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India-US Relations Blog

The Ties that Bind

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Three years after the conclusion of the path-breaking civilian nuclear agreement, the U.S.-India relationship suffers from the lack of a new energizing project. In its first year or so, the Obama administration did not display much interest in continuing its predecessor’s high-profile engagement with New Delhi, turning its attention instead to expanding ties with Beijing. To be sure, the United States more recently has moved to re-engage India, as evidenced by the warm sentiment flowing from President Obama’s state visit last November. The problem is that Mr. Obama’s rhetoric during the trip made it sound like the visit was more connected to his export-promotion initiative than to any grand foreign policy objective.

For its part, New Delhi is a constrained strategic partner, one that is not well-equipped – ideologically or institutionally – to take on bold bilateral projects. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh finally did manage to push the nuclear agreement through a balky Parliament, his victory was in important measure pyrrhic, in the end revealing just how small the consensus (see the analysis here and here) is among Indian political elites for undertaking ambitious bilateral initiatives.

Credit: thesouthasian.comThe paucity of visible leadership in both capitals is problematic. It is true that both governments are collaborating as never before at the bureaucratic level. But the U.S.-India partnership has yet to find sure footing and still lacks sufficient institutionalization to advance the new era in bilateral relations. Robert Blackwill has warned that “neither the U.S. nor the Indian bureaucracies at present are yet prepared instinctively to facilitate a deeper and more intimate degree of cooperation between the two countries….It is going to take leadership and direction from the top to change old habits and attitudes.” Ronen Sen has made a similar point: “We have not reached the point where the relationship can be placed on auto-pilot. It still needs to be nurtured.”  And the Hindustan Times noted last year that the Washington-New Delhi connection is still not yet “a machine that will move on its own steam.”

The burden of advancing bilateral affairs, at least in the next few years, will have to be borne by the key societal bonds that helped build the relationship in the first place.  Headlines about the nuclear cooperation accord and expanding military ties notwithstanding, it is important to bear in mind that the foundation for the partnership was actually forged outside the realm of government policy and far beyond the confines of Washington and New Delhi. Unlike most of the relationships maintained by the United States with other leading countries, the one with India is distinguished by the signal role played by societal ties and privatesector initiatives. As Shivshankar Menon, now Prime Minister Singh’s national security advisor, remarked last year, “[I]f anything, the creativity of [American and Indian] entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists has sometimes exceeded that of our political structures.” And Nicholas Burns, who did yeoman’s work in hammering out the details of the nuclear accord, emphasizes that societal bonds are “the greatest strength in the relationship” and that “the big breakthrough in U.S.-India relations was achieved originally by the private sector.”

Consider, for example, the dynamics at work a little more than a decade ago. In response to the 1998 nuclear tests, Washington imposed an array of economic sanctions on India and expelled visiting Indian scientists from U.S. government laboratories. Yet at the same time, concerns about the “Y2K” programming problem led companies in Silicon Valley and in India to set the foundation for today’s strong technology partnership. And as I wrote earlier, the Indian-American community, relatively small but highly influential, has lead the way in building new ties between its native and adoptive countries.

credit: charlierose.comThe significant role played by these societal bonds has caused Fareed Zakaria to compare U.S.-India ties to the special relationships the United States has with Great Britain and Israel. Shashi Tharoor has likewise remarked that “in 20 years I expect the Indo-U.S. relationship to resemble the Israel-U.S. relationship, and for many of the same reasons.”

Although they are often overlooked by national policymakers, societal bonds give fuller texture and equipoise to the bilateral partnership than could be hoped to be achieved at the intergovernmental level alone.  And at a time when bureaucratic mechanisms are not firing on all cylinders, strengthening these ties will be one key in securing the growth of broad-based, resilient relations over the long term since they work to limit the risk that political and diplomatic frictions could escalate and disrupt the overall U.S.-India partnership.

This is particularly important as the structural dynamics of the bilateral relationship will prove challenging to manage in the future.  The basic framework of U.S. security and economic relations with a number of key countries in Europe and Asia was laid down in another era of world politics, when the national power of these states was in decline.  The resulting alliances were, and in many ways still remain, unequal partnerships.  In contrast, India’s power trajectory is upward.

