords.
• It is good that the agreements for a full defence engagement with the US are in place.
• But it is one matter to have them done and an entirely different one insofar as the nature and intensity of cooperation.
• So, India’s tradition of relying on its own strengths in matters of national security should not be eroded in the hope that an outside power would provide useful inputs.

Alliance Vs. Partnership

• India-US ties are in the framework of a partnership, not an alliance.
• The partnership may not be based on opposition to an outside element, the alliance almost always is.
• Alliances also demand a much higher price than partnerships, through loss of autonomy if the ally is a bigger power.

Excessive enthusiasm on Quad may be premature

• The 2+2 joint statement does not name China but its thrust is clear.
• The Quad is based on a commonality of concerns on account of China’s actions.
• India’s decision to go along with a more purposive group, including through its maritime exercises, is in keeping with its interests.
• The real direction that the Quad will take has to await the US’s overall China strategy over the next few years.
• Excessive enthusiasm on the Quad front may, therefore, be premature.

Way forward

• India has to change the nature of its economic and commercial ties with China.
• Thus, the joint statement’s reference on the need to “enhance supply chain resilience and to seek alternatives to the current paradigm” was timely, though here, again, the future US approach is not entirely certain.
• The areas where the bilateral partnership has the potential of evolving most positively for India relate to health, education and science and technology.
• There should not be any reluctance in developing ties in defence industries, too, but it cannot be forgotten that no country will part with any of its critical technologies.
• But there cannot be a substitute for developing indigenous capacity for India’s needs for weapon systems.

Conclusion

India-US ties will move positively forward but there will be imponderables ahead, principally arising out of US strategies towards China. But, a close embrace of another country is always problematic.

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Changing geopolitical factors have accelerated further the deepening of India-US ties. The article analyses the current circumstances and evolution of the bilateral relations.

Background against which 2+2 dialogue taking place

• The 2+2 dialogue between India and the United States in Delhi this week marks an important moment in bilateral relations.
• The 2+2 dialogue comes just three weeks after the foreign ministers of the Quad — or the Quadrilateral Security Framework — met in Tokyo.
• It also takes place amidst a profound structural shift in great power politics as well as turbulence in the international economic order intensified by the coronavirus pandemic.
• The dialogue follows India’s first-ever participation in a meeting of the exclusive Five Eyes grouping that facilitates intelligence-sharing among the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
• A few days ago, Delhi announced the much-awaited expansion of the annual Malabar exercises to include Australia.

Background of the past engagements

• Signing the historic civil nuclear initiative ended India’s prolonged atomic isolation in the world laid the outline of a broader framework for security cooperation.
• Due to the deep divisions within the national security establishment, the leadership and some political constraints faced by the government, the coalition broke up.
•  The focus was on keeping visible distance from the US in the name of non-alignment, strategic autonomy, and the quest for a multipolar world.
• The relationship survived those years, thanks to the US’s perseverance.

3 Factors responsible for rapid progress in the US-India ties

1) Chines aggression on northern border

• The huge military crisis on the northern borders with China that is well into the sixth month is the first factor.
• In the past, India avoided closer security ties with the US in deference to Beijing’s sensitivities.
• In contrast, the government now has refused to pay heed to Chinese sensitivities over its policy on security cooperation with the US.

2) Disruption caused by the corona pandemic

• The coronavirus has sharpened the US debate on the dangers of excessive economic interdependence on China.
• Meanwhile, India has begun to reduce its commercial ties to Beijing in response to the PLA’s Ladakh aggression.
• This has created the conditions for a new conversation between India and the US on rearranging global supply chains away from China.
• So, the Quad Plus conversations have drawn in Brazil, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam with a view to rearrange the global supply chain.

3) Focus on critical technologies

• Third factor is critical technologies like artificial intelligence that promise to transform most aspects of modern life — including security, political economy and social order.
• Delhi and Washington are now focused on finding ways to collaborate on the critical technologies of the 21st century and work with their partners in setting new global rules for managing them.

