S. Kalyanaraman

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr S Kalyanaraman’s article on India-Japan Strategic partnership to safeguard Asian Territorial Order, titled ‘India, Japan and Preservation of the Asian Territorial Order’ was published in E-International Relations on December 24, 2017.

Read article

• Published: 24 December, 2017

Geo-economics was one among several ideational constructs postulated as the likely defining characteristic of international politics after the end of the Cold War. A neologism coined by Edward Luttwak, the construct was premised on 'the waning importance of military power' in the interactions among the core states of the international system, that is, those located in North America, West Europe, and East Asia.

• Published: November 2017
• Strategic Analysis

In this first of two volumes, Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam offers excellent and concise histories of India’s wars and military operations, starting with the rescue and partial liberation of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947-48 from depredating Pakistani irregulars and ending with the 1971 war for the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan’s genocidal rule. Based on published material available, and supplementing it with interviews, Subramaniam’s India’s Wars provides a layered perspective on the strategic, operational and tactical aspects of these wars and operations.

• Published: July 2017
• Journal of Defence Studies

It is a widely held belief that the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was highly relevant for India and its foreign policy interests during the bipolar era of the Cold War and that it has, since the 1990s, lost this relevance in a unipolar international order.

It is true that NAM played an important role during the Cold War years in furthering many of the causes that India advocated: decolonisation, end to apartheid, global nuclear disarmament, ushering in of new international economic and information orders, etc. But what is generally ignored is the fact that NAM was more or less irrelevant for India in terms of helping to protect and promote its security and interests – the principal criterion by which the utility of a multilateral group should be measured.

NAM’s lack of utility for protecting and promoting India’s security and interests is clearly demonstrated by the diplomatic positions adopted by member countries during the various wars in which India has been involved. On each of these occasions, NAM members invariably adopted diplomatic positions that were not favourable towards or supportive of India.

To begin with, during the 1962 War with China, Ghana and Indonesia – two of the co-founders of NAM, along with India – adopted explicitly pro-China positions. Ghana, which had developed close economic ties with China, even cautioned the United Kingdom against giving military aid to India since it might “aggravate the unfortunate situation”.

In general, most countries of NAM adopted even-handed positions and refused to unequivocally condemn China’s aggression. Astonishing as it may sound for realist ears, Indian leaders and officials were simply dismayed at the behaviour of their nonaligned partners. That dismay also extended to the so-called Colombo states which had put forward the Colombo Proposals. In the light of this experience, the official history of the 1962 War wryly noted the serious limitations of Afro-Asian solidarity, a statement that, by extension, also reflects on the Non-Aligned Movement.

Three years later came the 1965 War with Pakistan. Again, Indonesia not only adopted an anti-India position but also supplied some arms to Pakistan. NAM members from West Asia, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait, adopted pro-Pakistan positions. Overall, India had no active supporters and few sympathisers in the world at large. As The Indian Express noted in an editorial at that time, “we do not seem to have many friends abroad”.

The worst, of course, came during the 1971 War. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kuwait and other Arab states were all fiercely pro-Pakistan. Egypt’s position was particularly dismaying to India, given that it was even unsympathetic to the massive refugee problem that India confronted. If India was disappointed about the diplomatic positions adopted by NAM members from West Asia, the situation was only slightly better in South East Asia. Indonesia once again stood against India and it even compelled a more sympathetic Malaysia into backing Pakistan.
Overall, most NAM countries adopted anti-India diplomatic positions. This was starkly evident during the vote on the UN General Assembly Resolution of 7 December 1971 calling for a ceasefire and withdrawal of forces. Of the total of 129 members of the UN at that time, 104 countries voted for the resolution, which was unfavourable for India and its position that only the establishment of an independent Bangladesh would put a stop to the brutal repression unleashed by the Pakistan military in East Pakistan and create the necessary condition for the return of the 10 million refugees from Indian territory. Only 11 votes were cast against the resolution, with almost all of these coming from the Soviet Union and its satellites. The brutal fact is that most NAM members stood completely opposed to India during the 1971 War.