Moreover, foreign policy elites in New Delhi continue to insist on the prerogative of strategic autonomy and, hence, are unlikely to accommodate Washington’s priorities as readily as other U.S. allies.  With continuing divergences over foreign policy objectives, frictions will inevitably develop on a range of issues – from global trade negotiations, climate change and nonproliferation policy, to differential approaches on Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as India’s bid for a higher profile in world affairs. As Nick Burns cautions “the United States must adjust to a friendship with India that will feature a wider margin of disagreement than [Washington is] accustomed to.”

India-US Relations Blog

What Indians (Some) Want the U.S. to do

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There is little doubt that the left in India wish the United States ill–not that the U.S. has done them any harm. The Indian left, ever since the Soviet bloc collapsed and China turned capitalist and aggressive, has needed an imperialist enemy to focus their enmity upon. After all, their version of socialism or communism ruined nine odd countries whose people revolted against the rule of the proletariat and went back into the capitalist fold. So the U.S. wish to democratize other nations and slap around a few dictators evokes little sympathy in places like JNU.  Opposing national stands taken in other capitals, are looked at by the Indian left benignly, unless the capital concerned is Washington. Any disagreement with Washington arises, according to the left, from an imperialist or capitalist plot, as is for instance the U.S. envoy in Delhi reporting to Washington (according to wikileaks) that dealing with a Mamta ruled Bengal would be easier than dealing with Buddhadeb. If the U.S. consular office reports that Hyderabad is the Center of an Indian visa application forgery scam, that too must be a capitalist plot.

Most Indians have a sensible view of the United States and world order. What do the sensible majority wish the U.S. to do? They certainly don’t want what they see as a huge Republican negativism in opposing the ruling party – for the sake of opposition – even if it means dragging the U.S. down. We have enough of that in our own country, where the beneficial nuclear deal was opposed by a right wing  – left wing anti-national coalition in parliament, when the nuclear deal was originally a BJP idea.

May be a world led by the USA is not an ideal world – but it is more acceptable than, say, a world in which the Chinese have the last word. So the majority of Indians wonder, when is the U.S. going to pull itself out of the economic doldrums, and re-invent itself, as it has done so many times in the past? When are the happy days of oodles of I-20 visas, a thriving Silicon valley, huge back office contracts and masses of desi California weddings coming back? The US-India relationship is largely run by the people, in any case. If we left it to the government they would lower it to the same ‘estranged’ levels as existed in the 1980s. The strength of the U.S. lies in technology innovation. That innovation is converted into dual use merchandise and military power. This process is the US’ monopoly. Techno-innovation comes from concentrating the best brains around booming university towns. To make all that happen again, the U.S. government must pour money into technology innovation, start ups, entrepreneurs and university research. Will the U.S. do all that? Do they have the money to create jobs, fix medical insurance and still have enough money to plough back into the process that makes the U.S. the number one nation? Indians are worried.

Delhi has enough unpredictable allies and friends – from Myanmar to Bangladesh to Sri- Lanka and Afghanistan. But all these unpredictabilities are small compared to the future of the US. Even two U.S. authors of Indian origin have joined in predicting a failing future for the U.S. – but the majority refuse to give up hope.  Of course Obama’s speech on cheap Indian medicine doesn’t help. Hasn’t he seen that the U.S. and India grow rich together? Or that, if the U.S. launches another technological revolution, in say, alternate energy, the Indians in the U.S. will link Indian back offices and labs to execute that revolution to the mutual advantage of both countries?

The Indian government is just as wayward as the U.S. government – flirting with a non-entity of alphabets like BRIC. We really have nothing in common with China buying our iron ore and dumping manufactured goods on us. Our relationship with Brazil is a really stretched concept. The bilateral relationship with Russia is healthy and strong without lumbering it with China and Brazil, in a pointed slap to the Americans. But that is what governments do – make diplomatic headlines  that are of no consequence on the ground.

India-US Relations Blog

India-US Medical Alliance will cut deficit

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The U.S. is – and will continue to be for at least a generation more – the primary engine driving the international economy. If Asia has made progress during the post-colonial period (i.e.after 1947), one of the major reasons is the U.S. economy. Although the Eurocentric administrations in Washington DC refused to sanction a Marshall Plan for Asia the way they implemented for Europe, the private industry has made up for a lot of the slack. Although the Vietnam war of the 1960s and beyond was a disaster in several ways, including the devastation it caused to that land and people without being able to prevent the takeover of the country by the Viet Minh, yet the purchases of goods and services made by the U.S. from the countries of East and South-east Asia for prosecuting  the war created tigers out of pussycats. Even Hong Kong developed,once the British withdrew east of Suez and lost interest in the day-to-day running of the colony.