Conclusion

As the regional and global order faces multiple transitions, the incentives for Delhi and Washington to sustain and advance India-US partnership are stronger than ever before and will continue into the next administration.

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Though it is the election held in the US for the election of the US President, it is closely followed throughout the world given the dominant position of that country in the world and impact of the US Presidents decision on the world. This article analyses the implications for India in both the scenarios re-election of Trump or Joe Biden winning the election.

Implications for India

• Broader foreign policy decisions will have significant implications for India.
• Particularly consequential will be how a second Trump administration or a Biden administration perceive and approach China and, relatedly, the question of America’s role in the world.
• The outcome will depend on the choices that the next American president makes on key personnel and policies.

Analysing Trump administration’s approach to China from India’s perspective

• The Trump administration’s more hawkish view of China broadly converges with Indian concerns about a rising China’s actions and intentions.
• And it has facilitated the Trump administration to assign India an important role in its strategic framework, including through the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept.
• This has laid the basis for defence and security cooperation, helped to manage differences with Delhi on trade, Russia, Iran, and human rights, and vocal American support for India in the ongoing crisis with China.
• Unlike India’s subtler approach to highlighting Beijing’s malign behaviour, the administration’s more explicit one has put a global spotlight on Chinese assertiveness.
• However, there are aspects of President Trump’s China approach that have caused concerns in Delhi.
• There has been concern about Trump striking a deal with Chinese leader Xi Jinping since summit in April 2017.
• The administration subsequently pivoted to competition with China that summer.
• Concerns have also been raised due to neglect in the Trump administration of developments related to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Huawei/ZTE.
• The other aspects of Trump’s China approach that have given Delhi pause are its ideological dimensions, as well as responses like tariffs that have hurt India too.
• On the similar lines American withdrawal from international institutions and agreements that has served to benefit Beijing.
• The China prism has had its limits — it has not, for instance, resulted in concessions to India on trade and immigration.

What would be Joe Biden’s to approach towards China and implications for India

• And there is recognition among most Democrats that the US-China relationship today is different from what it was in 2009, 2012 or 2016.
• An Obama administration China hand noted that opinion in the US on approach to China has “moved from balancing co-operation and competition, to competition and confrontation”.
• But what a Biden administration sees as the terms of strategic competition with China and how it might choose to blend in cooperation will have implications for India.
• Its outcome will depend in part on the president’s views, who holds key foreign and economic policy positions, as well as Beijing’s approach.
• India will closely watch how Biden might respond to any overtures from Beijing.
• It will particularly worry about any signs that Washington would be willing to limit competition or criticism in return for Chinese cooperation on certain administration priorities.
• More broadly, it will look at whether Biden administration’s Asia policy derives from its China policy or vice versa.
• Other aspects of Biden’s preferred approach might suit India, for instance:
• 1) acting collectively with allies and partners rather than unilaterally,
• 2) Not imposing tariffs that hit allies and partners along with China,
• 3) Recommitting to international organisations in ways that could blunt Chinese influence.
• India might also broadly approve of — and could benefit from — the 3Ds of a Biden foreign policy: Domestic (renewal), deterrence, and democracy.
•  If a Biden administration sees engagement with China on climate change, global health security and non-proliferation as a priority that will complicate the Indian government’s options and require adjustments.
• Moreover, with either Trump or Biden, foreign economic policy choices and budgetary ones for example, spending at home versus abroad will have crucial implications for India.

Conclusion

India will need to consider what America’s choice on November 3 will mean for American power and purpose — because assessments of that could determine how Beijing decides to act in the region and globally.

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While highlighting the importance of navy for India, the article examines the need to define the role and relation between the Quad and Malabar.

The salience of navy for India

• It took confrontation in the Himalayas to bring focus on India’s maritime domain clearly indicates that the salience of maritime power is not yet understood in India.
• On its northern and western fronts, India faces a formidable challenge and can at best hope for stalemate due to two factors :
• 1) Economic, military and technological asymmetry between China and India.
• 2) Active China-Pakistan nexus.
• Attention has, therefore, been focused on the maritime domain, where it is believed that India may have some cards to play.
•  While preparing to fight its own battles with determination, it is time for India to seek external balancing (read Quad) — best done via the maritime domain.

