Titli Basu

Given the fluidity in East Asian geopolitics and China’s arrival as a key variable in the international system, Japan has been forced to respond to the asymmetrical power politics. As China is carving out a sphere of influence for itself which is increasingly eclipsing Japan’s international stature, Abe has the task of presenting the case of where and how does Japan fit in.

• Published: April 2017
• Journal of Defence Studies

Associate Fellow, Dr. Titli Basu’s article on ‘Forging India-Japan Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific Theatre’ was published in Journal of Indian Ocean Studies Vol. 25, No 1. April 2017. ISSN 0972-3080.

• Published: 1 April, 2017

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president, Japan is weighing the geopolitical and geo-economic implications of the new economic and security policies that his administration may adopt.

• Published: December 20, 2016
• IDSA Comments

Furthering the premise of an increasingly severe security environment, Japan’s latest defence white paper has accorded relatively more space to its ‘strong concerns’ over China’s ‘active maritime expansion’ as well as progress in North Korea’s missile development programme.

• Published: August 22, 2016
• IDSA Comments

Research Assistant, IDSA, Dr Titli Basu’s article on ‘India’s Balance of Interest in the Asian Century’ was published in Alternative Scenarios, The Asan Forum, Vol. 4, No 4, August 2016. Online ISSN 2288-5757.

• Published: 1 August, 2016

Japan’s long-standing alliance with the US is the key feature of its defence and security policy. However, China’s rise and impact on shaping the regional security architecture, and the vigour of US commitment in the backdrop of a G2 formulation, is making Japan diversify her options. Thus, India now features in the Japanese idea of Asia while it struggles to cope with the fluidity of the regional security landscape. This article critically analyses the increasing space accorded to India and the variables behind Japan’s courtship of it.

• Published: July 2016
• Journal of Defence Studies

The year 2015 witnessed the formation of new strategic triangulations involving India. Frameworks including US-India-Japan and India-Australia-Japan were added to the existing Indian trilateral engagements, including the India-China-Russia arrangement, which has been in operation since 2002. The new trilateral designs, especially the US-India-Japan arrangement, are sometimes interpreted through the narrative of fluidity in regional geopolitics, especially managing the emergence of a sinocentric Asian Order. The key question is whether the proposed norms and value-based trilateral designs in the Indo-Pacific are aimed at containing the expansion of Chinese clout or are part of triangular fluidity, where the United States, India, and Japan work in coordination on a few, specific issues, while disagreeing on others.

It is critical to note that while two of the three nations in the US-India-Japan triangle are formal alliance partners for more than six decades, India believes in the notion of strategic autonomy as the guiding principle of its foreign policy rooted in its national identity. Undeniably, the relative importance of each nation in the eyes of the others has evolved over the years, but each actor in the equation, with their apparent asymmetry and differences in relative power, are solely guided by its national interests. To comprehend India’s approach towards this strategic triangle, it is critical to trace the position of an emerging India as it began featuring in the US-Japan equation, draw from the depths of their bilateral relations, and situate the newly upgraded trilateral in the larger regional dynamics.

India in the US-Japan alliance

The post-Cold War realities led to readjustment of US attitudes toward India. Escalating US interest in India as a stabilizing factor in Asia led Washington to cultivate robust bilateral relations. As the Defense Department recognised India as a long-term security partner, India started figuring in Japanese security discourse too. Consequently, Japan was required to reassess its approach toward India, which was for long shaped by the ideological compass of the Cold War divide. Fostering partnership with India featured in the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee, which welcomed “India as a strong and enduring Asia-Pacific partner,”1 and pushed for promoting trilateral dialogue involving the United States, Japan, and India. Moreover, at the Raisina Dialogue in March 2016, Admiral Harry B. Harris argued for expanding the India-Japan-Australia trilateral to a quadrilateral including the United States,2 facilitating the rules-based order. This concurs with Abe’s initialQuadrilateral Initiative.

Despite the narrative of shared values, India barely featured in the radar of the United States or Japan before the 2000s. But eventually India’s standing as a credible naval power with potential to safeguard critical maritime space caught the attention of these two alliance partners and both started investing energy in building a partnership with India. Moreover, developments in the India-US relations facilitated India-Japan relations. Some experts have opined that Japan considers the alliance with the United States as the mainstay of its security policy, and it utilizes other partnerships such as with India to support the alliance.3 Thus, India found a place in Japan’s maiden National Security Strategy and the National Defense Program Guidelines.