India under Indira Gandhi missed the US-driven bus. Unlike Thailand, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, she refused to create the conditions needed for Indian businesses to take advantage in the spurt of U.S. procurement created by the Vietnam war. Indeed, she turned away from such opportunities, even rejecting an invitation to be a part of ASEAN. As for industry, Indira Gandhi continued with Jawaharlal Nehru’s policy of strangling the private sector through taxes and regulation, and creating state-owned monopolies that were citadels of incompetence and corruption. Small wonder that SE Asia and East Asia rapidly overtook India and entered the fold of middle-income countries two decades before India finally began to catch up in the mid-1990s,  a rise that has been threatened by the sharp increase in regulation seen in the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA since 2004.

Despite the return of frank Nehruism in central policy, India still remains a country where the newly-empowered private sector is fighting back. Honest corporates are happy at the increase in public awareness of the fact that it is graft on a monumental scale that is keeping them in such misery. Those traveling by the potholed roads of India; enduring power cut after power cut despite sky-high electricity prices; going through substandard public schooling at a time when the UPA is seeking to choke the private education sector through fresh regulations; and suffering such depredations as income-tax raids conducted just to collect bribes for settlement, are now coming on to the streets. If not in 2012, certainly by 2013, India will have its own Tahrir Square, with millions likely to picket the homes of the powerful trinity of corrupt bureaucrats, businesspersons and politicians who have aped the British colonial authorities by enriching themselves through impoverishing the country. For the first time since the 1950s, India seems to be on a path towards cleaner government and greater powers to the ordinary citizen vis-a-vis the colonial-style state,largely because of the pressure from the Supreme Court and the fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is personally honest,and hence has no personal interest in continuing to cover up corruption.

This is the ideal time for a great democracy to create multiple linkages with India, so that civil society in both countries can benefit. In the field of energy, this writer has already pointed out how the negative bias of the non-proliferation lobby in the U.S. is creating the conditions for an Indo-Russian atomic alliance from which the U.S. will get excluded. Healthcare is another field in which India has several advantages. Indeed, it is this potential that is scaring pharmaceutical and fat-cat medical lobbies in Europe, making them invent risks in India that are unproven by scientific evidence. The Lancet, for example (whose advocacy of the medical mafia in the developed world is transprent) has been printing report after report warning individuals to keep away from India. The latest smear is that the country is swarming with a “superbug”. Unexplained is why such a “deadly” microbe has made zero dent on the country’s population, or in its health services. The reality is that cooperation with India will cost the medical mafia in several countries their millions of euros, hence the hysteria against India.

The fact is that only – repeat only – an alliance with India can reduce healthcare costs in the U.S. and the EU to levels that are compatible with continued prosperity. Instead of blocking low-cost Indian pharmaceuticals from entering their (or other) markets by the foisting of cases and by other means, EU governments should get their corporates to form alliances with Indian companies that can ensure low-cost healthcare to billions of people in Europe, India and in North America.

However, given their mindset (which is clearly still lost in nostalgia for the colonial era), it is unlikely that the EU will follow such a rational path. On the contrary, we can expect several more efforts to malign both the country as well as its medical profession, because of the fact that it can provide healthcare at a fraction of the cost charged by the medical mafia. Rather, it is the U.S. that needs to take the lead in forming an alliance with India, that would ensure enhanced Indo-US production of cheaper drugs and cheaper procedures. Unless this be done, the U.S. budget deficit will continue to balloon to a level that threatens the future of the world’s biggest economy. The sharing of healthcare facilities by India and the U.S. will ensure the saving of tens of billions of dollars every year, and in time form a fusion that can bring healthcare to the doorsteps of the needy in every country.

India-US Relations Blog

Gary Locke’s Missed Opportunity

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U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke traveled to India earlier this month for a six-day tour focused on enhancing bilateral high-tech trade and cooperation. The first U.S. Cabinet officer to come to India since President Obama’s state visit last November, he brought with him representatives from 24 U.S. companies, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Westinghouse.  The trip resulted in an agreement on closer collaboration in the area of energy technology as well as an announcement about the further easing of U.S. export controls on India. As one senior U.S. official accompanying Locke stated: “We have agreed to an unprecedented level of technology transfers to India and we can go even further.” Judged by the usual standards of such trade missions, the visit was not unproductive. Yet by the time Locke’s sojourn ended, one had the feeling that he nonetheless missed a good opportunity to significantly advance the bilateral economic agenda.

