A growing convergence

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to India this week has put the spotlight back on this very important bilateral partnership. The Indo-Japanese collaboration on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train underscores the rapidity with which the two nations are developing their strategic partnership.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed this well when he suggested that this project “will add speed to India’s growth”, “shorten the distance between people and places” and “increase productivity thanks to high speed connectivity.” Abe reciprocated the gesture by underlining that “if we work together, nothing is impossible. I would like to state that India-Japan partnership is special, strategic and global.”

The India-Japan relationship has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years and the Modi-Abe camaraderie has taken this relationship to a new high. This was reflected in Modi’s comments when he remarked that “a good friend is timeless and sees no borders. Japan has shown it is this kind of friend. We are able to get this project off the ground so quickly. The credit for that goes to Abe, he took a personal interest in it to ensure that there are no delays or difficulties.”

Abe always had a special place for India in his vision of the emerging order in the Asia-Pacific. Much before anyone else, he could foresee the need to view the Indian and Pacific Oceans as a cohesive unit. In Modi, he has found a kindred spirit. Both have a vision for the region in which the Indo-Japanese relationship plays a central stabilising role.

Abe’s visit has seen the relationship moving in several areas, including academia, research, capacity-building, skills upgrade, science and technology and people-to-people exchanges. In their joint statement, the two nations called on Pakistan to bring to justice the perpetrators of terrorist attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai and the 2016 Pathankot attacks.

The two leaders have decided to convene the fifth Japan-India consultation on terrorism and to strengthen cooperation against terrorist threats from groups including Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Toiba and their affiliates. Defence cooperation is also now moving beyond the maritime sphere to include the army and the air force of the two nations.

India is the largest recipient of Japanese foreign aid. Japanese investment in India is booming, with the Japanese making record private equity and venture capital investments in India. The Japan International Cooperation Agency has been involved in the funding of Delhi Metro, India’s biggest subway system, and has agreed to fund the next phase of Mumbai Metro.

Japan is expected to play a major role in a number of high profile infrastructure projects, including completion of the ambitious Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor, a Chennai-Bengaluru industrial corridor and a dedicated freight project in southern India. India has also invited Japan to invest in infrastructure projects in India’s northeast region, where tensions with China loom large.

The regional security situation has been worsening in recent years in the Indo-Pacific. China’s rapid rise has been causing anxieties in regional capitals. Japan has been sparring with China in the East China Sea while India was recently engaged in a long stand-off with China on the Doklam Plateau. China’s aggressive foreign policy is making it imperative for regional powers to collaborate and cooperate.

Malabar exercises, which have taken a trilateral shape along with the US, have become central to how India and Japan view the management of regional security issues. There are growing questions about the Trump Administration’s reliabi-lity as the guarantor of regional stability. North Korea’s nuclear tests have made the regional security environment extremely precarious, for Japan in particular.

India and Japan are therefore trying to build a broader coalition of like-minded countries with the US and Australia to manage the unfolding strategic realities in the broader Indo-Pacific. Abe had articulated a need for such a security architecture way back in 2012 when he had suggested “a strategy whereby Australia, India, Japan, and the US state of Hawaii form a diamond to safeguard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean region to the western Pacific.”

It is this security diamond that China’s belligerence is giving shape to as the four countries come closer. This was reflected in the Abe-Modi joint statement which “welcomed the renewed momentum for trilateral cooperation frameworks with the US and Australia” in order to “ensure a rule-based order in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Ambitious project

The two nations are working on an ambitious programme, the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), which will find place in the Abe-Modi summit. With a Japanese commitment of $30 billion and an Indian commitment of $10 billion, the project is aimed at capacity-building and human resource development in Africa as well as developing infrastructure and regional connectivity. While it is simplistic to view this as a response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, as some have suggested, it reflects the growing bond between Asia’s two major powers and a convergence at the level of ideas and institutions that is quite rare in global politics.

China had taken strong exception when such formulations had first emerged in the form of a ‘democratic quad’ — India, Japan, US and Australia. But by relentlessly pursuing an expansionist agenda, Beijing has made it impossible for India and Japan to ignore such mechanisms. This time, too, its reaction was predictable, with its foreign affairs spokesperson underlining “that regional countries should stand for dialogue without confrontation and work for a partnership instead of an alliance.”

But Abe’s visit to India has once again made it clear that India and Japan are intent on taking their relationship to a new level as the two are completely in sync on bilateral, regional and global issues. China is only one factor shaping the relationship. It is the larger convergence between New Delhi and Tokyo that will shape the emerging strategic realities in the Indo-Pacific.

(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi , and Professor of International Relations, King’s College, London)