Evolution of Malabar Exercise

• Above is the backdrop against which one must see the progressive evolution of Exercise “Malabar”,
• At beginning, it was a bilateral event involving just the Indian and US navies.
• It became tri-lateral with the inclusion of Japan in 2015.
• And now it has transformed into a four-cornered naval drill that will also include Australia.
• Apart from its geo-political significance for the Indo-Pacific, this development poses two conundrums.
• Firstly, given the same composition, what is the distinction, now, between “Malabar” and the “Quad”?
• Secondly, does Malabar 2020 mark the release of Australia from China’s thralldom?

Defining the roles and relation betwee Malabar and Quad

• The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad has its roots in the Core Group of four senior diplomats representing the US, India, Japan and Australia.
• The group was formed to coordinate relief efforts after the Great Asian Tsunami of December 26, 2004.
• The present Quad has obviously retained this tradition and its members have neither created a charter nor invested it with any substance.
• The Quad is 16 years old now, and Malabar 28.
• Both have served a useful purpose, and a reappraisal of the roles and relationship of the Quad-Malabar concepts is, therefore, overdue.
• Since it is India which faces a “clear and present danger”, it should boldly take the initiative to do so.

Need for the Indo-Pacific Concord

•  In order to rein in China’s hegemonic urges, there is need for affected nations to come together to show their solidarity and determination in a common cause.
• In this context, there is need to create a broad-based “Indo-Pacific Concord”, of like-minded regional democracies.
• This should be an organisation with a maritime security charter, which has no offensive or provocative connotations.
• Using the Quad and Malabar templates, a shore-based secretariat can be established in a central location like Port Blair, in the Andaman Islands, which would schedule and conduct periodic multinational naval exercises.
• The exercises could be structured to hone the skills of participating navies in specialisations like humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, countering non-traditional threats, undertaking search-and-rescue operations and establishing networked maritime domain awareness.
• The Concord could also designate forces to uphold maritime security or “good order at sea”.

What Australia joining Quad means

•  The prospect of Australia belatedly joining the Quad is expected to reinforce the Quad and enhance its credibility.
• But there are reasons for India to be circumspect it.
• Memories are still alive of its past political ambivalence towards India, its criticism of our naval expansion and its vociferous condemnation of the 1998 nuclear tests.
• Nor should one overlook Beijing’s recent influence on Australia’s foreign policy.
• This influence on Australia’s foreing policy caused it to flip-flop over the sale of uranium to India as well as its peremptory withdrawal from the Quad in 2008.

Implications of singing of BECA with the U.S.

• India signing the BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement) with the US last of the four “foundational agreements” would enhance interoperability between the respective militaries.
• However, there is need to pay heed to two valid concerns:
• 1) Regarding the possible compromise of information impinging on India’s security.
• 2) Whether these agreements will barter away the last vestiges of India’s strategic autonomy.

Consider the question “The changing geopolitical equations has necessitated the formation of Indo-Pacific Concord by the democracies of the region.” In light of this, elaborate on India’s role in Quad and its implications for the region”

Conclusion

Indians, given our history, should never lose sight of the truism in international relations, that it is the unerring pursuit of national interests that guides the actions and policies of every nation.

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The article analyses the evolution of India’s approach to strategic autonomy from the unipolar world dominated by the U.S. to now when the Chinese threat has been looming large.

Context

• Addressing a Southeast Asian forum last week, external affairs minister outlined India’s new quest for “strategic autonomy” in its global economic engagement.

Connection with Atmanirbhar Bharat

• This new quest for “strategic autonomy” is the natural external complement to new economic strategy, described as “Atmanirbharata” or “self-reliance”.
• The concept carries so much ideological baggage, its revival by Government inevitably raised many questions
• Senior ministers and officials of the NDA government sought to reassure India’s partners that Delhi was not marching backwards.
• When applied to the foreign policy framework, “self-reliance” becomes “strategic autonomy”.