The one exception to this rule was the diplomatic positions adopted by several NAM members during the Kargil conflict. Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and South Africa highlighted the importance of peaceful dialogue under the Simla Agreement as well as maintaining the Line of Control inviolate. However, the decisions of these countries did not flow from NAM solidarity. Instead, their decisions were a function of the new international diplomatic outreach that India had initiated in the early 1990s as well as in the wake of the 1998 nuclear tests.
In the light of such lack of support from NAM members for India at critical moments in its history, it is astonishing that the dominant view so far has been that NAM was deeply relevant for India during the Cold War years. In reality, the only use NAM had for India was during the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, NAM served as a forum to channel India’s deep dissatisfaction with the international order, characterised as it was by economic, political, and nuclear hierarchies. It was through NAM that India articulated the call for a new international economic order that would cater for the special needs of the developing countries. Similarly, it was through NAM that India articulated the call for a new world information and communication order to provide a greater voice for developing countries in global communications. NAM also served as a forum for India to articulate its views on global nuclear disarmament and the discriminatory nature of the global nuclear order at the centre of which stood the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

As we now know, all of these were failed causes that did not acquire any purchase and have since been abandoned. India in particular, but also most other NAM countries, have integrated themselves to varying degrees within the liberal economic order and have benefited from it. India today is a member of the G20 and its rising economic profile has contributed to the greater resonance of Indian popular culture around the world. In addition, India has declared itself as a nuclear weapons power and has for all practical purposes abandoned the call for global nuclear disarmament. Even India’s dissatisfaction with the nuclear order has waned in the wake of its accommodation into global nuclear commerce and the very real prospects of it becoming a member in various nuclear and dual-use technology cartels. The only dissatisfaction with the international order that India continues to nurture is with respect to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Even in this case, India has sought to assuage itself by gaining verbal assurances from almost all the countries of the world.

Further, since the end of the Cold War, India has become a key member of various multilateral groupings: BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) for protecting and promoting its interests on climate change; G4 for pushing through reforms of the UN Security Council; G20 for managing the world economy; BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) to enhance economic coordination with countries that are similarly placed; and ASEAN-centred institutions, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and Russia-India-China grouping for pursuing political and security interests. These engagements in multiple forums for varying economic, political and security purposes have, in the words of Shashi Tharoor, made the Non-Aligned Movement “largely incidental” to India’s pursuit of its national interest since the end of the Cold War.

In sum, the Non-Aligned Movement was not relevant for promoting India’s important national interests during the Cold War years. And since the end of the Cold War, India’s increasing integration with international economic, political and security structures has led to NAM losing even its earlier limited usefulness as a vehicle for articulating India’s dissatisfaction with the international order.

The article was originally published in Swarajya Magazine

• Published: 29 September, 2016

The Asia-Pacific has emerged as the principal engine of the international economy. It contains three of the world’s largest economies in terms of Gross Domestic Product – America, China and Japan. And it is home to eight of the top 20 economies of the world, to include, India, Russia, Australia, South Korea and Indonesia. The region accounts for 40 per cent of global imports and exports, and for two-thirds of global economic growth. This state of affairs, of the Asia-Pacific being the primary locus of the international economy, is projected to persist in the short and long terms as well despite the current slowdown in growth. At the same time, economic interdependence among the countries of the Asia-Pacific has also steadily intensified. Six of India’s top 10 trading partners in 2014-15 were from this region. Similarly, four of America’s, six of China’s, seven of Japan’s, and eight of ASEAN’s top 10 trading partners in 2014 were from the Asia-Pacific.

According to one strain of the liberal theory of international relations, economic interdependence ameliorates conflict and fosters cooperation. Given the growing economic interdependence in the Asia-Pacific, liberal institutionalists such as Richard Rosecrance argue that peace and cooperation are likely to prevail over conflict and competition. Operating on this premise, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has over the years established several multilateral groupings designed to bind and commit its major Asia-Pacific partners to the habits of cooperation and consensus ingrained in the ASEAN Way.

But developments in the political and security spheres are tending to push the Asia-Pacific in the opposite direction, leading to predictions that the region is at the cusp of emerging as the primary cockpit of international politics. The most important factor in this regard has been China’s rise: its spectacular economic growth, growing military capabilities, and quest for recognition as a great power equal to America as well as the dominant power in Asia. The security concerns that many Asia-Pacific countries began to entertain at the onset of China’s rise have begun to intensify in recent years because of its confident, even assertive, conduct. According to Orville Schell, China has stopped emphasising upon its peaceful rise during the last two years. Instead, Chinese leaders believe that their country’s time has come, that they no longer need to heed Deng Xiaoping’s advice about hiding capabilities and biding time, and that, if China cannot get what it wants peacefully, it is now powerful enough to get it through other, meaning coercive and military, means.