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Just how large a miss this was became clear a few days later, when Indian and Japanese Cabinet officials gathered in Tokyo to sign a comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA). This accord provides a stark counterpoise to Locke’s visit, exemplifying the imaginative initiatives that should have been on his brief. The Indian-Japanese pact not only eases the movement of goods but also the flow of services, capital and labor.  It promises to increase the value of bilateral trade 150 percent over the next few years and has been received with great enthusiasm by the Indian business community. Indeed, the agreement is an apt economic expression of the growing partnership that the two countries are forging in the geopolitical realm.

Indian trade diplomacy is on a tear. Just days after the deal with Tokyo, New Delhi signed a similar arrangement with Kuala Lumpur, which will further deepen India’s involvement in Southeast Asia’s dynamic economy. And Commerce Minister Anand Sharma has raised expectations that trade negotiations with the 27-nation European Union will soon be concluded.  India has also concluded free trade accords with South Korea, Thailand and the ten-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in recent years, and has launched bilateral trade negotiations with China and Canada.

Suggestions have been floated about crafting a U.S.-India free trade agreement (FTA), an idea that would certainly result in significant economic gains for both countries. Despite dramatic increases over the past decade, the bilateral economic relationship is far from achieving critical mass and will require purposeful nurturing to reach its full potential.  Trade and investments flows between the two countries remain a small fraction of the U.S.-China level, and China recently eclipsed the United States as India’s top trading partner. Indeed, it is a telling indicator that President Obama’s visit to India netted trade deals worth some $10 billion, while Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s trip just a month later resulted in $16 billion in business deals – this despite the increased diplomatic tensions that color India-China relations. Moreover, the two countries used the Wen visit to announce an ambitious effort to nearly double their trade in the next five years to $100 billion annually. For all of the spectacular improvement in U.S-India ties, India is still only the 14th largest trading partner for the United States and India remains a comparatively minor destination for U.S. investment flows.

So a far-reaching multi-dimensional U.S.-India FTA deserves an important spot on the bilateral agenda, though one must also admit the difficulties in forging one. Given that Washington and New Delhi are at loggerheads in the Doha Round negotiations, as well as the unpromising political climate in the United States regarding trade policy, the prospects for a broad-based bilateral FTA are not strong in the foreseeable future.  Moreover, the agricultural access issues that will need to be included are highly problematic for both sides. Consider, for example, that India’s negotiations with the European Union have lasted nearly four years and since the EU is not a large exporter of farm products, agricultural issues have not been the major obstacle in the EU-India FTA talks that they would be in an U.S.-India negotiation. At best, Washington and New Delhi should announce a commitment to signing such an accord by 2015, even if it is one whose provisions take effect over an extended period. An excellent opportunity to make such an announcement is in early April, when the next round of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue convenes in New Delhi.

But even as Washington and New Delhi hash out the terms of a broad-based FTA, trade officials should focus the bulk of their energies on an accord that promises a large payoff in the immediate term. A sweeping initiative aimed at capitalizing on mutual synergies in the area of high-technology trade would do just that.

The high-tech sector plays a critical – and largely complementary – role in the economies of both nations, and the United States has been a prominent factor in the spectacular development of the Indian IT sector. Yet overall bilateral trade in advanced technology products is surprisingly low and important synergies remain untapped. And unlike a more comprehensive FTA – entailing prolonged negotiations, unwieldy bargaining tradeoffs and protracted coalition-building at home – an arrangement with a limited but sharp focus on the innovation economy could likely be formulated relatively quickly, and its self-evident “win-win” features would override bureaucratic timidity and domestic opposition.

A model for such an initiative exists in the 1997 Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which eliminated tariffs on a range of capital goods, intermediate inputs and final products in the information and communications technology sector. The agreement was negotiated by 29 original countries (then representing about 80 percent of the global IT trade). Although conducted under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, the agreement was formulated quickly outside of its normal (and cumbersome) negotiating process. The final agreement was quickly joined by other countries (including India) and currently has over 70 participants (collectively representing 97 percent of the global IT trade). The ITA is credited with spurring world trade in IT products, currently estimated at $4 trillion annually, and remains the only industry-specific comprehensive free trade agreement ever signed.