Bilateralism Shaping the U.S.-India-Japan Trilateral Formation

The US-India-Japan trilateral ministerial framework has drawn from the strengthening of all three bilateral relationships. Pushing the envelope of cooperation, the US-Japan-India trilateral dialogue at the director-general level, which was instituted in 2011, has been elevated to a ministerial dialogue in September 2015. Maritime interests, with a focus on disaster response capabilities and humanitarian assistance, constitute one of the important components of this trilateral design. Cooperation on regional connectivity, women’s skill enhancement, and economic empowerment also featured in the inaugural trilateral meeting.4Subsequently in October, Japan was incorporated into the India-US Malabar exercises as a permanent feature. The goal is improving cooperation between navies and buttressing capacities for prompt action while confronting challenges related to disaster prevention and relief.5

The US Department of Defense articulates strategic congruence between its rebalance policy and India’s Act East course and further argues the case of buttressing India’s maritime strengths as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean region and beyond.6 The US-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region enunciated in January 2015 and the US-India Joint Statement on the Visit of Secretary of Defense Carter to India in April 20167 underscore the importance of safeguarding critical maritime sea-lanes and ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, including in the South China Sea. Furthermore, the Joint Strategic Vision outlines the objective of boosting regional dialogues and advancing trilateral consultations with regional countries in the coming five years.8

As Secretary Carter and Defense Minister Parrikar agreed, in principle, to conclude a Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, and India’s Agreement Concerning Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology Cooperation with Japan instilled new depth to the bilateral equation, India’s Special Strategic and Global Partnership with Japan and the Joint Vision 2025 added qualitative value to the bilateral relationship. The joint vision, among other issues, discussed maritime themes and endorsed the principles of peaceful settlement of disputes, the rule of law, freedom of navigation, and over flight, and noted the importance of sea lines of communication (SLOCs) in the South China Sea for regional energy security and trade and commerce. Both urged “states to avoid unilateral actions that could lead to tensions in the region.”9

Situating the Triangle within the Larger Regional Dynamics

What is the significance of the US-India-Japan ministerial trilateral framework for India? Any attempt at seeking an answer needs to situate this trilateral within the larger regional geopolitical and geo-economic landscape. Popular perceptions often subscribe to the notion of balancing China. Analyzing this trilateral in isolation is too narrow an approach at a time when China is pushing for a new model of great power relations with the United States and the region has concerns regarding the strength of US commitment in the backdrop of an evolving G2 paradigm. There may be structural tensions between the established power and the rising challenger in the Asia-Pacific region, but beyond that there is evidence of consonance between the two in other regions, for instance in Afghanistan. Moreover, the economic component of US-China relations has significantly complicated the strategic paradigm.

Under Modi, India is certainly more forthcoming in articulating its position on a few specific regional issues where India’s interests are involved. This triangle, for instance, discussed freedom of navigation in South China Sea, but this in no way limits what Modi envisions as the strategic role for India as a leading power, not just a balancer in international politics.10 Since India is not as dependent on the United States with regard to its security as Japan is, India is guided by a balance of interests and realistically engages with all the key players including China on particular issues. For instance, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, while Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj discussed maritime issues in the inaugural US-India-Japan meeting, she also participated in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) foreign ministers’ meeting, where climate change negotiations and reconstitution of global financial institutions emerged as shared concerns.

In April 2016, while India invested its energy in reinforcing defense cooperation with the United States during Defense Secretary Carter’s visit, it also discussed the prospects of an “open, inclusive, indivisible and transparent security and cooperation architecture”11 in the Asia-Pacific region with Russia and China. The South China Sea also featured in the latest Russia-India-China foreign ministers’ trilateral meeting, where India, in keeping with its position, argued that the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) should be implemented. In February 2016, the first round of the China-India maritime cooperation dialogue was held, where they decided to increase practical cooperation in joint efforts to ensure maritime security.

India conducted a joint counter-terrorism drill with China around the same time as Modi created space for Japan in the Malabar exercises in October 2015. Engaging with the Chinese military is not exclusive to India; the Royal Australian Navy conducted exercises with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) navy and the start of US freedom of navigation operations in October-November. Earlier in August, China, the United States, and Australia held military drills aimed at strengthening the three armies’ inter-operational abilities. China also joined the US-led Rim of the Pacific maritime exercises.

