'Soft balancing' China

An American president flanked by the Indian commander-in-chief and the prime minister celebrating the founding of our republic would have been inconceivable even six months ago.

After a fairy tale-like courting of India in the early 2000s, US geostrategy lapsed into its old ways by 2009. Delhi’s proactive engagement with China, Japan, Russia and the US suggests a more sophisticated and interest-based foreign policy than that gauged simply from the optics. Is Modi writing a new script for Indo-US relations inside out?

South Asia was always the area of contradictions between US policies to maintain a durable equation with Pakistan while developing a relationship with India. Here the Bush White House forged the nuclear deal – in essence a defacto acknowledgement of India’s nuclear weapons programme and status – as an implicit quid pro quo for acquiescence to otherwise persistent US policies in the region. While this single agreement was transformative in that it removed an outdated posture against India’s nuclear programme, thereby enabling the two countries to normalise and heighten their engagement, the implied wider linkage with India’s perceptions and policies across other issue-areas gradually diluted the mutuality of the envisaged entente with America.

This framework broke down in ensuing contestations within India. These contestations, although couched on the merits of the nuclear deal, were actually more deep rooted. They were based on conceptions of sovereignty and India’s self image in the regional and global system. India’s innate preference for an independent path in its rise could not be reconciled with the US framework and attendant vision for India’s role in South Asia, Asia and the world. Delhi’s inability to re-define and re-negotiate an acceptable framework for Indo-US ties produced a period of apathetic drift until 2013.

It fell upon a new nationalist-oriented dispensation after Modi’s dramatic 2014 victory to restore some conceptual and operational energy to India’s foreign policy. Having learnt the lessons of the 2000s where an overly ambitious agenda was imposed on Indo-US relations, Modi has sought to reframe and anchor the relationship in three core areas – economic development, Pakistan-driven terrorism, and China’s rise – where Indian self-interest and perceptions guide how these issues are transacted in bilateral interactions.

While Modi’s optics and effort to connect the Indian people to the world of diplomacy and high politics is new, it is the substance of statecraft that ultimately matters. There appear to be two interpretations related to the China part of the India-US equation. One view is that India has swung towards a total convergence in its wider Asia-Pacific policy with the US. For example, the “Joint Strategic Vision” for the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean is an endorsement of each other’s roles in maritime Asia. Yet, given US maritime predominance over this large area, India is in effect bandwagoning with the US and its allied network.

A second view is India’s overall foreign policy vis-a-vis the great powers has not changed. India is seeking to benefit from the global balance of power rather than assume the unpredictable and potentially costly role of a swing power who buttresses the strength of one great power or bloc in its competition with another. This reluctance to aggregate its moral and material strength with one great power against another is apparent from Modi’s words and deeds since May 2014. To be sure, this does not preclude seeking support from one power in the search for security against another. Nor does it exclude issue-based cooperation that might run contrary to the position of another great power (South China Sea).

Asian politics
From the above two views on Modi’s foreign policy, it is evident that each interpretation is based on a set of assumptions around India’s interests and role, and, China’s policies. The first view presumes that Delhi is still uncertain of its China policy and takes a more zero-sum view of China’s rise, especially in the security realm. The second view presumes that Asian politics and China’s rise is an evolving dynamic and different strategic futures would drive different policy responses. It is the implementation or “roadmap” of the Joint Strategic Vision that matters and this would evolve based on China’s regional and particularly South Asia policies.

The first view presumes the securitisation of Asian geopolitics is now irreversible and India has chosen one side. This outlook is shaped by the concept of indivisible security where China’s strategies in East Asia will directly impact India. The second view leaves open the possibility of multiple paths of Sino-Indian interactions, and, a subsequent recalibration of India’s Asia policy. This is based on an outlook of divisible security where India and China can craft a bilateral modus vivendi even as China engages in strategic competition with the US in East Asia.

The first view presumes a sceptical outlook for India’s emergence as a regional power centre that requires a dramatic external balancing prop. The second view is more confident of India’s strategic future and ability to craft asymmetric strategies to maintain India’s regional role despite the probability of a much stronger China for several decades. 

But perhaps most important is that the first view has constructed China’s rise as an existential threat while the second view is more complex and flexible in this assessment. The latter presumes that Chinese intentions and Beijing’s India policies can be influenced by Indian statecraft. Indeed, the “soft balancing” against China’s maritime ambitions could accelerate opportunities to alleviate, if not address, the roots of Sino-Indian problems – such as their territorial dispute and competition in South Asia.

If the second view is indeed driving Modi’s foreign policy then ensuing patterns of Indian behaviour should fit into the overall policy framework. Logically, the Obama visit should provide the impetus to pursue a mutually beneficial equation with China.

(The writer is a research scholar at King’s College, London)