While the ITA is still in effect, its value has been significantly diluted by a series of technological developments in the period since its creation. Specifically, disputes have arisen among the signatories over how to apply the agreement to hundreds of new IT products that were not foreseen a decade ago and on addressing the issue of non-tariff barriers. Moreover, multi-party negotiations to update the ITA have been stalled for years.

In light of these problems, the United States and India should launch a bilateral effort to further liberalize trade and deepen engagement in the IT field or, even more one that covers the entire range of advanced technology products and services.  This agreement could then be opened to the participation of other like-minded countries.  Given the vital role of the high-tech sector in the American and Indian economies, not to mention the broader world economy, such an initiative would pay robust commercial dividends.  Additionally, with Washington and New Delhi at odds in the Doha Round talks, this initiative would have great political value, further solidifying the U.S.-India partnership and providing an important example of joint leadership in the global economy between developed and emerging nations.  Finally, it would be a good down payment on the Obama administration’s pledge to double U.S. exports over the next five years, as well as India’s effort to double its own trade levels.

An effort focused on crafting a bilateral free trade mechanism relevant to the advanced technology sectors would instill a level of momentum in bilateral ties that has been noticeably missing since George W. Bush left the White House. The Obama state visit succeeded in righting a relationship that had been adrift for the better part of two years.  But with the civilian nuclear accord now a done deal, officials in both governments are still searching for a bold, creative initiative capable of driving relations forward.  An exchange that occurred at the start of the Obama administration is instructive. In January 2009, Richard Boucher, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, suggested to Shivshankar Menon, then India’s Foreign Secretary and now Prime Minister Singh’s National Security Advisor, that both capitals needed to find “the next big idea” to animate bilateral affairs. Menon concurred, noting that in the absence of something that captures the imagination “Indians were beginning to view the relationship with the U.S. as only about political-military and nuclear issues.”

Focusing on the high-tech agenda would be a very good way to stir imaginations in both countries. It would underscore the critical role that economic engagement has played in launching the new era in U.S.-India affairs.  Indeed, increased private-sector ties will be one key in securing the growth of broad-based, resilient relations over the long term, since they work to limit the risk that momentary political and diplomatic frictions could escalate and disrupt the overall bilateral partnership.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Invading the strategic space: the Dragon fires another salvo at India

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By A Adityanjee
Indian Review of Global Affairs

The Chinese have fired yet another salvo in its cloak and dagger strategic games directed at India. It has gone totally unnoticed in the Indian media but for the last few days, both the Peoples’ Daily of China and the China Daily along with their Indian Sinophile minions have been crowing about the latest Chinese “smart” success in invading India’s international strategic space. By itself, the current Chinese salvo seems pretty innocuous but it has far reaching consequences. The stapled visa issue also started as an innocuous action by low level visa officers in the Chinese embassy. One has to read in between the tea leaves to ascertain Chinese motives. By these aggressive containment efforts, China has proved once again that it is not a friend or an ally of India but at worst a determined and hostile strategic adversary and at best a peer competitor.

There is a very clear cut pattern to Chinese geo-political endeavours. China is behaving as a classical hegemon that is determined to prevent emergence of a rival power by any means. Despite India’s serious reservations, a few years ago, China manipulated the SAARC process to enter as an observer, on an  Invitation from Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh When India wanted to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the full membership was frozen and India was again hyphenated with Pakistan and Iran as an observer. China is the only country among the P5 nations that has yet to endorse India’s candidature for the permanent membership of the UNSC. This, even though China has been making noises about harmony, democracy and consensus building in the UNSC reform process. This will help the Coffee Group (so-called United for Consensus group) orchestrated by Pakistan.

China had initially put up a number of conditions at the time of approval of the India-US civil nuclear energy deal by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Ultimately, the U.S. forced China to support the deal in the NSG. Now, China wants a similar deal in the NSG for its all-weather friend and client state Pakistan. Turning to the ASEAN, China has, for last several years prevented India’s entry by stringently opposing the ASEAN plus six formula that includes India (ASEAN, Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and US) while supporting the ASEAN plus three formula (ASEAN, China, U.S. and Japan). We also see continued exclusion of India from the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Conference). Primarily as a result of Chinese machinations, the APEC is not ready to enlarge itself. If we carefully analyse the Chinese behaviour towards India, not only has China tried to confine India to the sub-continent as a mere regional player, but also China has made no secret of its efforts to contain India’s rising profile in other international fora to suit its narrow mercantile and hegemonic purposes.