Security concerns about China are not being driven only by its rise to great power status and assertive behaviour. They are underpinned by two other aspects: 1) China being a party to several regional territorial disputes and power political competitions; and 2) China being an important factor in some conflicts among other countries of the region.

With respect to the first of these aspects, China’s commitment to the absorption of Taiwan, peacefully if possible but through war if necessary, is a case in point. Further, it is a party to maritime territorial disputes with some ASEAN countries in the South China Sea, where it has upped the ante in recent years by laying claim to nearly 90 per cent of these international waters and marking its physical and military presence there. China is also a party to a maritime territorial dispute with Japan over the Senkaku or Diaoyu. More importantly, there is a strong element of power political rivalry between the two countries, with Japan concerned about becoming vulnerable to China’s growing strength and eventually attaining hegemony in the region. Similarly, the India-China relationship is also marked by the intractable border dispute, China’s expansive claims to Indian territory in recent years, and a power political competition in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region engendered by the growing Chinese economic and military presence and influence in these regions.

Finally, China and America appear to be getting enmeshed in what Professor Graham Allison has referred to as the Thucydides Trap, a phenomenon that involves inevitable competition and even conflict between a “rising power” and a “ruling power” because of “the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway, on the one hand, and the fear, insecurity, and determination to defend the status quo this engenders in the established power, on the other.” This is evident from the fact that China is seeking to exclude America from Asia both by calling for Asians to manage their own affairs and by proposing the One Belt One Road initiative to economically tie Eurasia together, while America is intent on preserving the dominant position it has enjoyed in the region since the end of the Second World War through its pivot and rebalancing policy which has both economic and military components.

In addition, China is an important factor in both the inter-Korean and India-Pakistan conflicts. Notwithstanding some non-official Chinese characterisations of North Korea in recent years as a “difficult ally” and even an “embarrassment”, China, in the words of Ted Dalen Carpenter, continues to view that country as “an important buffer state between the Chinese homeland and the rest of Northeast Asia that is dominated by the United States and its allies.” Consequently, it is likely to play an important role in any conflict that may break out involving North Korea as well as in the future disposition of the Korean peninsula.

Similarly, China views Pakistan as an ally that is both able and willing to serve as a counterweight to India and thus constrain India from attaining a dominant position in the subcontinent. In this regard, John Garver cites one Chinese analyst as bluntly stating that an improvement in the adversarial relations between India and Pakistan “would be a precondition for India adopting more aggressive policies toward China.” Accordingly, China has endeavoured to strengthen Pakistan’s conventional and nuclear weapons capabilities as an integral part of their all-weather friendship. And in various joint statements issued with Pakistan, China has repeatedly affirmed its “full support” for Pakistan’s efforts “to uphold its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

This list of disputes and rivalries to which China is a party or in which it is an important factor does not obviously mean that there are no other inter-state conflicts and rivalries in the Asia-Pacific. India-Pakistan relations continue to lurch from one crisis to another. The maritime dispute in the South China Sea also involves rival claims among Southeast Asian countries themselves, which, during the 1990s, had resulted in military incidents between Vietnam and Taiwan and Vietnam and the Philippines. Japan and South Korea are parties to a dispute over the Takeshima or Dokdo islets. Further, their relationship also remains hostage to the issue of Japan’s militaristic conduct in the first half of the 20th century. Finally, Japan is also a party to a maritime territorial dispute with Russia over the Kurile Islands. Russia is determined to maintain control over these islands, as evident from both its July 2013 conduct of a large naval exercise, which, according to reports, simulated “a response to a hypothetical attack by Japanese and US forces”, and its announcement of a naval build-up in the region.

