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Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Rather Unexpectedly, India’s Neighborhood is Looking Up

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Things are going bad domestically, but at least India’s regional position is improving

 

A regular concern of this blog is the internal constraints on India’s rise as a great power.  But for decades the country’s global aspirations also have been encumbered by a quite problematic regional environment.  Unlike China, India has had the misfortune of residing in a highly volatile neighborhood, surrounded by weak and unstable, and often hostile, countries that habitually top various failed-states indices.   Fortunately, and somewhat unexpectedly, the situation is starting to improve.

As detailed in a previous post, India’s relations with Pakistan, its perennial arch-nemesis, are warming, driven by growing trade ties.  And against all odds, a remarkable measure of political stability has taken root in Islamabad.  The civilian government is weak and unpopular but looks like it will become the first one in the country’s 65-year existence to complete its allotted term.  It’s even managed to claw back authority in the foreign policy arena from the overbearing military establishment.

To be sure, Pakistan’s long-term prospects continue to be cloudy at best and the ever-latent rivalry with India will be re-ignited by coming regional scramble to secure influence over post-NATO Afghanistan.  But the present situation along India’s western flank is much better than one could have imagined just a year ago.

Ditto for the eastern flank, where the national fortunes of Bangladesh and Myanmar are trending upwards.  Not too long ago, Bangladesh was a pitiable basket case, known for its cyclone disasters, ferry boat tragedies and outbreaks of famine.  But the country has maintained a 5-6 percent growth rate for much of the last two decades and earned a spot on Goldman Sachs’ “Next 11” roster of countries with a high potential to become economic success stories.  It is a prime destination for labor-intensive manufacturing that is now migrating out of China and a hub for the global garment trade.  It has largely tamed the scourge of religious radicalism that keeps Pakistan, its erstwhile sibling, aflame.  And it has now embarked upon a cooperative approach vis-à-vis India, eschewing the confrontational line it pursued for decades.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka last September is widely seen as inaugurating a new era in India-Bangladesh relations.

Like Pakistan, Bangladesh is just four years removed from military dictatorship and it is conceivable that the army will once again storm out of its barracks given the prospect of political turbulence as the 2013 parliamentary elections approach.  The country also faces long-term environmental challenges.  Still, the overall situation there is a welcome relief to security managers in New Delhi.

Things also are suddenly looking up in Myanmar, which was part of the British empire in India until the mid-1930s.   Despite being blessed by abundant natural resources, decades of economic mismanagement made it one of Asia’s poorest countries.  Repressive, xenophobic and quixotic military rule guaranteed that it was an international pariah subject to Western embargoes as well as suspicion by even its Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) brethren.

But a series of dramatic political and economic reforms over the past year, which have prompted a lifting of U.S. and European sanctions, have given rise to new hopes.   According to media reports (here and here), Yangon, the country’s commercial hub, has become a boomtown filled with foreign investors searching out long-denied deals.  Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund released a report highlighting the country’s “historic opportunity” to become the next economic frontier in Asia.  Similarly, the Asia director of the United Nations Development Program notes that Myanmar “could become the economic engine of the region,” while an Asian Development Bank official states that it “has the capability for private-sector growth that we haven’t seen anywhere else for a long time.”

The new stability and prosperity among the immediate neighbors promises to bring economic and security dividends to New Delhi.   For all the talk about the country as a rising global actor, it remains a less than “fully convincing hegemon within its own subregion,” as David Malone, former Canadian ambassador in New Delhi, recently put it.  Despite the common civilizational and historical links that permeate South Asia, India up to now has been unable to integrate the area in the same way that China has economically stitched together the much more culturally diverse and geographically dispersed East Asian region.

The result is a strategic paradox for India: A broadening diplomatic, economic and even military profile in East Asia, juxtaposed with a rather lackluster record of leadership in its own back yard.  In recent years, New Delhi’s economic diplomacy has been firing on all cylinders in East Asia, penning trade and commercial deals with Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the ten-country ASEAN.  It is also deepening security relations with Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.  Yet until recently, it has not displayed the same dynamism in its sub-continental diplomacy.  Conspicuously unsuccessful were efforts at promoting cross-border economic cooperation via the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation – a forum largely created by New Delhi.

But that may be changing.  Deepening economic linkages with Pakistan promise to enliven the 2006 South Asia Free Trade Agreement which up until this point has been all but a dead letter.  Last week, New Delhi also approved an ambitious $7.6 billion gas pipeline project that runs from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India.

New Delhi has become more magnanimous and imaginative in its relations with Dhaka.  It has liberalized Bangladeshi apparel imports; offered generous terms for a free trade accord geared toward services to complement an existing pact for goods; and worked out agreements to settle complex border disputes and nettlesome water-sharing problems.

With Myanmar distancing itself from China’s longtime patronage, New Delhi is moving with celerity to fill the void, including developing the deep-water port of Sittwe on the Bay of Bengal.  This landmark $120 million project, scheduled for completion next year, would directly link India’s economically-isolated and insurgency-ranked northeastern states to the growing markets of Southeast Asia and so is significant for both commercial and geopolitical reasons.