Evolution of the idea of strategic autonomy

• America towered over the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
• India’s past emphasis on strategic autonomy was in the context of the “unipolar moment” [dominated by the U.S.] that emerged after the Cold War.
• On the one hand, India needed Western capital as well as technology and better access to its markets.
• On the other hand, Delhi had to protect some of its core national interests from the threats of US intervention.

India-U.S. Relations: Evolution after the Cold war

• In the early 1990s, the Clinton Administration strong desire to resolve the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.
• The Clinton Administration saw the nuclear and Kashmir disputes as one and the same thing.
• Indian diplomacy for the next two decades tried to change the US policy on both Kashmir and nuclear issues.
• Under President George W Bush, the US discarded the long-standing temptation to insert itself in the Kashmir dispute.
• The US also went out of the way to resolve the nuclear dispute with India by changing its domestic laws and international norms on nuclear proliferation.
• The Obama and Trump Administrations have stayed the course since then.

China challenge for India

• On the atomic front, as the US sought to lift the prolonged atomic blockade against India, China sought to block the process.
• China turned an obstacle to India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
• China takes up the Kashmir issue regularly in the United Nations Security Council.
• Today, India’s strategic autonomy is about coping with China’s challenge to India’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
•  China today is viewed in Delhi as a major threat to India’s economic development.
• The bilateral trade deficit reached nearly $55billion in 2019.
• India pulled out of an Asia-wide free-trade arrangement called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership late last year, sensing the threat posed by China-led economic order.
• Ladakh aggression forced India to go from a passive commercial withdrawal to an active economic decoupling from China.

Way forward

• The logic of strategic autonomy from China nudges India to look for strong security partnerships with the US, Europe, Japan and Australia.
• On the economic front, India is exploring various forms of collaboration with a broad group of nations that have a shared interest in developing trustworthy global supply chains.

Consider the question “Delineate the evolution of India’s approach towards the idea of strategic autonomy. How it differs from the past?”

Conclusion

Threats to either territorial integrity or economic prosperity are powerful enough on their own to compel drastic changes in any nation’s policies. Coming together, they promise to make strategic autonomy from an assertive China an enduring theme of India’s economic and foreign policies in the years ahead.

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India has been maintaining strategic autonomy in its foreign policy since Independence. But the end of Cold War and growing closeness towards the U.S. raises concerns. This article addresses this issue.

India’s foreign policy: characterised by autonomy

• India has historically prided itself as an independent developing country which does not take orders from or succumb to pressure from great powers.
• Indian maintained this stance in its foreign policy when the world order was bipolar from 1947 to 1991, dominated by the U.S. and Russia.
• Also, when the world was unipolar from 1991 to 2008, dominated by the U.S.
• Or when it is multipolar as at the present times.
• The need for autonomy in making foreign policy choices has remained constant.

Flexibility in foreign policy

• However, strategic autonomy has often been adjusted in India’s history as per the changing milieu.
• During the 1962 war with China, Prime Minister Nehru, had to appeal to the U.S. for emergency military aid.
• In the build-up to the 1971 war with Pakistan, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had to enter a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union to ward off both China and the U.S.
• And in Kargil in 1999, India welcomed a direct intervention by the U.S. to force Pakistan to back down.
• In all the above examples, India did not become any less autonomous when geopolitical circumstances compelled it to enter into de facto alliance-like cooperation with major powers.
• Rather, India secured its freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity by manoeuvering the great power equations and playing the realpolitik game.

Concerns over India’s growing closeness to the U.S.

• As India is facing China’s growing aggression along the LAC, Non-alignment 2.0 with China and the U.S. makes little sense.
• Fears that proximity to the U.S. will lead to loss of India’s strategic autonomy are overblown.
• Because independent India has never been subordinated to a foreign hegemon.