At the same time, China has been seconding the Manmohan Singh mantra about the world having enough space for both China and India to rise peacefully at the same time. Similar to Nehru’s endorsement of “Panchsheel”, the current Indian PM has fallen in the same trap laid by China for India in the international organizations. Nehru was privately characterised as a “useful idiot” by the Chinese leadership. One wonders what Hu Jintao is saying about Dr. Singh privately. A few years ago, India’s then petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar was naively talking about developing hydrocarbon resources jointly with China, while China successfully outbid India for every hydrocarbon asset internationally whether in Africa or closer to home in Myanmar. Indian politicians have failed to learn from the previous treacherous behaviour on part of China, and regularly succumb to Chinese bullying. The lack of proactive strategic planning has always been missing from India’s leadership’s mindset and time and again we are left to react to geo-political situations by fire-fighting each avoidable crisis.

Although India and China have tangoed at the G20, RIC, BRIC, BASIC and SCO groupings for a few years now, China has been keen to neutralise India’s influence in the IBSA, a grouping that excludes China specifically. India has been lukewarm to the idea of China joining the IBSA because China is not a democracy while all the three countries of IBSA are thriving democracies in three separate continents. China has been working very hard with Brazil and South Africa for the last couple of years to achieve its stated purpose. The next BRIC meeting is scheduled in April 2011 in Beijing. And, lo and behold, China has had the chutzpah to foist South Africa on to the BRIC. Enlarging the economic grouping to BRICS tremendously helps China’s foreign policy objectives of containing Indian economic, strategic, political and diplomatic influence. China has effectively managed to collapse BRIC and IBSA into one single grouping (BRICS). Currently China is South Africa’s largest trading partner and South Africa is the largest destination in Africa for China’s direct investment. South Africa’s small population, the size of its economy and the relatively slow growth rate did not meet the original BRIC standards. By inviting South Africa to BRIC(S), China has deftly dented India’s economic outreach in Africa. China has also quickly out-manoeuvred the proposed India-US collaboration and cooperation in Africa as suggested by President Barack Obama during his November 2010 India trip recently.

By this master-stroke, China has shown the audacity to adopt the colonial and imperialistic policy of “Divide and Rule” vis-a-vis the G4 countries (Brazil, India, Germany and Japan) who are aspiring to be members of the UNSC as permanent members. Brazil has been torn asunder from the G4 in toto and firmly aligned with China in the now enlarged BRICS. By claiming the leadership of BRICS and harping on its political role in the developing world, China has tried to marginalise India’s rise as an emerging pole in the emerging oligo-polar geo-political balance of power hierarchy. For all practical purposes, we can say goodbye to IBSA as an economic vehicle for India to access increasingly lucrative African and Latin American markets. Chinese efforts are ostensibly geared towards strengthening South Africa’s and Brazil’s claims for the UNSC permanent membership while simultaneously over-looking and demeaning India’s global role. People’s Daily Online ominously notes that “In 2011, all the members of the BRICS countries will serve as members of the UN security council, permanent or non-permanent. Their active roles deserve people’s attention in the year to come”. China Daily, while neglecting India focuses on the role of China, Russia and Brazil have played in the international arena.

India has now very hard strategic choices. It should insist that BRICS in its latest avatar must remain primarily an economic block without any scope for creeping politicisation of the economic group into a geo-political formation. India cannot be seen to be opposing South Africa’s entry into the BRICS for historical, diplomatic and geo-political reasons, though it remains lukewarm to the proposal. India should take a serious note of China’s audacious move in the international chess game and counteract it by joining the ASEAN formally, resurrecting the BIMSTEC and vigorously strengthening the IBSA as a trade block. India should use her current membership of the UNSC to catapult into the NSG as a full-fledged member. India should make determined efforts to join the proposed East Asian Economic Community and prevent her further exclusion from any economic or trade group in order to balance China’s growing influence in international economic diplomacy.

(Dr Adityanjee is President, Council for Strategic Affairs, New Delhi)


(The article originally appeared at www.irgamag.com. USINPAC and IRGA are content partners.)