Citing Sri Lanka’s flirtations with China and New Delhi’s slow response to the toppling of the democratic government in the Maldives in February, some Indian pundits lament the erosion of regional influence.  But India’s position in the neighborhood, at least for the time being, is actually brightening.  Now if New Delhi could only get its act together on domestic policy, it would go places.

This commentary was originally posted on Chanakya’s Notebook.  I invite you to follow me on Twitter.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Red Lines and Reversed Roles

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The South China Sea controversy demonstrates how Beijing’s actions will inevitably draw Washington and New Delhi closer together.

The respective security roles that the United States and India traditionally play in East Asia seemed to switch last week. By deciding not to supply Taiwan with the new fighter aircraft it has requested, the U.S. appeared to defer to China, which had cautioned that the sale was a “red line” that must not be crossed. In contrast, New Delhi’s determined sally into the South China Sea, in defiance of Beijing’s explicit warnings, exemplified the strategic assertion that the Obama administration has been urging on India. The dichotomy offers a glimpse of the shifting power dynamics now underway in Asia and, perhaps, a preview of what the regional security order might look like beyond the horizon.

america20xy.comThe U.S. decision to refurbish Taiwan’s aging F-16 fleet rather than provide it with more sophisticated versions of the aircraft is taken by some in Asia as the latest sign of China’s ascent and America’s subsidence in the western Pacific, an area long thought of as a U.S. lake. The Associated Press reported that Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin sees the decision primarily as a function of Beijing’s growing financial leverage vis-à-vis Washington. “It has a large debt and if China will try to apply pressure, the U.S. can end up in trouble,” he said. “The U.S. has to temper its relations with Taiwan for China.” The report also quoted a South Korean defense analyst as saying that some in that country have reached the conclusion that it would be better to bandwagon with China than continue to adhere to the decades-old security alliance with the United States.

By striking coincidence, a similar storyline was being replicated last week in another part of the world in which Washington has long exercised sway. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner put in an unprecedented appearance at a gathering of European finance officials called to address the region’s burgeoning debt crisis. His presence was intended to signal U.S. concern about the spillover potential of Europe’s financial woes. But some in the audience did not take kindly to his telling them what to do.  Both the Austrian and Belgian finance ministers tartly questioned how the Americans could presume to dispense advice when their own fiscal house is in such visible disarray. One media commentator observed the proceedings underscore that “in the wake of the debt-ceiling debacle, Geithner has lost a significant amount of international heft.” The Europeans, on the other, are much more interested these days in China’s views. With Beijing sitting on top of the world’s largest pile of foreign exchange, regional leaders have started to look to it as a potential financial savior.

India’s actions last week, in contrast, were the very definition of foreign policy steadfastness. On a visit to Vietnam, Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna announced that the overseas arm of India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) would proceed with hydrocarbon exploration activities in the South China Sea, an energy-rich area that in claimed in almost its entirety by Beijing. China has been increasingly brusque in asserting its claim of “indisputable sovereignty” over the waters, which it last year elevated to a “core national interest.” The marker Krishna laid down comes two months after Beijing warned New Delhi against involving itself in the area and after an unusual incident between the INS Airavat, an amphibious warfare vessel, and the Chinese navy off the coast of Vietnam.

New Delhi’s temerity sparked a passionate reaction in the China Times, a nationalist tabloid affiliated with the Communist Party. It lashed out in a lead editorial that India was engaged in “a serious political provocation” that constitutes a major challenge to China’s national resolve. It urged the Chinese leadership to use “every means possible” to reverse Indian actions. And in what seemed to be a retaliatory move, Beijing quickly announced that it would expand seabed explorations in the southwestern Indian Ocean.

Media commentary in India saw things differently. A Times of India editorial averred that “India has done well to hold its ground” and termed the ONGC move as a befitting response to the infrastructure projects China is conducting in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In a similar vein, Harsh V. Pant, a well-known foreign policy expert, noted that if “China wants to expand its presence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, New Delhi’s thinking goes, India can do the same thing in East Asia.” And M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat, called India’s actions “a historic move,” arguing that “India’s ‘Look East’ policy acquires swagger.  The Sino-Indian geostrategic rivalry is not going to be the same again.”

Observing the train of events, Time magazine’s “Global Spin” blog asked “Is This How Wars Start?” Of course, a booming bilateral economic relationship gives New Delhi and Beijing strong reason to moderate impulses toward outright military conflict. But as both countries continue simultaneously to rise in power and prestige, dynamics of competition and one-upmanship will inevitability deepen. This pattern is already evident in their Himalayan border area, in Burma and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean region and as far afield as Africa. And as last week’s events demonstrate, the South China Sea is now emerging as a new arena for strategic rivalry.

Pundits in Washington who doubt the prospects for the United States and India conjoining in a coalition directed against China should take note. The meteoric rise of Beijing’s power and the assertiveness in which it is exercised will ineluctably draw Washington and New Delhi even closer together. As a former U.S. official once predicted, “we don’t need to talk about the containment of China. It will take care of itself as India rises.”