What should be India’s strategy

• In the threat environment marked by a pushy China, India should aim to have both- American support and stay as an independent power centre by cooperation with middle powers in Asia and around the world.
• For India complete dependence on the U.S. to counter China would be an error.
• Such complete dependence would be detrimental to India’s national interest such as its ties with Iran and Russia and efforts to speed up indigenous defence modernisation.
• A wide and diverse range of strategic partners, including the U.S. is the only viable diplomatic way forward in the current emerging multipolar world order.

Consider the question “Does India’s close alignment with the U.S. harms its strategic autonomy? Suggest the strategy to balance India’s security concerns and maintaining strategic autonomy.”

Conclusion

We are free and self-reliant not through isolation or alliance with one great power, but only in variable combinations with several like-minded partners. India is familiar with the phrase ‘multi-vector’ foreign policy. It is time to maximise its potential.

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This article analyses what the new shift in the India-U.S. ties will require for the mutual benefit.

Following 12 factors would influence the depth and longevity of the India-U.S. ties.

1) Outcome of the  U.S. Presidential elections

• The success of India’s new bonding with the U.S. will depend on the outcome of the U.S. Presidential elections.
• The Democratic party candidate with the Left wing and liberals in the U.S. has been highly critical of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

2) Need to build trust with the U.S.

• India purchased of the S-400 air defence missile system from Russia disregarding the U.S. concerns.
• India refused to send Indian troops to Afghanistan.
• We need to build trust with the U.S. that we will give to the U.S. as good as it gives us.
• For this structuring we must realise that India-U.S. relations require give and take on both sides.
• What India needs to take today is for dealing with the Ladakh confrontation with China.
• India needs U.S. hardware military equipment.

3)  Fighting the U.S. enemy in neighbourhood

• The U.S. needs India to fight her enemies in the neighbourhood such as in Afghanistan.
• India should send two divisions gradually to Afghanistan and relieve U.S. troops to go home

4) Intelligence sharing and cooperation

• India needs the support of the U.S. and its ally, Israel, in cyberwarfare, satellite mappings of China and Pakistan.
• There is a need for sharing intercepts of electronic communication, hard intelligence on terrorists, and controlling the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan.

5) Developing naval bases

• India needs the U.S. to completely develop the Andaman & Nicobar, and also the Lakshadweep Islands as a naval and air force base.
• These naval bases can be used by the U.S  and shared along with its allies such as Indonesia and Japan.

6) Economic relations and India’s concerns

• The economic relations must be based on macroeconomic commercial principles.
• Free, indiscriminate flow of U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) is not in India’s national interest.

7) Technology sharing

• India needs technologies such as thorium utilisation, desalination of sea water, and hydrogen fuel cells.

8) U.S. should allow import of agricultural product

• The U.S. must allow India’s exports of agricultural products including Bos indicus milk, which are of highly competitive prices in the world.

9) FDI in India

• FDI should be allowed into India selectively from abroad, including from the U.S.
• FDI in India should be based on the economic theory of comparative advantage and not on subsidies and gratis.

10) Tariffs

• Tariffs of both India and the U.S. should be lowered, and the Indian rupee should be gradually revalued to ₹35 to a dollar.
• Later, with the economy picking up, the rupee rate should go below 10 to the dollar.

11) Stay away from certain issues

•  India should not provide the U.S. with our troops to enter Tibet, or be involved in the Hong Kong and Taiwan issue.
• There is always a possibility of a leadership change in China.
• Thus, China’s policy changed very favourably towards India.
• In the cases of Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, we have made explicit agreements.
• In the case of Tibet, two formal treaties were signed by Nehru (1954) and A.B. Vajpayee (2003).

12) Trilateral commitment to world peace

• In the long run, India, the U.S., and China should form a trilateral commitment for world peace provided Chinese current international policies undergo a healthy change.

Consider the question “What are the factors influencing the India-U.S. ties? Suggest the pathway to address the issues that hamper the deepening of India-U.S. ties.”

Conclusion

Both countries need to recognise each other’s concern and work towards the deepening of the ties for the mutual benefit and with a view to dealing with the challenges confronting both the countries.

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