It is true that all three actors have their divergences with China, but all of them are engaging with China, at their own pace, given its significance in the Asian calculus. For instance, Japanese bureaucrats worked hard for resumption of summit meetings with President Xi Jinping and, subsequently, for the China-Japan-South Korea trilateral summit. The point is that an anti-China thought process should not motivate US-India-Japan cooperation. It is not necessary also since these three nations have other shared interests for working together.12 There should be a realistic expectation of what this trilateral can achieve.

India’s Approach

India’s approach toward geopolitical realities is guided by a balance between engagement and autonomy.13 Under Modi it has enunciated greater strategic coordination as witnessed within both trilateral and bilateral designs. However, this should not be interpreted as dilution of the fundamental values of Indian foreign policy. India is expected to pursue its quest for multi-polarity and great power identity and pragmatically engage with all the important players including the United States and China to ensure regional peace and stability, which are critical for facilitating development. Foreign Secretary Jaishankar argued that as India aims to modernize, it seeks resources and technology from global partners. This is the key focus in India’s diplomatic endeavors. “Both the United States and China—and indeed the ASEAN, Japan, Republic of Korea and Europe—can contribute to this transformation. The centrality of this commitment ensures that India will set a positive and inter-active agenda with other major powers and groupings.”14

Modi aims to bolster India’s leading power status. To this end, he has articulated India’s vision for the Asia-Pacific and engaged in strategic coordination, including the US-India-Japan as one among several trilaterals. There is certainly greater coordination on a few specific regional issues, but Modi has simultaneously engaged with China in building a closer developmental partnership and adopted a different approach with regard to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank from the United States and Japan. India is expected to boldly engage, but certainly not align, with all regional actors to leverage partnerships. India does not subscribe to the practice of alliance formation. Balance of interest is driving the Indian leadership since it does not see a zero-sum game.

The article was originally published in the The Asan Forum

• Published: 27 May, 2016

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Partnership for Quality Infrastructure in Asia (PQI) aims to consolidate Japan’s regional clout among the emerging Asian economies. PQI, which is often viewed as a competing formulation vis-à-vis the Chinese mega infrastructure designs, is critical to achieving the goals of Japan’s national growth strategy.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe at a ceremony, in New Delhi, India. (Photo: AAP) Japan aims to promote high quality infrastructure partnerships and facilitate expansion to emerging markets in Asia, and enable a revolution in productivity by investment in the future.

Prior to conceptualising PQI, the June 2013 Japan Revitalization Strategy articulated the significance of creating new frontiers for growth by capturing the international infrastructure market. It argued for tripling infrastructure sales by 2020. The stage is set in Southeast and South Asia where the latest manifestation of the China–Japan contest is evolving in the infrastructure sector.

Abe is aggressively arguing Japan’s case based on the rationale of quality as ‘cost-effective in the long-run’. The Japan Business Federation identified Asia, and especially countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, India and Myanmar, as the priority regions. Sectors including railway, airports, harbours, telecommunication and power plants are of interest. Drawing from its promising economic prospects, rapid urbanisation, expanding market and growing strategic significance as a regional power, Japan is aggressively pursuing PQI in India.

This is a win–win construct for Japan and India as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative, which aims to make India an epicentre of global manufacturing by creating excellent infrastructure and enhancing the investment climate, intersects with Abe’s PQI.

Japan will increasingly play an instrumental role in redefining Indian infrastructure. PQI will further expand the shadow of Japan in India’s development story. While Japan’s footprint in high-speed rail, industrial corridors and urban mass rapid transport systems have expanded in India over the years through Official Development Assistance loans, PQI is a more comprehensive approach. It appears to be relatively more amenable to high risk projects and reinforces the Japan Bank for International Cooperation’s role to give support for private–public partnerships for infrastructure projects; calls for robust collaboration with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for expansion of lending capacity and lending portfolio to the private sector; encourages mobilisation of private funding for infrastructure projects; and aims to accelerate loan procedures.

The policy priority of Prime Minister Modi is economic development and reinstating the confidence of investors. Besides good governance, this requires resilient infrastructure that will facilitate industrial networks and regional value chains. Estimates indicate that India requires investment of approximately US$1 trillion in infrastructure over the next few years — innovative solutions are needed to address this huge requirement. As India mobilises resources to attain its developmental goals, Abe’s PQI will play a key role in enhancing connectivity within India and beyond the borders.