In response to this evolving state of affairs in the Asia-Pacific, each of the major actors in the region has begun to initiate policy measures designed to promote its security and interests. Thus, Japan has reaffirmed its alliance with America, declared its intent to respond jointly with America to future regional crises and conflicts, amended its constitution to assume greater and wider military responsibilities, and diplomatically reached out to India to form a countervailing partnership vis-à-vis China. America has declared a pivot or rebalancing of economic, foreign policy and military priorities towards the Asia-Pacific. Integral elements of this strategy include: positioning a greater proportion of military assets in the region, strengthening and modernising traditional security alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and the Philippines, forging new diplomatic understandings with Vietnam, Indonesia and India, empowering regional institutions, seeking a new equilibrium in relations with China, and establishing the Trans-Pacific Partnership which pointedly excludes China but also aspires to establish a region-wide free trade area.

Russia too has declared a pivot to the Asia-Pacific with the aims of boosting economic growth in its far-eastern territories through closer association with the dynamic economies of the region, enhancing its military presence so as to acquire a role in the security affairs of the region, and positioning itself as an intermediate power between the US-led West and China-led East. At the same time, it is also forging an entente with China and is keen to integrate its Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) project with China’s One Belt One Road initiative.

For its part, China has put forward the One Belt One Road initiative, which, if successful, would transform Eurasia through massive infrastructure development, integrate the economies of this vast region with the Chinese economy, and contribute to China’s emergence as an alternate economic and political model. At the same time, China has also issued the call of “Asia for Asians”, which envisions the people of Asia running their own affairs, solving their own problems and upholding Asian security themselves without the involvement and interference of non-Asian actors (read America). In effect, the Chinese objectives are to economically tie Eurasia together, with China serving as the core, and considerably reduce America’s role and influence in Asian affairs. The practical consequence of China achieving these two related objectives would be to make it the regional hegemon on the Asian continent.

In sum, the unfolding policy initiatives of these four major countries indicate that the Asia-Pacific is poised at the cusp of a new power rivalry between China and possibly Russia on one side and the United States and its allies, especially Japan, on the other.

India is an integral part of this process of the Asia-Pacific’s transition into the fulcrum of the international system because of the size, vitality and interdependence of its economy, its growing political and security interests in the region, and its defence capabilities. Until now, the principal endeavour of India’s foreign policy has been to leverage the conditions of economic interdependence and general tranquillity in the Asia-Pacific for fostering closer economic, political and security relationships with all the major players in the region. By doing so, India has been seeking to accelerate domestic economic growth, establish bilateral relations on a sound footing, and structure a stable regional security order. Such an omnibus approach of developing closer relationships with all the major actors of the Asia-Pacific may, however, neither suffice nor be practicable in the unfolding circumstances of the region’s emerging economic and security rivalries. “We must now choose”, declared former National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon in a recent public lecture. That choice will, however, be inevitably dictated not by the highly preferable objective of domestic economic transformation but by the overriding objective of safeguarding territorial integrity and national security from the policies and actions of rivals and adversaries. Attaining that overriding objective necessarily involves the adoption of a foreign policy framework based on balance of power, or more accurately, balance of threat, considerations to construct an equilibrated and multi-polar Asian order.

The article was originally published in the July 2016 issue of Defence and Security Alert.

• Published: 14 July, 2016

Ceding PoK as part of a settlement does not comport with India’s national and strategic interests, especially in terms of dealing with the challenge posed by China-Pakistan collaboration.

• Published: May 03, 2016
• IDSA Comments

The ceasefire decision was influenced by the combination of three factors: absence of the prospect of a swift victory, concerns about Chinese military intervention, and concerted diplomatic pressure from major powers.

• Published: September 21, 2015
• Special Feature

Shooting for a Century: Finding Answers to the India–Pakistan Conundrum, by Stephen P. Cohen

• Published: July 2015
• Journal of Defence Studies

Nearly 2,500 years ago the Greek historian Thucydides noted that the foreign policy of Athens was driven by fear, interest and honour.

• Published: July 2013
• Strategic Analysis

The United Kingdom (UK) is keen on establishing a ‘stronger, wider and deeper’ relationship with India. It is ‘determined to make’ defence cooperation ‘an essential part’ of this relationship. London sees such a relationship with an India that will shape the twenty-first century as ‘an essential pillar’ in its ‘broader strategy’ to fashion a role for itself in Asia.

• Published: January 2013
• Journal of Defence Studies