India is benefitting as the competition for infrastructure financing is heating up between China and Japan in emerging Asian economies. The impact of losing the Indonesian high speed railway project to China in September 2015 made Japan offer attractive loan terms and Shinkansen technology for the Mumbai–Ahmadabad high speed railway project during Abe’s visit to India in December 2015.

Meanwhile, the feasibility study for the Delhi–Mumbai high speed train corridor is being conducted by an Indo–Chinese consortium, while the Delhi–Nagpur section of the Delhi-Chennai Diamond Quadrilateral corridor is being done through government-to-government cooperation with China. France and Spain based consortiums are also engaged in the feasibility studies for the Mumbai–Chennai and Kolkata–Delhi railway corridors respectively. Constructive competition in infrastructure financing is desirable since it will provide India the choice to opt from the best terms. This will eventually serve the larger goal of enabling the emerging economies of Asia to fuel their national growth engines and boost Asia’s overall ability to compete in the global economy.

PQI will certainly add qualitative depth to the India–Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership. But both sides will have to invest more energy and demonstrate patience as infrastructure financing will have to navigate a few hurdles while India makes effort to undo decades-old bureaucratic bottlenecks to ease procedures and attract investments.

Even as Modi welcomed the concessional loans and high speed rail technology for the Mumbai–Ahmadabad project from Japan, national debate questioned the rationality of a high cost project between two already well-connected cities in a poor country like India when resources could be mobilised to improve the overall railway network. Some have argued in favour of developing the highspeed railway network along the Diamond Quadrilateral — which aims to connect the four cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata — rather than regional corridors. A section of the domestic debate revolved around the question of economic viability and ridership of the Mumbai–Ahmadabad project. Still high speed railway will certainly redefine the Indian transportation sector and fuel the engine of economic growth.

Weighing the impact of China-led mega-infrastructure projects, Abe conceptualised PQI. One of the important pillars of PQI is to deepen collaboration with the ADB. Meanwhile, Asia is closely observing how the ADB is debating the scope of joint infrastructure financing with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank while responding to Asia’s enormous infrastructure requirements. Japan has stressed that in cooperation with the ADB, it will deliver high-quality and innovative infrastructure to Asia and committed US$110 billion over five years, demonstrating a 30 per cent increase in funding. India will certainly gain from such commitments, which in turn will redefine the contours of India–Japan relations at a time when political energy on both sides is working to add further depth to bilateral ties.

Titli Basu is a Researcher at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

The article was originally published in the East Asia Forum

• Published: 29 April, 2016

Research Assistant, IDSA, Dr Titli Basu’s article, titled ‘Japan in Prime Minister Modi's Vision for India’, was published in the Asia Pacific Bulletin (East-West Center) on March 30, 2016.

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• Published: 30 March, 2016

Research Assistant, IDSA, Dr Titli Basu’s article on Japan’s Security Discourse, titled ‘Decoding Japan’s Security Discourse: Diverse Perspectives’, was published in the January-March, 2016, edition of India Quarterly.

Abstract

East Asian theatre is fast evolving. China’s arrival as a major power in international politics is altering the existing regional balance of power and intensifying Japan’s quest for securing a rightful place in the international system. Japan is reacting to the asymmetrical power politics and Shinzo Abe is increasingly becoming restless in attempting to redefine Japan’s secondary power identity. This requires undoing the limitations that were forced on Japan in the post-war period, including the constitutional restrictions, especially the pacifist clause. Amid fiercely contested domestic debate, reinterpreting the pacifist constitution is certainly a bold step towards infusing clarity in Japan’s future security role. The key objective is to convey to Japan’s allies concerning the manner the SDF will cooperate with the US and other regional powers, such as Australia, India, Philippines, etc. How this ‘limited’ right to collective self-defence will translate into operation will remain to be seen. To understand the rapidly unfolding policy shift, it is imperative to understand the different waves of the debate on collective self-defence and deconstruct the recent cabinet decision; explore the arguments of the competing schools of thought in Japan; examine the nuances and drivers that propelled Japan to redefine its passive constitution; and understand how regional and extra-regional powers evaluate this policy reorientation. Few regional stakeholders raised an alarm over the approach adopted by Abe to achieve the policy objective underscoring his militarist ambitions. While the aggressive historical baggage has caused considerable unease, it is premature to be alarmed over Japan’s shifting security posture as possible re-militarisation is unlikely to represent the traits of Imperial Japan.

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• Published: 2 March, 2016